Meta Employees Express AI Frustrations and Layoff Concerns on Blind Forum

Meta’s decision to lay off 10% of its workforce next month to offset AI spending has triggered a wave of frustration among employees, who have taken to Blind, an anonymous workplace forum, to voice their concerns. According to a report by Blind provided to Fast Company, posts containing negative sentiment about AI at Meta have skyrocketed to 83% since late 2025—a roughly 300% increase from 2024, when only 20% of posts about the topic were negative.

“Meta is dead and depressing,” one user wrote on Blind following the layoff announcement. Cynicism about AI and workplace culture at Meta is widespread on the platform. Another post stated, “They do not care about the employees anymore and all they care about is AI.”

Since April, there have been 523 posts related to Meta’s layoff announcement alone. While the layoffs have intensified discussions, Blind’s data reveals that anxiety and negativity about AI at Meta have been growing for years. In 2019, most posts about AI at Meta on the platform were optimistic, but sentiment shifted dramatically over time.

From 2024 to 2025, negativity deepened, with layoffs becoming a dominant theme in conversations. Sunguk Moon, CEO of Blind, noted that employees have rated Meta’s culture at 2.23 out of five—a 43% drop since 2020. “We’ve seen sentiment among Meta employees turn more negative in the past two years, largely due to layoffs and the internal push for AI adoption,” Moon told Fast Company. “The top, recurring sentiment among Meta employees is that, while the benefits and pay remain competitive, the mental health of employees worried about job stability continues to worsen.”

Meta declined Fast Company’s request for comment. The company has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to AI, announcing plans earlier this year to invest $135 billion in AI initiatives. Some of these efforts, such as tracking employees’ mouse movements and keystrokes to train AI models, have drawn sharp criticism.

“I feel violated,” one anonymous user posted in response to the tracking policy. “I get it that Meta is trying to improve the quality of AI and all that but seriously? Are you gonna monitor our every move and see how our mouse moves? Screenshot our screen sometimes? What next? Implement chips in our brains to read our minds?”

On May 20, Meta will lay off 8,000 employees out of its workforce of more than 78,000, with an additional 6,000 open roles set to be closed. In an internal memo, Meta attributed the cuts to its “continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The memo did not explicitly name AI as the cause of the layoffs.