After Meta introduced it could lay off 10% of its workforce subsequent month to offset AI spending, staff swarmed to Blind—an nameless on-line office discussion board—to get just a few issues off their chests.
In response to a report by Blind supplied to Quick Firm, posts containing unfavorable sentiment about AI at Meta have grown to 83% since late 2025—that’s a roughly 300% bounce since 2024, when simply 20% of posts on the location about AI at Meta had been unfavorable.
“Meta is lifeless and miserable,” one publish on the platform stated after the corporate’s layoff bulletins.
Cynicism round AI and office tradition at Meta is pervasive on the platform. “They don’t care in regards to the staff anymore and all they care about is AI,” one other publish stated.
In April alone, there have been 523 posts associated to Meta’s layoff announcement. Whereas there was an uptick in posts after the layoff announcement, Blind’s knowledge is telling that views round AI at Meta have been pervaded with nervousness and negativity for a while now. (The platform—which is very standard amongst tech professionals—has completely different tiers of verification and retains worker emails encrypted.)
In 2019, many of the posts on Blind about AI at Meta on the platform had been described as optimistic. By way of the years, although, such posts took a flip in the direction of nervousness.
From 2024 to 2025, the negativity deepened, with discussions about layoffs being a dominant theme within the conversations. Blind CEO Sunguk Moon stated that staff have rated the tradition at Meta a 2.23 out of 5, a 43% drop since 2020.
“We’ve seen sentiment amongst Meta staff flip extra unfavorable previously two years, largely because of layoffs and the inner push for AI adoption,” Moon instructed Quick Firm. “The highest, recurring sentiment amongst Meta staff is that, whereas the advantages and pay stay aggressive, the psychological well being of staff apprehensive about job stability continues to worsen.”
Meta declined Quick Firm‘s request for remark.
Meta has made its dedication to AI adoption and innovation clear. The corporate introduced earlier this 12 months that it could spend $135 billion on AI initiatives. A few of its endeavors, like tracking the staff’s mouse movements and keystrokes to coach AI fashions, ruffled staff’ feathers.
“I really feel violated,” one anonymous user posted to Blind in response to the tracker information. “I get it that Meta is making an attempt to enhance the standard of AI and all that however critically? Are you gonna monitor our each transfer and see how our mouse strikes? Screenshot our display screen typically? What subsequent? Implement chips in our brains to learn our minds?”
On Might 20, 8,000 staff out of the corporate’s workforce of greater than 78,000 shall be laid off, with a further 6,000 open roles set to be closed. In an inside memo despatched to staff, Meta attributed the cuts to the corporate’s “continued effort to run the corporate extra effectively and to permit us to offset the opposite investments we’re making.”
Whereas the memo didn’t title AI because the direct explanation for the layoffs, the tech is a scorching subject at Meta. At the very least on Blind, it’s clear that staff are receiving a message of alternative somewhat than innovation.
