New Meta Fact: Record Higher Profits. Record Low Morale

As Meta employees Scheduled to be removed on Wednesday, May 20, many said vibes it’s dangerous, low profile. “Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are unhappy are, in fact, the managers,” says an employee who works at Instagram.

The visitors The giant plans to cut about 10 percent of its workforce, or about 8,000 people, “to streamline the company” and “dissolve other businesses” it is developing, according to the humanitarian leader. But the removal, which will add about 25,000 bars Trim has announced the past four years, is far from the only reason for rock-bottom behavior.

The widening of the wage gap between workers, the loss of the company’s court, and the necessary changes of hundreds of top engineers have also contributed to what the workers see as very bad atmosphere inside Meta. Another issue has been the recent introduction of software on employees’ computers to track their actions in the name of AI training, according to 16 current and former employees from various positions who spoke to WIRED. They declined to be named because of company policies that prohibit talking to the media without permission.

“I don’t know anyone who is happy,” said one political activist. The vibe is “a bit” – lack of connection to the mission, impending layoffs, American workers being used to train the AI ​​species that will replace them.

Anyone who can afford to leave expects to be out of a job and receive at least 16 weeks and 18 months of paid health care that comes with it, several people said. As one Instagram user put it, “Everybody’s like, do it now, Jesus Christ is bad.” Only the people with the best salaries and those involved in AI development seem to be doing well, a former CEO at Meta says.

In the UK, some workers are so frustrated that they are signing up to form a trade union. “Our leaders are increasing their aggressive and short-sighted behavior,” organizers inside the company wrote. a warning to your friends. “We have to create an incentive for them to treat us with basic people.”

United Tech & Allied Workers, which bills itself as the UK’s largest trade union for technical workers, he said last week that Meta employees wanted to join the group to protect their jobs, benefits, and privacy. Earlier this month, UK employees at Google DeepMind voted to agree and the union’s parent union, the Communication Workers Union, over concerns about selling AI to the US military.

Worker strike pockets have become a regular and well-known part of major tech companies, including Trim, Amazonand Google. But the latest concerns at Meta appear to be overblown — so much so that it’s hampering the hiring process, an employee says (Meta denies the claim). “There is a lot of anger and fear,” the law enforcement official adds. “It’s frustrating to watch because it feels so trivial”—especially considering how successful Meta’s marketing continues to be.

Meta specifically declined to comment on the details of the story but pointed to previous statements defending job cuts and new AI-related projects, including tracking software. “There are security measures that are well known, and that information is not used for any other purpose,” Meta spokeswoman Tracy Clayton says.

Settlement of Complaints

Some of the workers’ complaints come down to money. In February, for the second year in a row, Meta cut the percentage of its annual dividend that is paid out as company shares, cutting it to 5 percent over last year’s 10 percent. Median wages for Meta fell to $388,200 last year from $417,400 in 2024, according to the people. documentseven Meta’s Clayton said that the salary is still higher than it was in 2022. The salary has been reduced significantly with the shares of Meta falling about 5 percent this year as the company changes its focus from real-world problems to the development of more expensive AI. “For most of the workers, the salary is half, so it’s sad,” the Instagram employee says.

The cuts in compensation and labor have come amid several cuts in Meta’s profits, to the tune of nearly $27 billion in the first three months of this year. And last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered to pay several top AI researchers about $100 million a yearor what one former executive said was “crazy money compared to what anyone in the company has been making.”