Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth Admits the Company’s AI Reorg Was ‘Atrocious’
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth Admits the Company’s AI Reorg Was ‘Atrocious’
Meta 首席技术官 Andrew Bosworth 承认公司 AI 部门重组“极其糟糕”
Meta did an “atrocious” job of rolling out a new artificial intelligence division and will aim to “rekindle” a more cheerful internal culture through better communication, career growth, and even snacks, a top executive told employees on Monday in an internal post seen by WIRED. Meta 在推出新人工智能部门时做得“极其糟糕”。据《连线》（WIRED）看到的一篇内部帖文显示，一位高管周一告诉员工，公司将通过加强沟通、促进职业发展，甚至提供零食等方式，旨在“重燃”更愉悦的内部文化。
The comments made by Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, follow reporting by WIRED last week that revealed widespread dissatisfaction within the Applied AI engineering unit. Meta formed the division of about 6,500 engineers and product managers in March to work on projects aimed at improving the company’s generative AI models. But what workers described as the menial nature of the work prompted one to describe it as “a gulag.” Meta 首席技术官 Andrew Bosworth 发表上述评论之前，《连线》上周报道称，应用人工智能（Applied AI）工程部门内部存在普遍不满。Meta 于今年 3 月组建了该部门，拥有约 6,500 名工程师和产品经理，旨在致力于改进公司的生成式 AI 模型。但员工们称工作内容琐碎，甚至有人将其形容为“古拉格”（劳改营）。
Bosworth cited recent employee feedback as shaping the changes he was announcing. “We’ve undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued, that you will grow and advance your career, and that this will be a place where you can actually have an impact,” Bosworth wrote. “We shook up the management structure that was providing you stability while rapid changes in strategy, including the boom/bust cycle of hiring, left entire teams in the lurch.” Bosworth 表示，他所宣布的变革是基于近期的员工反馈。他写道：“我们破坏了你们对公司价值的信任——即你们的专业知识和贡献会受到重视，你们的职业生涯会得到成长和提升，这里是一个你们真正能产生影响的地方。我们动摇了原本提供稳定性的管理结构，而战略上的快速变化，包括招聘的繁荣与萧条周期，让整个团队陷入了困境。”
Meta declined to comment for this story. Meta 拒绝就本文置评。
The unrest inside the AI team is part of a broader downward swing in morale at Meta in the wake of mass layoffs, worker surveillance, and other concerns among employees. In recent days, several executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have posted internal messages acknowledging employees’ feelings and vowing to make changes to address them. AI 团队内部的不安，是 Meta 在大规模裁员、员工监控以及其他员工担忧之后，整体士气下滑的一部分。最近几天，包括首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在内的多位高管发布了内部信息，承认员工的感受并承诺做出改变以解决这些问题。
In his lengthy memo, Bosworth, long seen as a Zuckerberg loyalist, said that employees would receive more personalized attention going forward. Meta plans to cap managers at about 20 direct reports each, he wrote, and will try to limit the number of times employees switch to new managers as part of restructurings. Managers would be focused primarily on managing and secondary on independent work, and workers would have access to “AI coaching” tools should they decide to use them. 在长篇备忘录中，长期被视为扎克伯格亲信的 Bosworth 表示，员工未来将获得更多个性化的关注。他写道，Meta 计划将每位经理的直接下属人数限制在 20 人左右，并尽量减少员工因重组而更换经理的次数。经理们将主要专注于管理工作，次要专注于独立工作，员工如果愿意，可以使用“AI 教练”工具。
Responding to a comment on his memo about the Applied AI team, Bosworth blamed himself and fellow executives for losing sight of employees’ perspective while rushing to focus on broader strategy issues, such as better competing in the market for AI coding tools. “We obviously did an atrocious job explaining the vision, giving people a clear picture of how we would support them and their careers in the shift, and painting a picture of how it would change over time,” he wrote. 在回应关于应用 AI 团队的备忘录评论时，Bosworth 责怪自己和其他高管在忙于关注更广泛的战略问题（例如在 AI 编码工具市场更好地竞争）时，忽视了员工的视角。他写道：“我们显然在解释愿景方面做得极其糟糕，没能让大家清楚地了解我们将如何在转型中支持他们及其职业生涯，也没能描绘出未来会如何变化。”
