Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree

impish9208 294 days ago |

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

ghostpepper 294 days ago | |

Thanks for sharing.

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

impish9208 294 days ago | | |

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

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

coro_1 294 days 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.

hooloovoo_zoo 294 days ago |

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

ipnon 294 days ago | |

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

voxgen 293 days 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?

xqcgrek2 294 days ago |

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

garciasn 294 days ago | |

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 294 days 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 294 days ago |

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

SOLAR_FIELDS 294 days ago | |

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.

platevoltage 294 days ago | | |

I liked it better when companies were hoarding bootcamp grads.

kjkjadksj 294 days 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.

IncreasePosts 293 days 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?

qwertyuiop07 294 days ago |

why do you need hiring when you have ai?

yahoozoo 294 days ago |

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

sarlalian 294 days ago | |

Boy are they going to make that instagram feed fire.

pm90 294 days ago |

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

Ianjit 293 days 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 294 days ago |

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.

smegger001 292 days 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.

andsoitis 294 days ago | |

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

BoredPositron 294 days 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.

platevoltage 294 days ago |

But I've always dreamed about being laid off for low performance by Meta.

seatac76 294 days ago |

Makes sense the payroll numbers of true are those of a 300+ person AI startup.

tushar-r 294 days ago |

Layoffs incoming?

buyucu 293 days ago |

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

animitronix 294 days ago |

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

mandeepj 294 days ago | |

They have burnt $40B on metaverse fantasy!

kjkjadksj 294 days ago | | |

Taxes are way too low

lotsofpulp 294 days ago | | |

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

kjkjadksj 293 days ago | | |

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

lotsofpulp 293 days ago | | |

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.

aredox 294 days ago | | |

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

lotsofpulp 294 days ago | |

Others can only hope their clown show is as successful:

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