Senior Meta Leaders Admit "Atrocious" AI Division Rollout, Unveil Changes to Boost Sagging Morale

A senior Meta executive acknowledged in an internal Monday memo obtained by WIRED that the company executed an "atrocious" rollout of its new artificial intelligence division, and outlined plans to "rekindle" a more positive internal culture through improved communication, clearer career growth paths, and even upgraded office perks including better snacks.

The comments came from Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, one week after WIRED published a report exposing widespread discontent across the company’s newly formed Applied AI engineering group. Launched in March, the division brings together roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers to advance development of Meta’s generative AI models. Still, multiple team members described their day-to-day work as menial and unfulfilling, with one staffer even labeling the unit "a gulag" in internal conversations.

Bosworth noted that the adjustments he announced are a direct response to recent feedback from rank-and-file employees. “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,” he wrote. He added that Meta upended the stable management structure employees relied on to create the new division, while rapid shifts in company strategy — including the erratic boom-and-bust hiring cycle Meta has navigated in recent years — left entire teams adrift without clear direction.

Meta declined to provide additional public comment for this report.

Unrest on the Applied AI team is just one symptom of a broader company-wide decline in morale at Meta, which has followed mass layoffs, internal employee surveillance programs, and a string of other issues that have left staff unsettled. Over the past several days, multiple top Meta leaders — including CEO Mark Zuckerberg — have published internal communications that validate employee frustrations and pledge to roll out changes to address them.

In his lengthy internal memo, Bosworth — a long-time loyalist and close confidant of Zuckerberg — laid out that staff will receive far more personalized attention and support moving forward. He noted that Meta will cap the number of direct reports per manager at roughly 20, and will work to reduce how often employees are forced to switch managers during company restructurings. Moving forward, managers’ primary responsibility will be leading their teams, with individual work taking a backseat, and employees who want extra career support will have access to optional "AI coaching" tools.

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Responding to employee comments on his internal memo about the Applied AI division, Bosworth took accountability alongside other senior leaders, saying the team rushed to prioritize big-picture strategic goals — like outcompeting other firms in the fast-growing AI coding tool space — and lost sight of how the restructuring impacted frontline staff. “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,” he wrote.

Even so, Bosworth stood by the original decision to reassign staff to the new AI division to speed up development, arguing it was the correct strategic call for the company. He reminded employees that they may need to spend time working on projects they “don’t find as personally fulfilling for a while” because “there are going to be times where the work requires sacrifice.”

In a separate internal post from late last Friday also reviewed by WIRED, Maher Saba, the vice president leading the Applied AI team, announced that employees who were involuntarily reassigned to the division will now be allowed to pursue other open roles across Meta if they can secure a position.

Saba explained that the original decision to draft staff to the new AI team was intentional: “We felt it was necessary to leverage what Meta has that those other [AI] labs don’t: our scale and our people’s expertise.” But, he added, “moving forward, we are returning to business as usual and giving people the agency to apply to roles that interest them.”

Saba added that the division, which initially focused on upgrading the coding and autonomous agent capabilities of Meta’s cutting-edge frontier AI models, will eventually expand into new areas including cybersecurity, AI debugging, and core product development.

Putting a new spin on Meta’s iconic early company motto “move fast and break things,” Saba said the Applied AI team’s new approach is “moving fast and fixing forward.” Traditional engineering roadmaps, which are typically mapped out twice a year at Meta, are no longer used for the group, because “the work evolves so dynamically,” Saba explained.

In his memo, Bosworth emphasized that Meta rejects the idea that AI will completely replace human workers on its AI teams. Still, he noted, “We should heed the saying, ‘AI won’t take your job but someone who knows AI might.’” Bosworth added that employee performance will be judged not just by whether staff use AI tools, but what meaningful impact they deliver using those tools.

He also acknowledged that there will be “tough trade-offs for a while” when allocating limited computing power to different teams working on AI projects. “We will do our best to be transparent and invest responsibly to alleviate bottlenecks,” he wrote, while encouraging staff to escalate any issues they encounter directly to leadership.

In a bid to lift flagging workplace morale, Bosworth vowed to remake Meta into a "fun and enjoyable" place to build a career. The company plans to upgrade its office microkitchens — in-office break areas stocked with complimentary snacks and drinks — boost employee travel budgets, and increase spending on in-person social events to give staff more opportunities to connect face-to-face.

“I hope we can rekindle the best of the culture we joined,” Bosworth wrote.