laid off 8,000 workers<\/a> on Wednesday \u2014 10 percent of its work force \u2014 as it transforms itself into an A.I.-first firm.<\/p>\nAs the ax fell, some employees traded somber messages with each other. Others reacted on internal forums with salad emojis, their way to say \u201csalute\u201d to one another. And for at least one employee, music was the answer.<\/p>\n
The worker used Meta\u2019s own A.I. tools to create an internal radio station that plays A.I.-generated songs about the job cuts, according to internal posts and recordings of the songs that were obtained by The New York Times, as well as interviews with about a dozen employees. The employee announced the station, called \u201c520 FM\u201d \u2014 a sendup of the May 20 date for the layoffs \u2014 in an internal post using language that mimicked the institutional voice of Meta\u2019s human resources department.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realize many of you are experiencing elevated anxiety,\u201d wrote the worker, whom other employees declined to name for fear of retaliation. \u201cTo support you through this transition, we\u2019ve launched an A.I.-native initiative: Meta 520 FM \u2014 a 24\/7 internal radio station featuring original curated anthems alongside multiple genres to support your diverse coping preferences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The radio station plays A.I.-generated songs in the style of hip-hop, country, rock and even metal, according to the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeta Layoff,\u201d which had the tongue-in-cheek chorus marrying joke, broke and layoff, laid down an easy-listening guitar lick with a finger-snapping rhythm, set to the voice of an R&B vocalist.<\/p>\n
Another track was a Lo-Fi acoustic guitar song called \u201cMissing the People,\u201d with references to missing \u201cthe faces\u201d and \u201clate night jokes\u201d of colleagues in the office.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig Beautiful Layoff,\u201d a song in the \u201cRap\u201d section, starts off more bluntly:<\/p>\n
\u201cH.R. Zoom call<\/p>\n
Screen frozen on the smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meta declined to comment, but some employees were more vocal. They said the radio station was a welcome distraction and added that the creator appeared to really support them.<\/p>\n
\u201cStay strong. Stay tuned. Stay focused on what you can control,\u201d the employee\u2019s internal post said.<\/p>\n
Audio production by Patricia Sulbar\u00e1n.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you wondered what it might be like to be laid off from a giant tech company like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[458,8,17898,12190,12984,1125,9,198,7,12983],"class_list":["post-31192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-headlines","tag-labor-and-jobs","tag-layoffs-and-job-reductions","tag-mark-e","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-news","tag-social-media","tag-top-stories","tag-zuckerberg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116609659893298001","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}