Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

Lots of companies spun up giant AI teams over the last 48 months. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 50+% of these roles are eliminated in the next 48 months.

The AI party is coming to an end. Those without clear ROI are ripe for the chopping block.

wishful thinking

Tbh yes. I like AI but I'm getting a bit sick of the hype. All our top dogs want AI in everything no matter whether it actually benefits the product. They even know it's senseless but they need to show the shareholders that they are all-in on AI.

It's really time for this bubble to collapse so we can go back to working on things that actually make sense rather than ticking boxes.

Well, the told us from the beginning that AI would make many developer jobs redundant, didn’t they?

THe great irony and greed of shareholders is, if this all blows up, they will demand more cash return in the form of dividends and stock buy backs. If that doesnt happen the stock price will get crushed as Meta already experienced back in 2022.

In optimising for AI it feels like we stopped optimising for everything else

It's not even optimising. It's just dragging AI by the hairs into everywhere, where it's not even clear whether it belongs there or provides any benefit. Just to get the company a reputation of "first mover".

Really, this is "blockchain" all over again, but 10x worse.

It's done a lot of damage to meritocracy and intellectualism that will take years to recover from. I don't look forward to having to play a role in fixing it.