Automation for thee, billions for me

My social media timeline today is full of people laid off from Meta as it purges 10% of its global workforce, or 8,000 people.

Billed internally as an "AI-first reset", the affected employees' day yesterday began with a simple email instruction to "work from home today". Then, a few hours later, their termination emails arrived. The fortunate remaining departmental colleagues would be transferred into new AI-led units -- doubtless to be fired in some future round -- while 6,000 open roles were scrapped.

This is, of course, a cowardly and impersonal way to let people go. People who had given years to a company they thought was probably a force for good in the world. Irrespective of personal performance, they were suddenly deemed surplus to requirement; nothing to do whatever with the financial performance of their employer.

Loyalty at work in organisations like Meta is a one-way street. Employees fall for the b/s company line that "At XYZCo we're like a family" and HR-drafted guff like that. In reality, employment is a transaction; services for payment. The fact that your personal life, your mortgage, your school fees, your car payment and, particularly in the US, your health insurance all depend on it is by the by.

As much as you as an employee invest in your job, take responsibility and lie awake worrying about whatever is plaguing you at work, the feeling isn't reciprocal for pleonexics like Mark Zuckerberg. Their pathological greed is boundless.

At an Amazon fulfilment centre in Oregon last month a 46-year-old employee collapsed and died of a heart attack. The co-workers on his shift were instructed not to look and "keep working", because productivity...

There are, of course, countless examples like the ones above of greed over care and dollars put before people's well-being, not just employees'. However, for an insight into Meta and its rapacious CEO, this book is an eye-opener into quite how psychopathic he is. https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/sarah-wynn-williams/careless-people/9781035065967

And in the meantime, the AI enshittification of everything continues, of course.

Have a nice day, y'all.