Meta’s chaotic AI strategy

https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/

by momentmaker • 1 month ago

75 86 1 month ago

wired.com

jqpabc123• 1 month ago

Sounds like the Metaverse is moving right along according to plan.

DropkickM16• 1 month ago

I wish these losers the worst. Working for zuck is its own reward.

hsuduebc23• 1 month ago

Indeed. Zero sympathy for someone helping creating this man his slop machine. It's kinda funny that their main problem is that they don't have enough work.

“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."
Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding that Meta stop a recently launched initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data.
Some employees are being asked to finish two tasks per week. These involve generating complex software coding problems to help AI scientists better train and evaluate the performance of the latest frontier models.

That's how I imagine the Gulag too of course.

bombcar• 1 month ago

The Gulag AIpeono is such a letdown compared to the original.

At least they have the decency to not compare themselves to chattel slaves.

simianwords3• 1 month ago

Indeed. Zero sympathy for someone helping creating this man his slop machine

I don't get these kind of accusations. They are working to build the AI model so that it is not slop anymore.

It's kinda funny that their main problem is that they don't have enough work.

Why is this funny? Do people not want to have good work?

kirubakaran• 1 month ago

Reminds me of when you hear that an asshole in your extended social circle is dating another asshole and you think "Fantastic! They're not hurting good people anymore"

brycewray• 1 month ago

“It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.”

― Samuel Butler

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11509180-it-was-very-good-o...

shimman• 1 month ago

Seriously, these people have zero solidarity with their fellow humans. If they had any they wouldn't be working at one of the most evil companies on the planet.

altbdoor• 1 month ago

https://archive.is/NndS8

bravetraveler• 1 month ago

Birds of a feather flock together.

My management (not Meta) is choosing to bribe people to complete their 'mandated' training. I suppose I shouldn't be so torn up, could clearly be worse.

kajman• 1 month ago

It sounds like these people would otherwise be laid off if they were not parked in this department instead. I imagine they are quite unhappy, but getting paid 200k+ to do tasks that are usually gig work is hardly the most heart wrenching story in this tech market.

nik2820003• 1 month ago

Plenty of entry level positions looking for the experience these 'engineers' claim to have.

loeg• 1 month ago

Eh, maybe. It's not clear that some won't be returned to their old roles eventually. Personally, I think I'd prefer the layoff with severance over this kind of transfer.

epgui• 1 month ago

I think everyone deserves to participate in meaningful and dignified work.

Dylan16807• 1 month ago

They can all get that if they want it! At a very nice but not as high wage.

inopinatus• 1 month ago

That is why I have no sympathy to spare for anyone who chose to work for Zuckerberg's social toilet.

coherentpony• 1 month ago

If your comment is intended to convey sympathy on these workers, I think you're going to have a difficult time finding folks that align with you.

If your comment is intended to remind folks that these workers can simply resign of their own free will to find meaningful and dignified work at a different employer, I think you're going to have an easy time finding folks that align with you.

yallpendantools• 1 month ago

From the article, it seems to me they've been "relegated" to coming up with Leetcode problems for AI. Which, let's face it, a bunch of them probably already did before for their SWE interview circus. I can see why they may feel under-employed/under-utilized but aside from the dystopian data gathering, I really find it hard to see what they are complaining about.

The article even admits that their current tasks are easier than before. For the same paycheck! For 200K I will dredge through the most obscure IMO/Leetcode/ICPC problems and the palm of my hands will remain delicately smooth, in danger only of drying from the air conditioning. If there is no meaning and dignity in that I'm sure I'll have plenty leftover from that comp to find meaning and dignity elsewhere be it a side gig, charity work, or heck even just good times with my family and my social circle. A lot of people "just do a job" for much, much less and still live rich inner lives.

Really, an orchestra of small violins playing while I read this one.

bluedevil2k2• 1 month ago

Woah…they’re paid WAY more than $200k for this.

fullshark2• 1 month ago

So they "draft" their own workers to create toy examples to train/evaluate LLAMA performance? Is this a temporary role/rotation? That seems goofy.

shitter• 1 month ago

Temporary in the sense that it's a stop or two away from getting laid off.

fullshark2• 1 month ago

Agreed that's the only way this makes any sense.

Avicebron2• 1 month ago

Is the child they hired for 250 million dollars still there?

wmf• 1 month ago

Who do you think created the "gulag"?

JKCalhoun3• 1 month ago

It feels like, when the history of Facebook is written, it will be clear that the company destroyed itself.

ethbr13• 1 month ago

It feels like Facebook will be written as a warning business case in allowing a single person to retain too much decision making control.

