Meta, the company that wants to know every individual line on your face before it’ll let you buy a clapped-out Crown Victoria and won’t let you access public information about where its CEO Mark Zuckerberg is flying, just laid off about 8,000 workers as the company shifts around its priorities on AI. Zuckerberg himself decided to celebrate the sweeping layoffs, by bringing his 390-foot superyacht out to Seattle — a city with 1,400 newly unemployed former Meta workers.
Zuckerberg’s yacht, named Launchpad, docked in the city Tuesday according to the Seattle Times. The yacht reportedly cost $300 million, and was met with insults and jeers as it swept into the Seattle area. Zuckerberg himself wasn’t present — he seems content to merely own the yacht, without having to go through any of the trouble of actually using it. The yacht has apparently remained a hatesink on its pier, with passing cyclists and joggers swearing at the boat as they go by.
Showy displays of wealth are good when you’re laying people off
Zuckerberg’s $300 million yacht cost more than a year of employment for every person in the Seattle area that Meta just laid off — the company averages a salary of $162,700 for software engineers in the area, according to ZipRecruiter, and Zuck’s big boat cost about 1,844 times that number. It almost seems like a trade: Seattle loses 1,400 jobs, and in exchange the guy who cut those jobs puts his boat there instead. Which would you rather have, Seattle? Gainful employment that helps you “buy food” or whatever, or the awe-inspiring sight of a boat that is bigger than other boats?
Mark Zuckerberg, like all his fellow tech barons, is a pox on human society. The man seems incapable of understanding social faux pas — or is perhaps just so disconnected from humanity as to ignore them entirely — but loves building spaces where your weird uncle who won’t shut up at Thanksgiving can post photos of his autopen monroney. Surely, this is a man who’s contributing to society in a way that justifies his net worth.
