As Meta employees prepare for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many say the atmosphere is at a frighteningly, historically low level. “Everyone is unhappy, and only the management is unhappy,” says an Instagram employee.
The social media giant plans to lay off about 10 percent of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 people, “to run the company more efficiently” and “offset other investments” it is making, according to the human resources leader. But the layoffs, which will add to some 25,000 cuts announced by Meta over the past four years, are not the only reason for the low morale.
Widening employee pay gaps, courtroom losses for the company and mandatory job reshuffles for hundreds of top engineers have also contributed to what employees perceive as an exceptionally bleak atmosphere at Meta. Yet another concern was the recent installation of enterprise software on employees’ computers to track their activity solely for the purpose of training artificial intelligence, according to 16 current and former employees in various positions who spoke to WIRED. They declined to be named because of company policy prohibiting unsanctioned conversations with journalists.
“I don’t know anyone who’s having a good time,” says a political staffer. “The atmosphere is a little over the top – lack of relevance to the mission, impending layoffs, using American workers to train artificial intelligence models that will replace them.”
Several people say anyone who can afford to leave hopes to be fired and receive at least 16 weeks of severance pay and 18 months of paid health care. As an Instagram employee put it: “Everyone says, do it now, Jesus Christ.” Only those with the best compensation packages and committed to core AI development seem to thrive, says a longtime senior leader at Meta.
In the UK, some workers were so frustrated that they registered signatures to form a trade union. “Our leaders are escalating their cruel and short-sighted behavior,” organizers at the company wrote Hint to colleagues. “We need to create incentives for them to treat us with basic humanity.”
United Tech & Allied Workers, which describes itself as the UK’s largest trade union for technology workers, he said last week that Meta employees wanted to organize with the group to protect their jobs, benefits and privacy. Earlier this month, British employees at Google DeepMind voted to join a union with the workers’ group’s parent organization, the Communication Workers Union, amid concerns about the sale of artificial intelligence to the US military.
Outbreaks of employee protests have become a regular feature of major tech companies, including Meta, Amazon and Google. However, the latest concerns at Meta appear to be more widespread — to the point that they are apparently hampering the company’s recruiting efforts, the employee claims (Meta denies this claim). “There is a lot of anger and fear,” the legal worker adds. “It’s frustrating to watch because it feels unnecessary,” especially given Meta’s consistently sturdy ad industry performance.
Meta largely declined to comment on the details of this story, but pointed to previous public statements defending employee layoffs and novel artificial intelligence projects, including tracking software. “Safeguards are in place to protect sensitive content, and data is not used for any other purposes,” says Meta spokeswoman Tracy Clayton.
Installation complaints
Some of the employee complaints are about money. In February, for the second year in a row, Meta cut the portion of annual raises paid in the form of company shares, cutting them by 5 percent from last year’s 10 percent cuts. Median total compensation at Meta fell to $388,200 last year from $417,400 in 2024, according to public opinion. filingsalthough Meta’s Clayton said pay still remains higher than in 2022. Pay has been further reduced as Meta’s stock has fallen about 5 percent this year as the company shifts attention from struggling virtual reality projects to even more costly work on artificial intelligence development. “Many employees are paid half the stock price, so it sucks,” says an Instagram employee.
The pay and job cuts come amid consecutive quarters of sturdy profits for Meta, which totaled nearly $27 billion in the first three months of this year. Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered to pay several top artificial intelligence researchers as much as $100 million a year, or, as a former executive put it, “a staggering amount of money compared to what anyone at this company has ever made.”