Mark Zuckerberg's $300M superyacht draws boos cruising into Seattle as Meta slashes jobs there - New York Post

Marvellous timing from Mark Zuckerberg. His $300 million superyacht, the 'Launchpad' — because nothing says 'I'm helping you launch your career' like a floating gin palace worth more than most small countries — cruised into Seattle just as Meta showed about 1,400 of its local employees the door. The bystanders booed, apparently failing to appreciate the subtle symbolism: you're being laid off, but look, a boat! Perhaps they should be grateful that Zuckerberg chose to park his conspicuous consumption in their harbour rather than, say, a tax haven. The optics deliver a remarkably clear message about who gets to launch and who gets to be launched.

That could have been a very generous severance package — above and beyond whatever Meta deigned to offer — but instead it's a boat named 'Launchpad,' because apparently Zuckerberg's sense of irony is as finely tuned as his sense of labour relations. The scene is so perfectly on-brand that it feels staged: the billionaire tech messiah, having decided his workforce is surplus to AI-automation requirements, arrives by sea in a vessel that costs more than the annual salaries of the people he's just fired.

The boos from the Seattle waterfront were not just for the timing — they were for the sheer, unapologetic audacity. In a world where CEOs preach mission and purpose while yachting past their former employees' severance, the only surprise is that anyone is surprised. The 'Launchpad' will move on, as wealthy people's toys do, leaving behind a waterfront full of unemployed tech workers and a question nobody in Menlo Park is asking: when you can no longer pretend the layoffs are about 'restructuring for efficiency' and not about the boat, what's left? A very pretty wake, apparently.