Meta’s workplace morale crisis has moved from internal grumbling to open institutional damage, prompting the company’s most senior executives to acknowledge publicly that years of aggressive restructuring have broken something important inside the organisation.
The clearest signal came on 2 June, during an internal session known as ‘Tuesdays With Boz,’ when chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth told employees that morale was ‘maybe not the worst it’s ever been in 20 years here, but it’s probably up there,’ according to Fast Company. He compared the atmosphere to the Cambridge Analytica era, a period widely regarded as one of the most reputationally damaging in the company’s history. In a subsequent memo, he said the business had done ‘an atrocious job’ with its recent restructuring and had ‘undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued.’
That is a striking shift from the Bosworth of early last year, who told staff questioning controversial changes: ‘You should quit if you feel that way,’ and ‘You can leave, or disagree and commit.’
The Scale of Meta’s Workplace Morale Crisis
The restructuring behind the discontent has been relentless. Meta cut 11,000 jobs in late 2022, then a further 10,000 the following spring during what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called a ‘year of efficiency.’ Another 3,600 roles were eliminated in 2025, with Zuckerberg describing the departures as removing ‘low performers,’ a framing that damaged the job prospects of many workers who had, in fact, received strong performance reviews.
This year the pace continued. In March, news of further cuts leaked but the company did not confirm them for weeks and did not notify those affected until May, creating a two-month period of uncertainty. Fast Company reports that the May restructuring ultimately saw roughly 10% of the workforce laid off and another 10% reassigned, many of them compulsorily, to teams working on AI training.
In April, a programme monitoring employees’ keystrokes and mouse movements to train AI models was launched, stoking fears among staff that the company was working towards automating their jobs. More than 1,600 workers subsequently signed a petition demanding it be stopped.
The human cost has become visible in ways that are difficult to manage quietly. Employees in the UK are attempting to form a trade union, describing executives’ ‘cruel and shortsighted behaviors.’ Wired reported this month that one frustrated worker hijacked a livestreamed internal meeting with a profanity-directed outburst at an executive. Others have said they are hoping to be made redundant simply to receive severance pay and leave.
Why Leadership Moved to Contain the Fallout
Bosworth was not alone in stepping forward. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox acknowledged the ‘insanity of this company’ that created a ‘difficult’ and ‘brutal’ environment. In a meeting with Instagram employees, Cox compared the experience to ‘running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you,’ adding: ‘It’s like what the fuck.’ Zuckerberg himself admitted: ‘We’ve made mistakes.’
Sandra Sucher, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School who studies organisational trust, says the acknowledgements are a necessary first step. ‘It’s a classic example of chickens coming home to roost,’ she told Business Insider. ‘They have almost systematically destroyed trust. They are trying to figure out how to dig themselves out of the hole that they dug.’
Sucher argues that small concessions, including promises to reduce team sizes, scale back the keystroke-monitoring programme, and increase budgets for staff social events, move in the right direction. Employees reassigned to AI training roles have also been offered the option to move to a different role of their choice, the company announced internally.
But Sucher is direct about what she believes the real obstacle is. ‘It’s very hard to turn the ship on these things,’ she said. ‘Usually, it requires a new leader. It’s unthinkable that Mark Zuckerberg would be a credible spokesman for change.’ Her advice: Zuckerberg needs to offer a genuine apology that includes the word ‘sorry,’ and make a credible commitment that he will stop treating employees as if they are not ‘human beings deserving of respect and care.’
The question of whether that commitment will materialise matters well beyond Meta. When the company became the first major tech firm to conduct mass layoffs in November 2022, it set the template for a broader Silicon Valley shift towards high-pressure, low-tolerance management. Decades of management research suggest fear and instability drain star employees and suppress the creative risk-taking that produces breakthroughs. Meta’s own AI ambitions appear to have suffered: the company delayed and ultimately did not release what was intended as its flagship model, and has repeatedly pushed back another model’s rollout to developers.
Google and Wired has noted that some peers, including Google and Microsoft, have recently opted for voluntary buyouts rather than mass layoffs. Zuckerberg has pledged to hold off on major job cuts for the rest of the year. Whether that pause becomes a genuine course correction, or simply a pause before the pressure resumes, is the question facing the roughly 70,000 people who remain at the company.