Andrew Bosworth said Meta did an "atrocious" job rolling out its new artificial intelligence division. Mark Zuckerberg and several other executives posted internal messages acknowledging employees' feelings and vowing changes. Bosworth said the company will try to "rekindle" a more cheerful internal culture through better communication, career growth, and snacks.
Andrew Bosworth
On Monday Bosworth wrote that "We’ve undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued, that you will grow and advance your career, and that this will be a place where you can actually have an impact," and that "We shook up the management structure that was providing you stability while rapid changes in strategy, including the boom/bust cycle of hiring, left entire teams in the lurch," adding in a follow-up that "We obviously did an atrocious job explaining the vision, giving people a clear picture of how we would support them and their careers in the shift, and painting a picture of how it would change over time," language that amounts to a senior-technology-level admission that the reorganization damaged managers' ability to sponsor career paths and utility of individual expertise inside the unit.
Applied AI
Meta formed the Applied AI division in March with about 6,500 engineers and product managers, and the company says it will cap managers at about 20 direct reports each, try to limit how often employees switch to new managers during restructurings, and make "AI coaching" tools available to workers who choose to use them, which matters because Applied AI work typically converts research outputs into production models, platform maintenance, and feature integration—the operational tasks that can feel less personally fulfilling than research—and because, at roughly 6,500 staff divided by a 20-person cap, the unit would require on the order of 325 managers to cover reporting lines, a structural change that narrows each manager's span of control and raises the nominal managerial headcount that the company must staff or promote into.
Maher Saba
Maher Saba posted late last Friday that employees who were forced to join the Applied AI team would now be allowed to take other roles within Meta if they secure them and argued that "We felt it was necessary to leverage what Meta has that those other [AI] labs don’t: our scale and our people’s expertise," adding that "moving forward, we are returning to business as usual and giving people the agency to apply to roles that interest them," while Bosworth also warned employees they may need to work on a project they "don't find as personally fulfilling for a while" because "there are going to be times where the work requires sacrifice," a direct contradiction between asking staff for short-term sacrifice and admitting that the rollout undermined trust and career clarity.
How many employees will actually leave the Applied AI team under the new rules is the unanswered question these posts leave for the roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers affected and for the managers who must absorb smaller spans of control.