Zuckerberg had 2.5 good ideas: Facebook (shared), prioritizing mobile early, and buying competing social platforms with high growth

Everything else they've thrown big money at has been a dumpster fire.

JKCalhoun3• 1 month ago

Worst still, they destroyed social media, perhaps even contributed to destroying mobile (destroyed in the sense that, well, they became dumpster fires).

antonvs• 1 month ago

The problem is, what were their other options? They made a ridiculous amount of money on a social network. Where do you go from there? VR and AI were and are attempts to remain relevant, but not every company succeeds in doing that, and Facebook is particularly unsuited to it - you don’t just pivot from web dev to innovating in new fields.

One of the common private equity playbooks recognizes this - they’ll often jettison anything resembling an R&D department from a new acquisition, and run the company as a cash cow. If its market dies, so be it. Leave the innovation to the startups who are focused on it.

The problem with Facebook is that the founders have ambitions beyond their capabilities (apparently).

tmp10423288442• 1 month ago

Unfortunately, the Metaverse happened during the COVID bubble, so there was no shareholder discipline then. Meta did crash after interest rates went up - there were large layoffs - but then they got a boost to their stock due to their AI strategy, which seemed competitive until Llama 4 in early 2025, although they were never on the frontier. Even since then they’ve been burning a ton of cash on AI with no discernible results.

The private equity strategy of putting Meta into maintenance mode and focusing purely on their social media business would have been much better.

JKCalhoun3• 1 month ago

Breaking/destroying the thing that put you on the map would seem to be a bad idea. But they so fucked up the algorithm on Facebook, turned the whole site into a political cesspool, that everyone I know left the site in droves.

I think I left 10 or 12 years ago?

HotGarbage• 1 month ago

Stop glamorizing the grind and start glamorizing whatever this is.

add-sub-mul-div• 1 month ago

We just came out of a period in which solving CRUD apps and cat pictures at high scale chose winners of the whole economy. Now we're in a big mess with them thinking they're capable of doing much more difficult things.

JSR_FDED2• 1 month ago

“I joined this fine company to help accelerate the destruction of society, and now instead I’m expected to help it destroy society in a _different way_ by creating puzzles for AI. Now my morale is low. Poor me. “

nik2820003• 1 month ago

Sign me up, I will gladly give up my blue collar hell to torture an AI to failure.

iammrpayments• 1 month ago

This alone should keep anyone away from using React.

bluedevil2k2• 1 month ago

React, the web framework that’s now 100% independent of Facebook/Meta. Not sure anyone should listen to this suggestion.

simianwords3• 1 month ago

This comment is funny because it has nothing to do with the post and the situation but just there to "boycott".

The only issue here is that Zuck is giving some marginally bad work to employees and they don't have much work to do. And your response is... social activism to boycott React which is not even a part of Meta anymore?

xnx• 1 month ago

“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."

May I be blessed with a life so comfortable that I would be able to complain in such a way.

SilverElfin2• 1 month ago

Yea isn’t that basically all “normal” work? You do tasks and have little ownership or fun.

It’s also obviously not “literally” the gulag. Do these children know what a gulag is and what happens there? It’s quite offensive to equate their luxurious spoiled lives with people getting tortured and murdered over politics.

TheTaytay• 1 month ago

I was never sentenced to the Gulag, but based on what little I know, it's pretty different than one these people are experiencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

nemomarx• 1 month ago

You do usually get to interact with coworkers at some points if the day though? Are they isolating them during breaks or something weird here

sumeno• 1 month ago

The emphatic literally has been in use for over 300 years, it's time to let it go

PakG1• 1 month ago

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/725/

meindnoch• 1 month ago

A day in the life of Ivan Slopisovich :'(

g023• 1 month ago

How come people these days treat jobs like its a social gathering?

Avicebron2• 1 month ago

Free food? Free massages? Low effort work? High salary? High social status? For a while I knew someone who lived in oakland and refused to commute across the bridge to the office because they couldn't be bothered.

tamimio• 1 month ago

The same people who bully the ones that actually do the work for not being fit for “company culture”. I had a similar experience before where I over delivered every task, but that wasn’t enough because I refused to join pizza parties and other “team building” activities.

nozzlegear• 1 month ago

We are social creatures and naturally want to socialize.

hsuduebc23• 1 month ago

I was kinda surprised by that. I thought that people working there we're just conformists which have the FAANG money and are generally not bothered by company's actions.

People I read about in the article sounds like spoiled babies.

rdedev• 1 month ago

Due to "politics" my teams main responsibility went from developing ai agents to just testing out a chat it developed by another team.

