A livestreamed internal presentation at Meta this week was interrupted by an employee who unleashed an expletive-filled rant, declaring being “the company’s bitch” and demanding that organizers tell a specific Meta AI executive “that he's a piece of shit,” according to a recording heard by WIRED. A presenter covered their face, and after asking everyone to mute, the meeting's two leaders moved on, while employees commented on the “spicy” start.
This incident is the latest symptom of what three current employees describe as “record-low morale” inside Meta’s Applied AI team, a unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers formed in March to support AI researchers at Meta Superintelligence Labs. The employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WIRED of deep dissatisfaction with the drudgework they have been assigned: generating puzzles to test how reliably AI models from Meta and other companies can solve them.
‘It’s Literally the Gulag’
One employee described the new role as “literally the gulag,” adding: “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week.” Another said the puzzle-generation work felt easy compared to previous software development projects, but “almost all” employees seem unhappy. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” a third employee told WIRED. Meta declined to comment for the story.
Broader Restructuring and Layoffs
The Applied AI unit is not alone in its turmoil. Meta's AI-focused restructuring included letting go 10 percent of the company, or 8,000 employees, last month. Several current and former employees told WIRED this has generated extra work and stress in data center engineering and Instagram divisions.
Employee Monitoring Backlash
Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding Meta stop monitoring US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data. The company has scaled back the program slightly, allowing employees to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request specific exemptions.
Leadership Acknowledges ‘Brutal’ Environment
In a meeting open to Instagram employees this week, chief product officer Chris Cox addressed the “difficult” and “brutal” environment created by the “insanity of this company”, according to a recording heard by WIRED. Cox noted that Instagram serves around 2 billion users while employees are “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you.” He remarked on AI: “It is neither god, nor is it the devil... and it doesn't know what day of the week it is.”
In an internal memo on Friday seen by WIRED, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that recent organizational changes had caused distress, stating “Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes.”
Implications for Enterprise AI Teams
For enterprise technology leaders, Meta’s experience highlights critical risks in scaling AI teams. Rapid reorganization can sever engineers from meaningful work, eroding morale. Monitoring employees for AI training data without trust can trigger rebellion. And the gap between AI research and applied engineering—where scientists publish but engineers toil on menial puzzles—demands careful alignment. As Cox put it, AI “is nowhere near as good as you think it is, and it is nowhere near as bad as you think it is.” The challenge is managing the human infrastructure behind the models.
