According to that chart 2021
was anomalously low and it has been linearly returning to normal for the past four years.
AFAICT, the general populace is anxious about AI. So, the news knows they can get clicks with “You are right to be afraid. AI bad.” Meanwhile, CEOs know they can get stock boosts by saying “We are so AI we don’t need expenses. Infinite ROI!”
Put together we’re getting a ton of scary reporting on what looks like a quite normal business cycle. And, everyone being afraid to hire is the only thing actually making it self-fulfilling.
Forgeties79 14 minutes ago [-]
I wouldn’t call the massive levels of investment by both private equity and municipal/state governments “business as usual.” The sums being thrown down and/or promised are staggering. People/groups that lose are going to lose big.
bearjaws 2 hours ago [-]
And Meta has another round coming, soon the only thing left at the company will be data center staff.
Surprised it took this long. I feel bad for the employees, but I can’t remember the last success they had. Metaverse, VR, throwing absurd money at AI and for what?
oneseventwonine 4 minutes ago [-]
I think their Meta Glasses are genuinely good, great form factor. I mainly use it to take photos or videos and not much their "Meta AI"
paxys 49 minutes ago [-]
Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. Every new effort since then has been hemorrhaging money. They get away with it because they have two limitless money faucets in Facebook and Instagram, but their product strategy as a whole has been a disaster.
ProllyInfamous 38 minutes ago [-]
It would be incredible to think that Mark Zuckerberg genuinely thought their Metaverse/VR investment was going to be akin to Xerox's bayarea PARC campus (developer of modern networking / GUI &c). I guess both were ultimately profit-negative financial disasters.
jordanb 17 minutes ago [-]
Watching their demo video was the perfect encapsulation of "this was not made for users" I have ever seen. First of all the idea of hanging out in a digital world with Mark Zuckerberg is so bleak. I can't imagine a worse hang.
But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!
HDThoreaun 13 minutes ago [-]
Meta ad spend increases 10% every year. Their products have had non stop continual successes for decades at this point. If fb and insta never changed and were solely relying on tailwind you could say they havent had any success, but this clearly is not true imo. Their family of apps have changed a lot, mostly for the worse imo, but it has led to massive increases in ad shows and spend per ad show.
twelve40 5 minutes ago [-]
there are plenty of amazingly lucrative businesses that do really well, like online casinos, tobacco companies, etc. that happily milk their users and don't bother with improving human condition. You can call that "successful product strategy" i guess, but to me that's still pretty repulsive. You can also call this hyperbole, but i really am very much repulsed at this: increasing addictiveness for the weak minds to extract more revenue.
jameskilton 1 hours ago [-]
Mark Zuckerberg is no longer the kingmaker that he was during Facebook's peak, and he is desperately trying to create the next platform to be the one in power once again.
It would be sad if it wasn't so unbelievably destructive to everything it touches.
jimbob45 6 minutes ago [-]
Llama should be mentioned in the same conversations that ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek dominate. If only it wasn’t so inaccessible…
abuani 59 minutes ago [-]
Curious to see how they can turn moltbook into a money maker. Do they sell ads to agents?
csimon80 40 minutes ago [-]
My guess is data collection. Maybe the data can be used to improve or train agents.
nradov 11 minutes ago [-]
There seems to be slightly less comment spam and pig butchering fake profiles on Facebook lately so maybe that counts as a minor success? It might not look impressive from the outside but it's technically challenging and helps to keep the advertising revenue rolling in.
chaostheory 1 hours ago [-]
Its surveillance business seems to be growing.
kypro 39 minutes ago [-]
Their Libra cryptocurrency project is another example.
simianwords 1 hours ago [-]
threads?
MSFT_Edging 60 minutes ago [-]
you don't often see screenshots of threads posts on other sites like you do twitter/bluesky.
nickthegreek 50 minutes ago [-]
Sure, but I’d argue that 140m dau, 400m mau is still success.
12_throw_away 35 minutes ago [-]
Considering the overall impact of Threads, those statistics are certainly ... interesting.
10xDev 21 minutes ago [-]
It is somewhat integrated to Instagram with billions of active users. Not saying a whole lot.
yacin 55 minutes ago [-]
also just another clear ripoff. they copy, they acquire, but they cannot seem to innovate.
tim-projects 39 minutes ago [-]
Meta seem fairly innovative. Their r&d labs seem to produce some really cool things.
