Zuckerberg threw a party for his workers — then cut most of them

Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up Meta's annual hackathon with a message that landed like a joke no one laughed at: the company had laid off about 1,000 employees since the event started.

The hackathon itself was the kind of Silicon Valley spectacle — employees pitching ideas, teams working through the night, a sense of creative momentum. But the layoffs are part of Meta's ongoing cost-cutting. The company has been trimming its workforce for months as it pivots hard into AI, trying to make the tech work pay for itself.

What's striking is the timing. The party was for the ones who stayed. The ones who got cut were already packing their desks. For the 1.7 million people Meta employs, the hackathon was a reminder that the company's future bets are real — but so is the cost of getting left behind.

Why this matters for us: When tech companies celebrate while cutting, the ones who pay the price are often the workers in the back offices — the ones who built the products and now watch them get repackaged.