The vibes at Meta headquarters right now aren’t just bad, they are downright rancid. Starting this morning, waves of emails will start arriving in nearly 8,000 employees’ personal inboxes, informing them that their jobs are terminated. Workers had been dreading the mass culling since it was first leaked by The Information in March, but Meta didn’t address the layoffs with staff until last month.

What’s the damage? The layoffs affect about 10% of the ~78,000 workforce. Earlier this week, the company said in a memo that it would also move 7,000 employees to AI-related initiatives and close 6,000 open roles.

Morale at the Facebook parent company is reportedly at an all-time low:

• Things have gotten so bad that some employees are begging for the virtual pink slip and the 16 weeks minimum of severance, Wired reported.
• An employee who worked at the company for over a decade told the San Francisco Standard, “I tend to cry in the shower.”
• Another worker said large empty boxes began arriving at a few of the Menlo Park offices before today’s layoffs, and no one could give employees an answer as to why.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in 2022 that the layoffs were a correction to Covid-era overhiring, but the recent rounds are meant to free up funds for AI spending. The tech giant has pledged to spend as much as $145 billion this year on artificial intelligence.

In April, Meta rolled out a new program internally that tracks employees’ every move on their computers. The company said it would use the data to train AI models on “how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers.”

Big picture: Many Meta workers have pushed back, with some launching a petition urging execs to end the tracking program, and UK workers attempting to unionize. Meta, meanwhile, is reporting record profits.—MM