The basic issue is none of it seems to be making any money when it ends up in products and services.
Main reason there seems to be that their walled garden approach is tolerated at best. They just aren't very good at it outside of a feed.
tinyhouse 10 minutes ago [-]
That's going to happen in all of big tech (already happening at Amazon and Microsoft). These companies have too many employees. It was never really justified and with AI even more so. I've been in big tech and directors often tell everyone to hire when they can rather when they need. For example, if they know a hiring freeze is coming, they will try to hire as many people as they can before it happens. It's rare to find people in big tech where their incentives align with the company. (and the blame is not always on the people themselves)
As for Meta, I give Mark credit for trying, even if he failed so far with all the VR stuff. The main disappointment is about Llama cause it's clearly an execution problem. With Meta's investments in AI throughout the years, not being able to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI is a big failure.
badgersnake 18 minutes ago [-]
It’s a lobbying firm now isn’t it?
smithcoin 2 hours ago [-]
Cutting layers of bureaucracy not replacing with AI
coffeefirst 28 minutes ago [-]
Some of this smells purely nihilistic. The market rewarded layoffs with higher stock prices, incentivizing more layoffs.
dd8601fn 12 minutes ago [-]
It sure didn't reward Atlassian. If anything it accelerated the long, downward slide.
HDThoreaun 10 minutes ago [-]
I dont think zuck cares especially much about the stock price. He's certainly not beholden to any shareholders. He's doing this because he genuinely thinks it will help the company to trim the fat.
rishabhaiover 1 hours ago [-]
Google's projected AI capex spend is $170-180 billion for this year. It's unreasonable to think AI would not be a reason for companies to consider layoffs.
IgorPartola 52 minutes ago [-]
There are two ways to interpret your comment:
1. Google is getting so much productivity out of their AI that they need fewer people.
2. Google is spending so much on AI they can’t afford to keep the people they need.
rishabhaiover 39 minutes ago [-]
Google (and almost all other BigTech) is spending on scaling compute (data centers/securing power generation/chip contracts). My comment was not related to AI producivity and its impact on reduction of workforce. I believe a company spending nearly all its free cash flow on scaling compute (or borrowing money to do so) would have a different opinion on the economics of human capital.
bayarearefugee 26 minutes ago [-]
Or
3. Google is spending so much on AI that they can't afford to keep paying people, but they are ok with this because they are convinced the AI investment will replace the people at an eventual cost savings.
dd8601fn 10 minutes ago [-]
That seems to have been Dorsey's approach. The business has been stagnant, so cut the roster and bet big on some future returns from AI.
PessimalDecimal 46 minutes ago [-]
I subscribe to the second point of view. Several companies fall in that bucket. Oracle comes to mind.
fcarraldo 43 minutes ago [-]
Does that include R&D? Google is an AI _provider_, which is a considerably different profile in terms of spend from companies who are consumers. I would expect Google to be investing considerable resources to keep up with Anthropic and OpenAI.
doomslayer999 2 hours ago [-]
Let's do the government, and boomer welfare next.
mc32 1 hours ago [-]
I’m down for that. There are so many “facilitators” in middle management, some really good and quite a few bad ones and many making no difference. I don’t know how people thought they were good positions to hire for.
Remember before Covid many a company deadweight showing us the vast amounts of unwork they did at their companies on their YouTube videos? Proudly showing how idle they were?
Not all the firings are deadweight but a lot are. There is also a general tightening of budgets and people who are part of dead-end programs that are being let go. When the economy was hotter companies would keep these people to add at the margins; I think now that money is still tight they’re not keeping that luxury.
jjmarr 1 hours ago [-]
In a zero interest rate environment, literally any return on investment justifies spending.
If interest rates are 3.8%, the company needs at least a 3.8% return every year on your yearly compensation to justify your job.
Retric 60 minutes ago [-]
Not if they are compensated during the year.
Grocery stores have slim margins, but if you make 10k after selling 1M worth of stock buy turn over that stock 12 times a year that’s ~12% annual ROI not 1%.
