A former Meta researcher, Tijmen Blankevoort, has drawn sharp attention to what he calls a deep cultural crisis within Meta’s AI division. In a blunt internal farewell note — obtained by The Information — Blankevoort described the workplace environment as riddled with fear, confusion, and dysfunction, even likening it to a “metastatic cancer” spreading throughout the organization.
Blankevoort, who worked on Meta’s LLaMA language models, didn’t hold back in his criticism of Meta’s leadership. He wrote that many employees feel disoriented, demotivated, and unsure of the company’s mission, placing blame on a relentless cycle of performance reviews and layoffs that he says have eroded morale and stifled innovation.
“We are in a culture of fear,” he wrote, adding that the AI team — now numbering over 2,000 — suffers from a lack of direction and purpose. “Most do not enjoy being here,” he said. “And they don’t even know what our mission is.”
His comments come at a time when Meta is aggressively expanding its AI efforts in a race to catch up with rivals like OpenAI and Google DeepMind. The company recently launched a new initiative called Superintelligence Labs, aimed at developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a long-term goal in the AI arms race.
As part of this push, Meta has been on a hiring spree, recruiting top talent from across the AI world. Most recently, Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s Foundation Models team, was brought in to join the Superintelligence division. Other notable hires include researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, such as Yuanzhi Li and Anton Bakhtin.
However, the aggressive poaching has caused friction. OpenAI's chief researcher Mark Chen accused Meta of “breaking into our home and stealing something,” referring to the company’s recruiting tactics. CEO Sam Altman claimed Meta had even offered $100 million signing bonuses to lure top researchers — a claim Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth downplayed, insisting such offers are rare and limited to key leaders.
While Meta’s hiring strategy signals ambition, Blankevoort’s essay suggests that new talent alone can’t fix what he sees as a broken culture. His words have reportedly triggered internal discussions, highlighting a larger truth: building powerful AI systems isn’t just about brilliant minds — it’s also about fostering an environment where those minds can thrive.
