Workplace morale at Meta is in a tailspin after Mark Zuckerberg and his executive crew slashed thousands of jobs to free up more funds for AI.
Usually when rank-and-file morale takes a nosedive, corporate bosses are reticent to acknowledge it head-on, preferring instead to offer a buffet of HR-solutionism like resilience training, pulse surveys, and the dreaded team-building exercise.
Evidently, the vibes at Meta are so bad that even the company’s C-suite is taking notice, and they’re not even trying to sugarcoat it. During an internal team meeting earlier in June, Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth admitted that workplace morale is downright rancid, Business Insider reports.
Bosworth said that the situation is “maybe not the worst it’s ever been in 20 years here, but it’s probably up there. It’s definitely up there.”
“I can think Cambridge Analytica was probably the worst,” the CTO continued, referring to the 2016 election scandal in which a political consulting firm secretly harvested data from some 87 million Facebook users. Still, he caveated that camaraderie is “probably one of the worst it’s ever been.”
It’s a telling comment from Bosworth, who as CTO would have a better view than most of the vibes on the ground. While the layoffs alone would be enough to sour any workforce’s mood, many of those who stayed at Meta have also been moved to menial roles training the company’s AI models, Wired reported.
In an effort to lift everybody’s spirits, Zuckerberg offered to host a company-wide hackathon — an attempt at a lighthearted diversion that landed with a thud among employees.
As one worker snapped at the time: “I’m literally preoccupied with keeping the lights on for my team. I have no incentive to participate, let alone have the time to do so.”
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