22 minutes ago [-]
alexanderchr 47 minutes ago [-]
You'd calculate return on investment based on invested capital, not on expenses, so this does not follow.
logicchains 55 minutes ago [-]
It's not the boomers' fault, they were misled into believing the social security system they were paying into was a genuine savings system, not just a perpetual wealth transfer system from the young to the old.
doomslayer999 7 minutes ago [-]
It was really FDR who abused wartime power to make a constitutionally illegal program. Now we’re in a complete demographic mess which is basically unsolvable because the pyramid is inverted.
avidiax 20 minutes ago [-]
How were they mislead?
From day one, Social Security was a "new money pays old money" scheme, the one thing that makes it Ponzi-like.
To be fair, the boomers got screwed in the 1980's SS reform to pay for their parents (but had it sweet before), so maybe this is just paying it forward.
napolux 2 hours ago [-]
AI as a real impact or more as an excuse?
ttul 2 hours ago [-]
It’s the business cycle, mostly. During the pandemic, low interest rates drove a boom in risk investing that flowed downhill into tech company balance sheets. Of course everyone used the money to hire lots of developers and engineers - probably more than were needed for the business opportunity they were exploiting.
I think AI is being used as an excuse for layoffs rather than the cause. Companies don’t have the cash and times got a bit too rich. This is the cyclical pull back that has been going on for decades.
win311fwg 1 hours ago [-]
There is never just one cause, but I do think AI is one of them.
Not in some AI "dey took er jerbs" kind of way, but because businesses are turning their investment focus towards AI-related ventures, like building data centres, and away from investments that require tech workers. Non-residential construction jobs, for example, have surged.
CoastalCoder 50 minutes ago [-]
> Not in some AI "dey took er jerbs" kind of way
FWIW, I read this as equating a particular regional accent with stupidity.
I imagine it wasn't intentional, but it's something to consider.
PessimalDecimal 43 minutes ago [-]
It's a South Park reference. It very much is equating the accent with stupidity and backwardness.
In their defense, they make fun of nearly everyone. But they definitely were mocking White Southerners there.
bogzz 1 hours ago [-]
Well yes, Meta even said so explicitly about their upcoming layoffs. They're offsetting the capital expenditures into data centers, and "preparing for greater efficiency brought on by AI-assisted workers".
RealityVoid 22 minutes ago [-]
So who is getting that money then? Contractors building sites? Is it going off to the silicon manufacturers? Is Nvidia getting a large part of the pie?
PlanksVariable 2 hours ago [-]
And for how many more years are we going to be calling this a post-Covid market correction?
Lerc 1 hours ago [-]
In a very real sense these are still ripples from the death of Franz Ferdinand.
AnimalMuppet 1 hours ago [-]
Not in a very useful sense, though.
If you can show that the death of Franz Ferdinand necessarily caused tech layoffs in 2026, I'll listen. I don't think you can, though.
Lerc 55 minutes ago [-]
I think you could absolutely draw a causal link, it wouldn't explain why 2026 instead of 2024 or 2028.
bayarearefugee 56 minutes ago [-]
Also, whether Covid is to blame or not, all these layoffs (not just the Meta one) contradict some of the most common rationalizations I've seen for how AI won't destroy the labor market but rather expand it.
If there really is all this latent untapped need to drive a Jevron's effect software explosion that will keep developers employable, why would so many profitable companies be laying off so many workers into the transition?
camdenreslink 2 hours ago [-]
Many companies really got bloated during COVID. From what I can see online, Meta doubled their number of employees between 2019 and 2022. How long does it take to correct from that amount of hiring?
dd8601fn 7 minutes ago [-]
Some of these companies have increased headcount since their post-COVID cuts.
Some of this has nothing to do with COVID boom numbers. Some are bailing water as fast as they can (Atlassian, et al), some are treading water and betting on future returns from AI (Block), etc.
gedy 1 hours ago [-]
I mean hell we are still feeling the impacts of 2008 crash and monetary policy.
joe_mamba 1 hours ago [-]
It takes time to correct 10 years of ZIRP, plus COVID overhiring that doubled the headcount of those 10 years in just 2-3.
