I am sorry but people going and wanting to go back to meta after being laid off is exactly why Meta keeps getting away with it.
I am in some ex-meta groups and people tell they got laid off and in the same sentence ask how/when can they apply again. If someone is laid off for supposed ‘low performance’ and they still want to go back because it pays 10-20% higher than others is just weak. Have some self esteem!
On the topic of recording clicks and keystrokes: they have one of the most extensive surveillance-ware on employee devices since 2015. So its not new. Its posted publicly to avoid some law suits in near future.
On the topic of training ai with this data: where do i even start. Meta is so delusional. NO ONE uses the ai in whatsapp, messenger, facebook, instagram. Many people don’t even try it. So regardless of the quality of the model, no one wants to speak to meta’s ai. Even if they produce a very efficient coworker, why would anyone touch meta’s ai? I wouldn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.
Not just bloated, obese. These companies have an eating disorder. They can longer control it. Even after all the layoffs meta gained net weight in 2025.
its not a 'concerted campaign'. meta laid off 4300 in 2025, but by the end of the year was actaully ~4800 higher than before. If that is not 'over hiring', i dont know what is. The headcount went from 74K in dec2024 to 78K in dec2025, even WITH the layoffs.
There is no "workforce reduction". its just "we need new faces around here". Hire-to-fire.
I think it is also a matter on how the Meta stock comp works - and that people hired during the slump in stock price became very expensive once it came back up.
Why though? It is the technology of today's times. 70s had microprocessors, 80s had languages and tools, 90s was about the internet, 00s was about e-commerce and then web2.0 and later iPhone, mobile/local/social, 15s-20s was gig and creator economy, blockchain, metaverse... and now its AI. If you are sick of reading about AI, what would you rather read/talk about?
Maybe I’m naive since most of that was before I was born, but a lot of the past topics you mentioned seem more interesting because the people talking about them (I assume) had interesting knowledge and opinions to share about them. AI is an extremely boring topic because the people most excited about it are “idea people” rather than people with interesting knowledge and expertise. And idea people are pretty draining to listen to for years on end.
Even the top post on HN about ChatGPT’s image generation is full of a bunch of comments just saying “wow this is epic”, “I can make so many mangas with this”, etc. Or a post about a new model where people are saying bland stuff like “this doesn’t write Typescript as well as Nut43-2.1-Max”. Compare those to a post about language design, for instance, and you’d see a lot more interesting discussion and opinions.
Just my opinion though. It seems like the more interesting topics in AI are related to its divisiveness, and even that is getting super old after years of it going on.
I agree with that sentiment. Most discourse around AI is shallow. There are people who do have a rather profound world view on this and sometimes it surfaces on hackernews. Karpathy for instance is very pragmatic but also philosophical at times.
What we see today is stuff of sci-fi. The amazing and deep stuff Asimov and many others wrote about.
“ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”
As far as I understand, there is plenty of research there in disciplines raging from social studies through psychology to game theory and economics, as well as informal simulations, that strongly suggest that human interactions are positive to participants pretty much if and only if those interactions are repeated, which realistically only occurs if participants are circumstantially close already - same neighborhood, same job, family, friends, same school, etc.
One-off interactions are almost invariably toxic with at least one of the participants getting cheated, bullied, or otherwise harmed.
So the whole premise of connecting people unconditionally, including anonymously, automatically, and from opposite sides of the world is inherently broken and doomed to do a lot of damage.
So even Meta's self proclaimed mission is damaging to society if followed, what could possibly at that point be expected from what they actually do, given the combination of basic facts that the primary purpose of any business is to make money, Meta's specific notoriously evident disregard towards ethics, their position as an advertisement business and entertainment provider, being deep into enshitification and market saturation, and of course actual honest mistakes to boot.
> human interactions are positive to participants pretty much if and only if those interactions are repeated
> One-off interactions are almost invariably toxic
I think these claims are too strong. I can believe that there's less incentive to treat people well when you don't expect to repeat interactions.
To give a mundane counter-example: last week I had a flight where I chatted on-and-off with the person next to me. I had zero expectations of repeat interactions with them following the flight, and it was still a friendly and courteous exchange, on both sides.
I agree in both parts. In particular, repeatability is only one part of it, another is in person physical presence, or a weaker form of it - on-screen presence, or at the absolute least - voice.
All of the latter plays a huge role, a lot of us don't want to be horrible to a person physically in front of us, evolutionally it makes sense - if you do, you might get a fist in the face. Or no support and help in the future, as whoever is nearby will have a high chance of meeting you again (historically, before modern technology and transportation), or even belong to your tribe.
Notice, however, that all of these factors in the end correlate with pre-existing geographical proximity to the person in question. In fact, the said proximity also maximizes the likelihood that you'll see eye to eye - will not have radical, difficult to overcome differences in world view. Yes, sure, we all "should" understand people existing in very different circumstances, but let's face it, it goes a lot better when circumstances are similar, and that once again correlates with geographical proximity.
So realistically there is a huge correlation between "connecting person A and B over the internet is good" and "person A and B already live nearby and already have a high chance of running into each other physically in the real world".
In its simplest, most primitive form what you want is to give people who have already physically met once a way of continuing the connection even if circumstances drive them apart immediately after. And if possible, keep that connection to more physical-like forms - at least audio, better yet video calls, only if absolutely necessary - text.
Wait, that's called a phone. Invented a gazillion years ago. You meet first, then you exchange the numbers. And then you call and actually talk to the person.
What social networks are doing is a fundamentally problematic way of connecting people even without any recommendation systems, rage baits, and other social and addictive engineering involved, or ads - even in the purest form it's already a problem.
“ That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”
After all the layoffs, labeling people as underperformers while laying off, etc. can they stoop any lower? Why TF would anyone in their right mind would want to join this company?
The answer to your question has less to do with "vibe coding," "harness," and all the jargon and "productivity guru speak."
It is akin to asking, "How do you get a runner's high when running in the Nike Vaporfly?" You don't. What you _can_ do is improve your core strength, endurance, cardio, etc. Then, there will come a day, if you are consistent in your running, when, while running, you are less worried about tired legs and generally feel "open" and feel like flying. That day, you will push your pace and realise "oh shit" and bonk. That day you realise that your body and mind are not ready for sustaining a very high pace for a long time. You start doing interval training, hill repeats, and so on. A few months later you try to push the pace again on a good day and voila, you love it! Pure running bliss.
The same is true for engineering. If your "multitasking" muscle/mechanism is weak, if your orbital-prefrontal cortex is weak and you get distracted easily, then no amount of process hacking will get you to flow state. So first understand your mind, understand your body, understand your weaknesses. Work on them consciously, deliberately.
As for me, I can work on at most 2, maybe 3, projects at a time. I observed that my mind works well as a stack, and I am good at pushing context from one project onto the stack, loading the next project's context, then pushing it onto the stack and starting work on the next one. Finish it, then pop to the previous project, and keep going around. When my mind feels weak, I use digital sticky notes or just jot down notes somewhere to maintain context between projects, to just drop down t o focusing on 1 project a time.
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