Meta executives have privately acknowledged that employee morale has fallen to near the lowest point in about 20 years, as the company pours tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, launches paid products, and wages an aggressive hiring battle with OpenAI and Google. The decline has been linked to mass layoffs, sweeping reorganizations, and forcing employees into AI-related work, whether they wanted it or not.
The comments came from Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth during an internal meeting called Tuesday with Boz, held earlier this month. According to four employees who attended and spoke to Business Insider, Bosworth said morale “may not be at the worst place it has ever been in the last 20 years, but it is probably very close to that,” and later compared the current atmosphere to the Cambridge Analytica crisis, Facebook’s biggest ever scandal. He also said morale is “probably one of the worst it has ever been.”
The company cut about 10% of its workforce in May, saying the move was needed to fund its AI investments. Around another 10% of employees were shifted into new AI training roles, and some said they felt they had been effectively “drafted” into work far outside their original jobs. In April, internal anger also flared after reports that Meta advanced a plan to monitor workers’ mouse movements and keyboard typing, which it said was meant to improve its AI models.
The most surprising proposed remedy, according to Wired, is not only more transparency and more investment in employee career development, but also bigger budgets for business travel, company events, and office snacks. Meta says employees moved into AI teams will be able to reapply for other roles inside the company if they wish. Bosworth wrote in an internal memo that Meta wants “to be the best place, for the best people, who do the best work,” and to restore the company culture it once had.
