Big Tech is posting record revenues — we're talking historic, champagne-popping, Wall-Street-euphoria-level numbers — and simultaneously handing out pink slips by the thousands. Meta alone has managed to announce jaw-dropping earnings, kill the metaverse, freeze 6,000 positions, lay off entire departments, and pledge its highest-ever AI spending all in what feels like a single breath.

As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly: "Yeah no shit. That's their thing, that's what they do."

Hard to argue with that. These companies never claimed they were cutting headcount because of slow sales. They're cutting because they can. Headcount is a line item, and when a multibillion-dollar bet like the metaverse craters, the people who built it become liabilities on a spreadsheet. It's not personal — it's accounting.

And here's where the AI pivot makes this story darker. The same companies slashing roles are pouring unprecedented capital into artificial intelligence — the very technology designed to make human workers less necessary. Meta is reportedly monitoring every keystroke and mouse movement on employee devices to train next-generation AI models with no opt-out. Think about that: your job is to make yourself obsolete, and they're recording your screen while you do it.

Now, a free-market perspective demands honesty here. No company has an obligation to carry headcount it doesn't need. That's not cruelty — that's how private enterprise works. But let's not pretend there's some noble efficiency play happening. These are monopoly-scale platforms using record profits to replace labor with automation while their stock prices soar on the promise of doing exactly that.

As one local wryly observed: "More AI, less people, home price drop — ain't this what Bay Area people been wanting?"

Careful what you wish for. When the most profitable companies in human history decide humans are the cost center to optimize, the ripple effects don't stay in Silicon Valley. They come for everyone's industry eventually.

The layoffs aren't a bug. They're the business model.