The jig was up when social media like Reddit and tiktok during the pandemic was full of posts with big tech workers gloating about getting hired for six figure salaries to sleep in and play video games at home while putting in 2 hours of work a week, obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that it was a too-good-to-be-true unsustainable bubble that's gonna pop and trigger a brutal reset on the job market.
Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss.
Reinforce that with wall street rewarding mass layoff with share price going up, contrary to the pandemic rewards of shares going up with over hiring, and you have the perfect storm.
AI and the idea of it replacing jobs, has nothing to dow with this, it's just 10 years of ZIRP reawarding every unprofitable bullsit SaaS start-up, and 10 years of "just learn to code bro" where every shoeshine boy became a coder so now tech companies hiring are spoiled for choice.
Edit: Oh I forgot, add to that the increased of offshoring to places with cheaper labor thanks to the normalisation of remote work making it an even perfecter(is that a word?) storm on why an average programmer's labor has way less value.
skybrian 2 hours ago [-]
Either? Both? The question is too zoomed-out. It's going to be different for each company and maybe different for each round of layoffs.
pokstad 1 hours ago [-]
Both. AI can help you be more productive with fewer people, but a growing company still needs many people commanding AI to expand into a market.
PLenz 2 hours ago [-]
The public reason given for a layoff is always a self-serving excuse.
tayo42 54 minutes ago [-]
Unemployed people, what are you doing?
apatheticonion 25 minutes ago [-]
I was laid off from Atlassian this/last week. Since then I've been playing Satisfactory for 12 hours a day.
Crazy thing is, I delivered optimizations that saved 1m USD over the last 12 months, with another optimization in-flight that would save another 1m USD. I thought that was enough to protect me from layoffs/PIPs - I guess no one was counting.
Internal survey showed that people saved a self-reported average of 4 hours per week using AI - which sounds about right. AI is just an excuse for layoffs which IMO CEOs are trying to use to recover share prices from the SaaS-pocalypse. Looks like layoffs aren't hitting the same for stock prices as they once were.
mixmastamyk 48 minutes ago [-]
Being ghosted, hazed, and otherwise abused. No one is hiring at restaurants, etc either. A recession has probably started.
Loudergood 38 minutes ago [-]
Interviewing 4 times just to get ghosted.
hirehalai 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
LoganDark 1 hours ago [-]
AI
gh0stcat 1 hours ago [-]
AI
simianwords 1 hours ago [-]
AI
ph4rsikal 14 minutes ago [-]
I think the age of SaaS and Software companies is over.
Given by all the overhyped TikTok videos there are lots of roles which are not needed.
small_model 1 hours ago [-]
Mangers and executives have better tools now to track a tech workers output/performance, they will cut the useless/low performers/in over their head people who were hired during preceding years. A small tech team with proficient intelligent devs augmented with AI can replace 100's of duds.
genthree 3 minutes ago [-]
My experience has been that a good small team, even full of people who’d stand no chance in a FAANG interview (fwiw) can outperform at least 5x as many devs in your median bigco, while maintaining a relaxed pace.
The reason for this has nothing to do with how productive the devs are per se and everything to do with bloated decision making processes and extremely high communication overhead. “AI” does nothing for that (in fact, I’m seeing integrated suggestions in ticket tracking tools making things spammier and reducing quality of tickets, so if anything, it’s making it worse)
davebren 11 minutes ago [-]
No what happens from using those metrics is that you filter out all the people that care more about doing their job well than gaming metrics. Fraudsters tend to do really well in those situations.
2020 and 2023 both had serious layoff spikes, but the 2023 spike trailed off to an asymptote that we're still hovering around.
https://layoffs.fyi/
AFAICT, the general populace is anxious about AI. So, the news knows they can get clicks with “You are right to be afraid. AI bad.” Meanwhile, CEOs know they can get stock boosts by saying “We are so AI we don’t need expenses. Infinite ROI!”
Put together we’re getting a ton of scary reporting on what looks like a quite normal business cycle. And, everyone being afraid to hire is the only thing actually making it self-fulfilling.
Apparently 20% to be laid off soon.
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning...
But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!
It would be sad if it wasn't so unbelievably destructive to everything it touches.
The basic issue is none of it seems to be making any money when it ends up in products and services.
Main reason there seems to be that their walled garden approach is tolerated at best. They just aren't very good at it outside of a feed.
