Meta's AI overhaul has its own staff in near-revolt. The company moved thousands of engineers into a new unit that writes coding puzzles to train AI models, made AI use a graded "core expectation," and went through repeated reorgs. This week an employee hijacked a livestreamed internal presentation to curse out a top AI executive. On Friday Zuckerberg sent a memo admitting Meta "made mistakes," promising no company-wide layoffs in 2026 — and announcing a July company-wide hackathon to lift morale.

1. Zuckerberg Is Trying to Stop the Bleeding (Mark Zuckerberg)

Admit the mistakes, stop the layoffs, bring back the desks, throw a hackathon.

Zuckerberg admitted Meta got it wrong. In a Friday memo he wrote that the company "made mistakes and will almost certainly make more," and promised no company-wide layoffs for the rest of 2026. He said Meta would cap how many people each manager oversees and give everyone assigned desks back by year-end.

The hackathon is part of the make-up plan. Meta will hold a company-wide hackathon in July and put more money into team offsites and events, trying to rebuild morale after a brutal year of reorgs. The message to staff is stability.

2. A Hackathon Won't Fix a "Gulag" (Meta engineers)

The complaints are about the work itself, not the perks.

Engineers are calling the new unit "the gulag." Staff reassigned to Applied AI told WIRED the work is "soul-crushing," and one said, "It's literally the gulag. You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden." Their job is generating coding puzzles to train Meta's models, not building products.

The anger boiled over on a company livestream. During an internal presentation open to thousands of employees, one worker broke in to call a top AI executive "a piece of shit." Meta also made using AI a graded "core expectation," so staff feel pushed to adopt the very tools that unsettle them. A July hackathon doesn't touch any of that.

3. The Real Problem Is a $14 Billion Bet (industry analysts)

Meta bought its way into the AI race and built the resentment itself.

Meta spent $14.3 billion to buy its way in. In 2025 it paid for nearly half of Scale AI and made founder Alexandr Wang its chief AI officer. Then in March 2026 it built Applied AI, a 6,500-person unit, to feed its Superintelligence Labs.

The structure built the resentment. Bringing in expensive outside leadership and reassigning thousands of existing engineers to puzzle-writing created a two-tier workforce that was bound to chafe. The revolt is a reaction to the strategy, and a hackathon doesn't change the strategy.

Where This Lands

Zuckerberg says he heard the complaints — no more layoffs this year, desks come back, and a hackathon to rebuild morale. Meta's engineers say the problem is the work itself, the "gulag" of writing puzzles all day and being graded on how much AI they use, and a hackathon doesn't fix that. And the analysts watching say Meta created this mess when it spent $14.3 billion to buy its way into the AI race and reshuffled thousands of people to make room. The hackathon is in July. The resentment is now.

Sources