Meta CTO to employees: AI saved you time? Great, you can work more
If you were counting on AI tools to help you finish work earlier, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has bad news for you. He stated that any time saved should be immediately dedicated to increasing output.
If you work at Meta and were counting on various AI tools to save you time so you could close your laptop earlier or take a long weekend, the company's CTO has news for you: keep dreaming and get back to running agents. From management's perspective, every minute saved on writing code, product specification, or container monitoring is a great opportunity for more output.
"Ask your parents"
In a recent meeting at Meta's offices, one employee tried his luck and asked the company's CTO, Andrew Bosworth, whether the increase in employee productivity achieved through various AI tools could lead to the renewal of the Meta Days program. This was an initiative from the COVID era that provided employees with gift vacation days to prevent burnout. With the shift in the global high-tech industry, this practice was canceled and replaced with two choice days per year.
Bosworth's answer was direct and unequivocal:
"Stop asking for Meta Days, it's really stupid."
According to a report in Business Insider, Bosworth explained that any time saved thanks to new tools should be immediately dedicated to work: "I hope that what we do with our extra time is to do even cooler things for the people who use our products every day. We have billions of people who use our products every day. I get an extra hour. You know what I do with it? I invest it in this."
Furthermore, Bosworth told the employee: "Go to your parents and ask them: 'Hey, every time I have a chance to talk to my boss, I ask him if I can get more days off'. Ask your parents what they think about this as a career strategy." Later in the conversation, Bosworth apologized for his harsh tone, admitting the question might have been asked in jest, but he did not retract his management message.
The solution: more snacks
These statements reflect the general atmosphere in the company: this year Meta cut about 10% of its workforce (8,000 employees), installed tracking software on employees' laptops, and demanded they cut token expenses, while investing up to 135 billion dollars in AI infrastructure. The event is reminiscent of a 2022 response from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who clarified ahead of a large wave of cuts that "there are people here who shouldn't be at the company." To improve morale, a few months ago, Bosworth suggested, among other things, improving the kitchenettes to include more drinks and snacks.
By the way, for Bosworth himself, the pressure to increase productivity also stems from a personal incentive. The CTO enjoys a rewarding options package that could yield him up to 921 million dollars when Meta's value reaches 9 trillion dollars.
