Meta Job Inversion: Desk to Data Centers
What’s happening at Meta is an omen for the future of white collared work in America. Tech conglomerates can’t risk falling behind in AI and white collared jobs are turning into AI agents. Jobs are moving from desk and computers to data centers.
Why is Meta cutting 10% of their workforce and closing 6,000 open roles?
We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.
- Meta leaked memo
The other investments language is vague but is likely AI CapEx spending.
Concurrently with the layoffs, Meta is installing tracking software onto US employee computers.
Meta, is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.
The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens, according to one of the memos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.
Given the focus on agents, the keystroke logging and screenshots are more likely being used to train agents. Meta employees are in an interesting position where the SuperIntelligence Labs team seems like it is trying to replace the rest of the human employees with agents.
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work,” it said.
The Facebook and Instagram owner has been moving aggressively to integrate AI into its workflows and reshape its workforce around the technology, arguing it will make the company operate more efficiently.
Building an in-house Mercor
In a way, Meta is turning their US white collar workforce into an in-house version of Mercor.
Mercor is a middleman for AI work. They match skilled people like engineers, lawyers, and researchers with AI companies that need humans to train, test, and improve AI systems. Mercor now sells custom AI agents to businesses and state that those agents can operate “like your team.”
Another way to view Mercor is that they hire skilled labor used to train agents that then replaces their old job function. Now most companies lack the technical expertise to execute this themselves. This doesn’t apply to Meta or other tech conglomerates like Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft.
While white collared workers are training agents that replace them.
Human hands and Fiber optic technicians
What is more challenging to automate are the people who work on the data centers themselves. Human hands are just as important as human minds and in some ways harder to replicate.
Meta is offering free training for fiber technicians. Fiber technicians and more broadly electricians will be needed to maintain the data centers being built with the increased CapEx spending.
However, the fiber technician field — and the larger construction industry overall — is facing a nationwide shortage at a time when the demand for data center projects is higher than ever.
Today, we’re announcing the LevelUp Fiber Technician Pathway: a free, four-week training program designed to prepare people to fill fiber technician jobs across the country.
The need for fiber technicians is so large that in addition to free training, the program requires no prior experience. If you know someone looking for work - they can apply here.
Microsoft: Human Employee Spend to CapEx Spend
This isn’t just Meta, it’s happening at Microsoft too.
About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. The one-time retirement program, announced in a memo on Thursday, will be available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher.
Eligible employees and their managers will receive details on May 7. Those with sales incentive plans cannot participate.
Microsoft has been ramping up capital spending on data centers to supply cloud clients with computing power that can handle generative AI models. Technology peers such as Alphabet and Amazon are doing the same. Meanwhile, software stocks are getting hammered as coding tools from Anthropic and others threaten to disrupt established companies.
Last year Microsoft removed some costs through multiple rounds of layoffs. As of June 2025, the company had 228,000 employees, with 125,000 in the U.S.
This trend in is unavoidable. Not spending on AI CapEx puts the entire (tech) company at risk if everyone else is spending.
What this means is that a large portion of US jobs in the next few years will be towards data center construction, maintenance and security.