Overview
- In May, Meta cut about 8,000 jobs and reassigned roughly 6,500–7,000 engineers and product managers into a new Applied AI unit to speed its AI push.
- CTO Andrew Bosworth told staff in a June 2 internal meeting that morale is "probably one of the worst it's ever been" and acknowledged leadership did an "atrocious" job rolling out the change.
- Reassigned employees say much of the work is menial data‑training tasks they call "soul‑crushing," one employee disrupted a company livestream to protest, and internal petitions have opposed a laptop tracking program.
- Meta has promised fixes including capping managers at about 20 direct reports, more internal mobility, better communication and increased perks, but protests and low morale persist.
- Rivals are openly recruiting disaffected engineers — X’s product head offered to match or exceed Meta’s snack budgets — creating a near‑term talent and product‑delivery risk as Meta pours money into AI infrastructure.