When you spend 8 hours a day doing mind numbing tasks, tasks that won't help you land another job and is constantly under stress of being fired, its bad for your mental health

nvme0n1p1• 1 month ago

Sounds like you already have the skills to automate your new responsibilities.

classified• 1 month ago

Did you think making unholy amounts of money came with no strings attached?

JSR_FDED2• 1 month ago

They should rotate all employees between divisions.

When done creating AI puzzles they can enjoy a stint in the Content Review team.

nik2820003• 1 month ago

They should spend one day working at a McDonalds or as a last mile delivery driver. Ill bet playing with a chat bot looks a lot better after that.

brcmthrowaway• 1 month ago

TBT to one of the best comments about the Meta situation

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47881678

jcgrillo4• 1 month ago

For real, though. Why in the fuck do you still work at Facebook? Just quit.

tjwebbnorfolk3• 1 month ago

Same reason any of us work: money.

qwerpy2• 1 month ago

If I had taken a Reddit/HN approved job instead of working at FAANGs for 20 years, I’d be looking at another 20 years of soul crushing work. Instead, I’m retired. Sure you have to roll your eyes at the corporate nonsense sometimes but I’m happy I made that trade-off.

hackable_sand2• 1 month ago

Gas stations pay money

They could be truck drivers

jcgrillo4• 1 month ago

Upvoted. Only solid reason there is.

dabedee• 1 month ago

Soul-crushing work for a soul-crushing company. Hard to feel much sympathy.

hsuduebc23• 1 month ago

The "soul's crushing work" they are crying about is actually not enough of work or not enough interesting work. Not the sole volume. They sound like angry kids.

simianwords3• 1 month ago

Hard to feel much sympathy.

I think these comments are incurious and coming from more of an emotional and activist place than anything.

dwb• 1 month ago

Maybe some of us direct our curiosity in more worthwhile directions, and have already figured out our worldview with regard to situations like this.

madhacker• 1 month ago

funny when they're being dog food their product suddenly it's not cool, woe is me. u reap what u sow facebookers!

newtonianrules• 1 month ago

It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week." Another employee describes some of the tasks—generating puzzles to test how reliably AI models from Meta and other companies can solve them—as easy compared to the software development work they had been doing previously. But the new projects feel menial, and “almost all” employees seem unhappy, they say. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” the third employee says.

Then quit your fucking jobs you entitled assholes. You’d be shocked how many people would gladly do that for $300k/year.

fmajid• 1 month ago

So basically they built an in-house version of Mercor, the sleazy company that hires desperate people on a freelancer basis to train LLMs so they can be replaced.

sys_64738• 1 month ago

"We don't know what it is so it must be art."

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 month ago

Alternative to archive.is

No CAPTCHA, no Javascript, no geo-blocking, no DDoS shenanigans

  cr=$(echo x|tr x '\r')
  nl=$(echo x|tr x '\n')
  curl https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/ \
  |sed "1s/^/HTTP 1.0 200 OK$cr$nlContent-Security-Policy: default-src: 'none';$cr$nl$cr$nl/" > 1.htm
  firefox ./1.htm
  #links https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/

Text-only

  curl https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/ \
  |egrep -o '(articleBody.*isBasedOn)|(>Someone.*shit.)' \
  |sort \
  |sed "1{s/>//;
         s/<\/span>//;
         s/<a.*Meta<\/a>/Meta/;
         s/<a.*Meta AI<\/a>/Meta AI/;
         s/&quot;/\"/;
         s/&#x27;/'/;};
        2{s/articleBody\":\"//;
         s/\\\n/@@/g;
         s/\"\".*//;
         s/\",\".*//;
         s/\\\//;
         s/@\{3,5\}/@/g;}" \
  |tr @ '\n' \
  |fmt > 1.txt
  less 1.txt
  #links -dump https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/|less

rbanffy2• 1 month ago

Engineers are a fun group. Usually, when a job isn’t interesting, we carve it into something interesting. Be it that we “need” some kind of automation framework so that the work is “easier”, shifting the actual boring work to whatever tool they “need” and is more interesting to build.

In this specific case, maybe a formal language to define the tests and their optimal solutions so that they can be “rendered” to multiple programming languages and the solutions can be measured against the definition automatically.

As for Zuckerberg’s employees not deserving sympathy, I think we all found ourselves in abusive relationships with companies thanks to stock options and other sorts of handcuffs that aren’t easy to get rid of. I have twice quit jobs for moral divergence with company goals and I can tell you it’s not as easy as some people paint it. The first time was the hardest.

Meta’s chaotic AI strategy

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