Workplace

When a Meta employee hijacked a company-wide livestream last Thursday and screamed at colleagues to tell a senior AI executive he was “a piece of shit,” it wasn’t one person having a bad day. It was the eruption of months of fury inside one of the most ambitious — and botched — corporate reorganizations in tech history. Welcome to Meta’s Applied AI unit, where roughly 6,500 engineers are openly calling their new assignment “the gulag.” ...

Something deeply uncomfortable is unfolding at Meta right now, and it goes far beyond another round of Silicon Valley layoffs. The company is simultaneously tracking employee keystrokes to train AI models, forcing AI tool adoption into performance reviews, and preparing to cut 8,000 workers by May 20th. Employees are sharing nihilistic memes, building countdown websites to their own layoffs, and openly asking to be fired so they can collect severance. ...