Meta’s employee morale has reached a near-record low as the company’s aggressive artificial intelligence overhaul backfires, with the social media giant’s own leadership acknowledging severe missteps in how the transformation was executed, according to internal statements and reporting from this week.
Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth said during an internal call on June 2 that morale is “probably one of the worst it’s ever been,” according to Business Insider, comparing the current crisis to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that damaged the company’s reputation in 2016.
The morale collapse follows Meta’s May 2026 layoff of 8,000 employees—roughly 10% of the company’s workforce—and the forced reassignment of another 7,000 workers to train artificial intelligence models. The cuts were framed as necessary to offset Meta’s enormous AI investments, which the company has forecast at up to $145 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 alone.
In a memo to staff on June 16, Bosworth acknowledged that Meta had done “an atrocious job” explaining the vision behind its newly created Applied AI engineering division to the roughly 6,500 staff members assigned to it, according to WIRED. The division, established just months earlier, has become a focal point of employee discontent.
TechCrunch reported on June 12 that the Applied AI unit is “on the verge of revolt,” with engineers describing the work environment as “soul-crushing.” The reporting cited what workers view as record-low morale and cited the unit’s rapid expansion and unclear direction as sources of frustration.
The crisis extends beyond the AI unit. Employees across Meta told WIRED in May that the vibes were “horrifically, historically low,” citing widening pay gaps, mandatory tracking software installed on company computers to monitor their activity for AI training, and the forced reassignments themselves. One Instagram employee told WIRED that “everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives.”
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the problems on June 12, stating that Meta had “made mistakes” in its AI workforce transformation, according to Reuters. The admission came after weeks of internal criticism about how the restructuring was communicated and executed.
Bosworth’s memo promised improvements, including allowing workers reassigned to the AI task force to reapply for other roles within Meta and increasing budgets for travel, events, and workplace amenities. He pledged that Meta would “rekindle the best of the culture” and commit to transparency from leadership, according to Business Insider and WIRED.
The scale of the current morale crisis mirrors but exceeds previous periods of unrest at Meta. When the company conducted a 10% workforce reduction in 2023 as part of its “year of efficiency,” employees reported significant demoralization. The current round combines job losses with what staff perceive as invasive monitoring and mandatory role changes without meaningful choice—a combination that has intensified employee frustration.
Sources
- Business Insider — CTO Bosworth’s June 2 internal call statement on morale being “probably one of the worst it’s ever been” and his June 16 memo addressing the Applied AI rollout
- WIRED — May 14 reporting on employee sentiment describing morale as “horrifically, historically low,” employee quotes, and details on mandatory tracking software and forced reassignments
- TechCrunch — June 12 reporting on the Applied AI unit being “on the verge of revolt” and engineers describing the environment as “soul-crushing”
- Reuters — June 12 reporting on Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment that Meta “made mistakes” in the AI transformation
