Record profits on one side. A workforce comparing their jobs to a gulag on the other. Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth made that gap official on June 2 during an internal Q&A session called “Tuesdays with Boz,” telling employees that morale is “probably one of the worst it’s ever been” in Meta’s 20-year history, according to Business Insider. His benchmark for comparison? The Cambridge Analytica scandal — a period when the company faced existential reputational damage and regulatory fury. Except this time, the crisis is coming from inside the building.
What’s Actually Breaking People
Four years of layoffs, AI reassignments, and surveillance software have hollowed out what was left of Meta’s internal culture.
The drivers read like a corporate dysfunction bingo card:
- Repeated layoff waves have eliminated roughly 25,000 roles since 2022. Each round followed executive promises that the cuts were finished. Zuckerberg told staff the “bloodbath is over.” A recently laid-off worker told the New York Post they expect more cuts anyway.
- Wired reported that roughly 6,500 surviving employees got involuntarily reassigned to AI grunt work — data labeling, prompt curation — tasks that feel like a demotion for engineers hired to build products.
- New monitoring software on work devices landed as surveillance, not support. Staff read the message clearly: train your replacement while someone watches you do it.
- Meta posted record profits and soaring stock performance while cutting median pay components in annual raises. Blind platform data shows culture scores down 39% from a 2024 peak, with overall satisfaction down 25%.
Snacks and Hackathons Won’t Fix This
Leadership’s proposed remedies feel like offering a Band-Aid at a five-alarm fire.
“Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are literally the executives,” one Instagram employee told Wired. Some workers are openly hoping to get laid off just to collect severance and escape.
Zuckerberg’s response? A company-wide hackathon. One staffer pushed back, saying they were “literally preoccupied with keeping the lights on.” Bosworth, to his credit, acknowledged the deeper problem in an internal message reported by Wired:
“We have eroded the confidence you hold that your unique skills and contributions will be recognized, that you will progress in your career, and that this environment will enable you to make a meaningful difference.” — Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO
Meanwhile, US job satisfaction hit a record 68.9% in 2026, according to The Conference Board. Meta isn’t riding a broader trend of workplace misery. Meta is the outlier — a company printing money while burning through the trust of the people who make the product.
