Laid-off Meta Engineers Receive Claude Code Credits Instead Of Severance
Internal surveys found that 83% of engineers would rather lose their healthcare than lose access to coding agents. The other 17% were already using Claude as their primary care physician.
Engineers terminated in Meta’s latest round of layoffs will receive Claude Code credits in lieu of severance.
“During exit interviews from our last round of layoffs, we found that team members were actually relieved to not be working at Meta anymore,” a company spokesperson told us. “They were mostly just sad to lose access to their coding agents.”
Meta has struggled with morale after multiple rounds of layoffs, forcing engineers to label training data, and recording employee computer activity. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox complained about the “insanity of the company” and described the situation as “what the fuck.”
Under the new severance program, engineers leaving the company will be able to use their free Claude Code credits to work on their own side projects and startup ideas without needing to endure the soul crushing experience of working at Meta.
“This solution is better aligned with the preferences of our former team members. Internal surveys found that 83% of engineers would rather lose their healthcare than lose access to coding agents. The other 17% were already using Claude as their primary care physician. Our program gives former employees access to Claude Code at a far more reasonable cost than they would be able to get on their own,” said the spokesperson.
“By issuing credits instead of cash, we can simultaneously improve profitability for quarterly earnings and generate valuable training data from unemployed engineers. Frankly, it’s difficult to see a downside.”
Meanwhile, while leadership was initially pleasantly surprised that employees were happy to take Claude Code credits instead of cash, this soon turned into panic as a surprisingly high number of high performers decided to take the buyout instead of continuing to slave away at Meta.
To address this issue, leadership announced a mandatory “Fun Week” featuring a pizza party, a bounce house, and a clown-led fireside chat series titled, “This Is Fine.”
In completely unrelated news, an unnamed tech company reportedly blew through $500M of Claude Code tokens this quarter due to a lack of AI cost controls. Meta declined to comment on the report.