Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree

Posted5 months agoActive5 months ago

polrjoy

45 points

40 comments

wsj.comTechstory

skepticalmixed

Debate

60/100

Artificial IntelligenceMetaHiring Practices

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Artificial Intelligence

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01Story posted
Aug 20, 2025 at 9:11 PM EDT
5 months ago
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Aug 20, 2025 at 9:33 PM EDT
22m after posting
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17 comments in 0-3h
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Aug 22, 2025 at 11:46 AM EDT
5 months ago
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Discussion (40 comments)

Showing 39 comments of 40

impish9208

5 months ago

1 reply

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-ai-hiring-freeze-fda6b3c4?s...

ghostpepper

5 months ago

1 reply

Thanks for sharing.

Pretty aggressive paywall that is blocking archive.is and won't allow viewing a gift link without an account.

impish9208

5 months ago

> won't allow viewing a gift link without an account.

Huh, that’s new. I didn’t realize they started doing that.

animitronix

5 months ago

2 replies

Lol. Meta has always been such a clownshow...

mandeepj

5 months ago

1 reply

They have burnt $40B on metaverse fantasy!

kjkjadksj

5 months ago

1 reply

Taxes are way too low

lotsofpulp

5 months ago

2 replies

You don't think those employees and vendors' employees and/or vendors' shareholders paid taxes on their income, capital gains, and/or dividends?

kjkjadksj

5 months ago

1 reply

I think they paid taxes and I think they are too low.

lotsofpulp

5 months ago

1 reply

Based on the fact that Meta was able to spend $x money on developing VR?

Seems like pretty arbitrary and baseless reasoning to conclude taxes liabilities were too low.

kjkjadksj

5 months ago

1 reply

Just a sign that profits aren’t being sufficiently taxed if $40b are trivially available for a billionaires pet project.

lotsofpulp

5 months ago

1 reply

If a business spends $40B to try to develop a new line if business, that is a business expense. If you are claiming that Meta’s R&D for virtual reality was not a legitimate business expense, but purely for Zuckerberg’s personal satisfaction, then good luck proving that.

Or are you arguing for a tax on revenue, instead of profit?

>are trivially available for a billionaires pet project.

What could this even mean? That it is trivial to become a majority owner of a business with enough cash flow to be able to spend $40B on R&D? If so, then you we live in different universes.

kjkjadksj

5 months ago

Not my opinion on it being a $40b plaything. That came straight from swe from meta who complain about it in these terms here on HN. It just tells me that their tax burden is too low. The fact that zuck is a billionaire means it’s also too low.

aredox

5 months ago

Found the one guy who still believes in the "trickle-down economics" con.

lotsofpulp

5 months ago

Others can only hope their clown show is as successful:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...

xqcgrek2

5 months ago

1 reply

I'd be embarrassed to work for Meta or have it on my resume/CV

garciasn

5 months ago

1 reply

If you land a $250MM total comp package, you probably won’t need to worry about being embarrassed about what companies are on your resume.

ulfw

5 months ago

Not exactly many make that even at crazy Meta. And now no one anymore will as they're ending their latest fad hiring.

IncreasePosts

5 months ago

1 reply

You'd think instead of paying 1 really good engineer $250M you could pay 5 really good engineers $50M each.

SOLAR_FIELDS

5 months ago

3 replies

This is a Bighead on the roof scenario. They aren't paying $250m to actually have $250m worth of work produced. They're paying it so that their competition doesn't have it.

kjkjadksj

5 months ago

If they are worth $250M to not work imagine how much they’d be worth if they said “screw that I’ll spin out my own company and license myself out.” I guess being paid a quarter billion to not work is hard to argue against though.

platevoltage

5 months ago

I liked it better when companies were hoarding bootcamp grads.

IncreasePosts

5 months ago

That implies that the dude can generate $250M+ of value in a couple years. No need to put him on the roof, make him work. But, my point is - doesn't it seem reasonable that if you hire 5 people who take the $50M offer, you have a good chance of getting a better outcome than hiring the one guy for $250M?

hooloovoo_zoo

5 months ago

2 replies

Meta already bought all openAI’s secrets; now it just needs to let the GPUs cook.

ipnon

5 months ago

When it is framed in this way the compensations are rational.

voxgen

5 months ago

What makes you think the secrets are small enough to fit inside people's heads, and aren't like a huge codebase of data scraping and filtering pipelines, or a DB of manual labels?

yahoozoo

5 months ago

1 reply

Surely Meta is going to be the company that turns LLMs into, not just AGI, but ASI.

sarlalian

5 months ago

Boy are they going to make that instagram feed fire.

pm90

5 months ago

1 reply

Interesting that investors can pressure Meta this way. I assumed that since Zuck has the “power shares” he can overrule anyone?

Ianjit

5 months ago

The pressure didn't come from investors. Investors expect Meta to increase capex by $30bn next year, a few engineers here or there is a rounding error in financial models.

habitue

5 months ago

2 replies

There has to be adverse selection here from the amount of money being offered right? Like ok, very few people could turn it down, but it's not going to result in a motivated team.

I am imagining all these overpaid founders etc just sitting in a room like reality show contestants. Trying to make smalltalk, brainstorm jamming for months, not really producing much because... who cares, they have unbelievable money and this is the weirdest scenario ever.

andsoitis

5 months ago

1 reply

You’re assuming they’re not ambitious, self-motivated, or curious.

BoredPositron

5 months ago

Usually things that go away with lots of money and corporate structure. I bet a good part of those new hires will land on the roof sooner or later.

smegger001

5 months ago

I would imagine there is some sort of incentive structure for the megamillions being offered by meta to these people not just throwing all of the money at them upfront. Payout structed around meeting measurable goals not just show up and collect fuck you money. Or maybe it is silcon valley redux and they will set on the roof with big head what do I know.

coro_1

5 months ago

> As of mid-August, Meta had successfully hired more than 20 researchers and engineers from OpenAI for the effort, at least 13 from Google, three from Apple, three from xAI and two from Anthropic for a total of 50-plus new employees.

The rest of us look for cultural fit.

tushar-r

5 months ago

Layoffs incoming?

buyucu

5 months ago

without paywall: https://archive.is/20250821033002/https://www.wsj.com/tech/a...

qwertyuiop07

5 months ago

why do you need hiring when you have ai?

platevoltage

5 months ago