Layoffs are everywhere. Millions of employees have had to do more without any change in compensation. My own team has decreased from six to two, but I am not seeing any increased pay for being more load bearing.
I will always pour one out for the fellow wage slave (more for the people who suddenly lost a job), but I am admittedly a bit less sympathetic to those with in demand skills receiving top tier compensation. More for the teachers, nurses, DOGEd FDA employees, whatever who was only ever taking in a more modest wage, but is continually expected to do more with less.
Management cutting headcount and making the drones work harder is not a unique story to Facebook.
Still, regardless of the eye-watering amount of money, there's still a maximum amount of useful work you can get out of someone. Demand too much, and you actually lower their total productivity.
(For me, I found the limit was somewhere around 70 hrs/week - beyond that, the mistakes I made negated any progress I made. This also left me pretty burnt out after about a year, so the sustainable long-term hourly work rate is lower)
We're talking about overworked AI engineers and researchers who've been berated for management failures and told they need to do 5x more (before today). The money isn't just handed out for slacking, it's in exchange for an eye-watering amount of work, and now more is expected of them.
Where did you get that people are expected to do 5x more? That just seems made up.
And do not forget that people have autonomy. They can choose to go elsewhere if they no longer think they’re getting compensated fairly for what they are putting in (and competing for with others in the labor market)