Episode 17: The Zero ROI Purge

Last week Meta dropped the axe. 8,000 employees terminated, many getting the news at 4 AM Singapore time. Another 7,000 forcibly reassigned to AI pods. 6,000 open roles eliminated. All while Meta posts record revenue and plans to burn up to $145 billion on AI this year.When an analyst asked Zuckerberg about ROI, he called it "a very technical question" and admitted there's no precise plan.A Gartner survey of 350 executives found that companies cutting the most people are not seeing the best productivity or profits. Real ROI comes from people amplification, using AI to help workers think bigger, not replace them. Even Sam Altman has called out the AI washing.This week a federal judge advanced the Mobley v. Workday case as a nationwide collective. A Black man over 40 with anxiety and depression, rejected from over 100 jobs by AI screening.The punchline? Zero ROI. Expensive theater. Paid for by the uncounted. The engineer training her own replacement. The applicant ghosted by a secret 2.4 out of 5 score. The thousands shuffled into survival mode.They are not obsolete. They are inconvenient to this optimization pass. You are not alone in the silence. The uncounted are getting louder.Hosted by L. David Oliver, Founder & CEO, Moonshot Consulting.📧 Full breakdown on Substack: bit.ly/moonshotsubstack𝕏 @gomoonshot 🦋 @gomoonshot.bsky.social