However, Bosworth also suggested that drafting people onto the AI team in the name of speed was the correct call, and he reminded employees that they may need to work on a project they “don’t find as personally fulfilling for a while” because “there are going to be times where the work requires sacrifice.” 然而，Bosworth 也表示，以速度为名将人员调入 AI 团队是正确的决定，并提醒员工，他们可能需要“暂时从事一些自己觉得没那么有成就感”的项目，因为“有时工作需要做出牺牲”。
In a separate post from late last Friday seen by WIRED, Maher Saba, a vice president leading the Applied AI team, told employees who were forced to join that they would be now allowed to take other roles within Meta if they are able to secure them. “We felt it was necessary to leverage what Meta has that those other [AI] labs don’t: our scale and our people’s expertise,” Saba said of the decision to draft people onto his team. But, “moving forward, we are returning to business as usual and giving people the agency to apply to roles that interest them,” Saba wrote. 在《连线》看到的上周五晚间发布的另一篇帖文中，负责应用 AI 团队的副总裁 Maher Saba 告诉那些被迫加入的员工，如果他们能找到其他职位，现在被允许在 Meta 内部调岗。Saba 在谈到将人员调入其团队的决定时说：“我们认为有必要利用 Meta 拥有的、而其他 [AI] 实验室所没有的东西：我们的规模和员工的专业知识。”但 Saba 写道：“展望未来，我们将恢复正常业务，并赋予员工自主权去申请他们感兴趣的职位。”
Saba said the group, which is initially focused on projects to increase the coding and agentic capabilities of Meta’s frontier AI models, could also expand to address security, debugging, and product development. Saba 表示，该团队最初专注于提高 Meta 前沿 AI 模型的编码和代理能力，未来也可能扩展到安全、调试和产品开发领域。
Recasting Meta’s now-infamous motto of “move fast and break things,” Saba said the new Applied AI team within Meta is “moving fast and fixing forward.” Traditional engineering roadmaps, typically laid out at the start of the first and second halves of the year, no longer apply, Saba said, because “the work evolves so dynamically.” Saba 重新诠释了 Meta 如今已“声名狼藉”的座右铭“快速行动，打破常规”（move fast and break things），称 Meta 内部新的应用 AI 团队正在“快速行动，向前修复”（moving fast and fixing forward）。Saba 说，传统的工程路线图（通常在上下半年开始时制定）已不再适用，因为“工作的发展太具动态性了”。
Bosworth’s memo emphasized that Meta doesn’t subscribe to the belief that AI will fully replace AI workers. However, he said, “We should heed the saying, ‘AI won’t take your job but someone who knows AI might.’” Employees’ performance will be based not on just using AI, but having an “impact” with it, Bosworth said. Bosworth 的备忘录强调，Meta 不认同 AI 将完全取代 AI 从业者的观点。然而，他表示：“我们应该记住那句名言：‘AI 不会取代你的工作，但会使用 AI 的人可能会。’”Bosworth 说，员工的绩效评估将不仅基于是否使用 AI，而是基于是否利用 AI 产生了“影响”。
He added that there would be “tough trade-offs for a while” around the amount of compute available to different teams to make use of AI tools. “We will do our best to be transparent and invest responsibly to alleviate bottlenecks,” he wrote, while also encouraging employees to escalate any issues. 他补充说，在不同团队使用 AI 工具所需的计算资源方面，短期内会有“艰难的权衡”。他写道：“我们将尽最大努力保持透明，并负责任地进行投资以缓解瓶颈”，同时鼓励员工向上级反映任何问题。
And, in an attempt to boost morale, Bosworth vowed to make the company a “fun and enjoyable” place to work. Meta will be “improving microkitchens,” which are break areas within offices with snacks and drinks, and increasing travel budgets as well as spending on social events, so that employees can spend time together in person. 为了提振士气，Bosworth 发誓要让公司成为一个“有趣且令人愉快”的工作场所。Meta 将“改善微型厨房”（办公室内的零食和饮料休息区），并增加差旅预算以及社交活动的支出，以便员工能够面对面地共度时光。
“I hope we can rekindle the best of the culture we joined,” Bosworth wrote. “我希望我们能重燃我们加入时那最好的文化，”Bosworth 写道。