As for Meta, I give Mark credit for trying, even if he failed so far with all the VR stuff. The main disappointment is about Llama cause it's clearly an execution problem. With Meta's investments in AI throughout the years, not being able to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI is a big failure.
1. Google is getting so much productivity out of their AI that they need fewer people.
2. Google is spending so much on AI they can’t afford to keep the people they need.
3. Google is spending so much on AI that they can't afford to keep paying people, but they are ok with this because they are convinced the AI investment will replace the people at an eventual cost savings.
Remember before Covid many a company deadweight showing us the vast amounts of unwork they did at their companies on their YouTube videos? Proudly showing how idle they were?
Not all the firings are deadweight but a lot are. There is also a general tightening of budgets and people who are part of dead-end programs that are being let go. When the economy was hotter companies would keep these people to add at the margins; I think now that money is still tight they’re not keeping that luxury.
If interest rates are 3.8%, the company needs at least a 3.8% return every year on your yearly compensation to justify your job.
Grocery stores have slim margins, but if you make 10k after selling 1M worth of stock buy turn over that stock 12 times a year that’s ~12% annual ROI not 1%.
From day one, Social Security was a "new money pays old money" scheme, the one thing that makes it Ponzi-like.
To be fair, the boomers got screwed in the 1980's SS reform to pay for their parents (but had it sweet before), so maybe this is just paying it forward.
I think AI is being used as an excuse for layoffs rather than the cause. Companies don’t have the cash and times got a bit too rich. This is the cyclical pull back that has been going on for decades.
Not in some AI "dey took er jerbs" kind of way, but because businesses are turning their investment focus towards AI-related ventures, like building data centres, and away from investments that require tech workers. Non-residential construction jobs, for example, have surged.
FWIW, I read this as equating a particular regional accent with stupidity.
I imagine it wasn't intentional, but it's something to consider.
In their defense, they make fun of nearly everyone. But they definitely were mocking White Southerners there.
If you can show that the death of Franz Ferdinand necessarily caused tech layoffs in 2026, I'll listen. I don't think you can, though.
If there really is all this latent untapped need to drive a Jevron's effect software explosion that will keep developers employable, why would so many profitable companies be laying off so many workers into the transition?
Some of this has nothing to do with COVID boom numbers. Some are bailing water as fast as they can (Atlassian, et al), some are treading water and betting on future returns from AI (Block), etc.
The jig was up when social media like Reddit and tiktok during the pandemic was full of posts with big tech workers gloating about getting hired for six figure salaries to sleep in and play video games at home while putting in 2 hours of work a week, obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that it was a too-good-to-be-true unsustainable bubble that's gonna pop and trigger a brutal reset on the job market.
Further reinforced with Elon firing 80% of Twitter and the website didn't stop working, reminding big tech CEOs that they can also start looking into trimming the overhiring fat in their back yard, with no operational loss.
Reinforce that with wall street rewarding mass layoff with share price going up, contrary to the pandemic rewards of shares going up with over hiring, and you have the perfect storm.
AI and the idea of it replacing jobs, has nothing to dow with this, it's just 10 years of ZIRP reawarding every unprofitable bullsit SaaS start-up, and 10 years of "just learn to code bro" where every shoeshine boy became a coder so now tech companies hiring are spoiled for choice.
Edit: Oh I forgot, add to that the increased of offshoring to places with cheaper labor thanks to the normalisation of remote work making it an even perfecter(is that a word?) storm on why an average programmer's labor has way less value.
Crazy thing is, I delivered optimizations that saved 1m USD over the last 12 months, with another optimization in-flight that would save another 1m USD. I thought that was enough to protect me from layoffs/PIPs - I guess no one was counting.
Internal survey showed that people saved a self-reported average of 4 hours per week using AI - which sounds about right. AI is just an excuse for layoffs which IMO CEOs are trying to use to recover share prices from the SaaS-pocalypse. Looks like layoffs aren't hitting the same for stock prices as they once were.
The reason for this has nothing to do with how productive the devs are per se and everything to do with bloated decision making processes and extremely high communication overhead. “AI” does nothing for that (in fact, I’m seeing integrated suggestions in ticket tracking tools making things spammier and reducing quality of tickets, so if anything, it’s making it worse)