Zuckerberg’s AI Hires Disrupt Meta with Swift Exits and Threats to Leave

When the first names were announced I read some comments on r/LocalLLaMA that they assembled a team with too many high egos and this was going to fall apart, because of general soft-skills issues.

I know nothing about the situation, but that comment was strangely specific

At least in my experience when doing investigative journo stuff, it's rare but it happens. The spokespeople who've done it towards me have been around for long enough that it's not unknown behavior.

It definitely has that petty, defensive vibe similar to the current administration as well as Elon Musk companies. Narcissistic leadership seems to be the common characteristic

> “manufactured tension without basis in fact that’s clearly being pushed by dramatic, navel-gazing busybodies.”

A spokesperson who said things like that would get fired immediately from any civilized company. Draw your own conclusions.

I feel like it's kind of counterproductive; it comes across as "what you are saying is true, but we are not happy about, and also how very dare you say it", in a way that the more conventional "[blah] declined to comment", or a simple denial, does not.

Like, it's hard to see how it's a _good_ media relations strategy.

What do you mean, it worked so well with his Metaverse initiative. $70 billion spent for $10 billion in revenue to date, and quarterly losses trending even worse as time goes on, you just can't argue with these results.

Or maybe - just hear me out - maybe he just hasn't thrown enough money at it (yet).

Like in soccer: https://www.hudl.com/blog/psg-recruitment-strategy-2025

It's notable that one of the more successful AI products (GitHub Copilot) was not built with throwing the money at a problem or a large team.

It was built by a small team, in a right place of a large company. And they were periodically re-assessing if the machine learning was "there yet". And the technology itself (codex) was created by a mix of Google Research / Academia (NIPS) and OpenAI/YC attempt to connect that research with products. It wasn't done on giant budgets and compensation was at the FANG levels or below.

In such cases, would the person still get the signing bonus? Or are these contracts always written with some contingency that the person has to remain for a period?

Either way if a company is willing to throw money to hire you, you probably have enough leverage to get them to write a custom contract in your favor.

Just not showing up at a job which you have signed a contract for is rude and childish. Even if you are a superduper ai researcher.

Maybe you know some of the people who've already started and just got re-orged _for the fourth time in six months_ (per the article)?

I mean, if it was me, and I had a bit of a buffer (which, y'know, you'd assume most people in this position do), there'd be a temptation to say "screw that, life's too short", and take a few months off before looking for a job somewhere less silly.

Counteroffer, or after the onboarding you realize that Meta is a huge corporation and that's just not for you.

As someone who has worked at both the biggest corps and the smallest startups (and in between), I can see how going from OpenAI to Meta could hit you like a truck after you do onboarding.

Counteroffer, obviously

When you are paid tens of million to work and have endless options, treating you as employer, or expecting you to implement some assholes vision and not your own is not the way forward.

These guys already have Fuck-you-money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck-you-money

  Noun,
  "fuck you money" (uncountable)
    (US, slang, vulgar) Enough money to leave 
    one's job, etc. and enjoy the lifestyle 
    of one's choice.

Money also can’t buy maturity it appears.

There's 0 chance they stop releasing open stuff. They are still way behind, so they have all the same incentives they had before to release models - brand recognition, devs engaged with their stack, slow down competition and so on. They will keep some models internal, or further train them on different datasets (internal?) for their own product use, but the "small" models (1-200ish B params) will be released in open weights for the foreseeable future.

My sense is that they know that legacy FB is no longer a growth product, the regulatory environment has been hostile to their previous strategy of buying products in new markets (instagram, whatsapp), and they know they need to come up with _something_ to stay relevant and keep growing if and when growth from those products starts to wane. I guess the regulatory environment in the US has shifted a little, but populist politics even on the right aren’t super friendly to conglomeration, and the EU has only grown more hostile to it.

Commoditize the compliment. They know they need AI to make their products keep up with the industry. They don't want to be reliant on their competitors (Microsoft or Google) for that AI.

They also don't want their competitors to grow by selling AI, which is why they give away their models.

All of their products are prime real estate for AI integration. But they need strong models that work well. L3 style but with current tool use / agentic stuff. They have "internal markets" for lots of niches. Auto store for mom&pop shops that use fb markets. Auto customer support. Auto chatbots for brands. Companions to keep people online and using their products. Flirty chatbots to bring in the new crop of users. And so on...

Their ‘metaverse’ did not work out great and they are trying something else.

Zuckerberg has basically complete control over Meta, and sits on a huge pile of cash. While FB still generates a ton of profit, it's clear there is a limit to its future growth.

So, what do you do in such a situation? You look for new markets where you could become a new leader. That's probably one reason for the whole push into Virtual/Augmented Reality, which so far hasn't really shown great results for the billions poured into it.

So, what's next?

Machine Learning played a huge role in successfully putting ads into the FB news feed, so there's already some ML expertise in house. And there are probably plenty of use cases for ML/AI in AR/VR too, and AI is all the hype, so why not go there next?

Remember it's not their money that they don't know what to do with, the investors are the ones with money they don't know what to do with. That's why they bet on technology stocks.

Zuckerberg and Musk have no choice but to be seen loudly investing in the latest cutting-edge technologies in order to keep their stock pumped. To fail to do this is to have the brand rot, the growth collapse, and the whole scheme come crashing to down like a house of cards.

They want to be Google, or at least what Google used to be. But the reality is that they have only ever built and launched one successful product on their own: Facebook. Everything else is either acquired or has been a huge failure.

They probably have some talented people stashed away somewhere, but it's pretty obvious that they are completely unable to leverage that talent to produce anything worthwhile at this point. Their strategic direction has also been a mess for years, but that is easy to ignore as long as your cash cows are still printing money.

Ya lets just have china do this stuff instead. /s

I hear you, but would you trust Sam / OpenAI or Elon / X? Same same same.

And there’s your answer. If past scandals haven’t made the remaining users leave, then what will?