Meta engineer blames executives in outburst over AI data labeling

According to monitoring by Beating, during a live internal Meta meeting attended by thousands, an engineer suddenly unmuted himself and swore, complaining that he was “being the company’s bitch” in the Applied AI department and demanded that executives be told he was “a piece of shit.” The sudden outburst left the presenter visibly embarrassed, and the live chat was quickly flooded with messages. In response to mounting resentment over the restructuring, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a memo on June 12 apologizing and pledging reforms. The Applied AI department, established in March of this year, comprises approximately 6,500 engineers who were forcibly reassigned with only two options: accept the transfer or leave. Engineers have self-deprecatingly referred to themselves as “conscripted conscripts.” Originally assigned to social applications, they are now forced under keystroke monitoring to create two original problems each week—problems that cannot be solved by existing models and leave no trace online—while also writing edge-case tests. The monotonous, mechanical nature of labeling has left engineers feeling profoundly underutilized, with many describing their roles as a “Gulag” labor camp. This practice of using high-salary engineers for data labeling originated with Meta’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang. At an April meeting, Zuckerberg stated that Wang believed Meta employees were far more intelligent than outsourced workers and could label data more efficiently. Ironically, after Meta acquired Scale AI last year, the new head of Scale was so shocked by the forced labeling of R&D staff that he immediately halted the practice. Yet with Alexandr Wang’s arrival at Meta to lead the labs, the abandoned model has resurfaced on an even larger scale—so much so that it has paralyzed parts of Meta’s security teams due to personnel being forcibly reassigned. In addition to forced reassignments, Meta has implemented keystroke monitoring internally to generate AI training data, prompting over 1,600 employees to sign a petition in protest. Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, admitted in an internal meeting that the current environment is extremely brutal, describing employees’ situation as “running a marathon in a hailstorm, only for your teammates to be suddenly replaced—and then the company starts recording your every move. What the fuck is this?” In response to the crisis, Zuckerberg pledged in his memo to cap the number of direct reports per manager and reaffirmed that there will be no major layoffs this year. He stated that the Applied AI department is only a temporary transit station and that future opportunities will be provided for affected employees to transition into more meaningful roles.