X courts disgruntled Meta employees and lures engineers with snacks
In the tech sector, one company's crisis often becomes another's opportunity. As Meta grapples with low workforce morale following mass layoffs and a major AI-driven restructuring, its rival X appears to be capitalising on the situation. The company is openly recruiting Meta employees; Nikita Bier, a product lead at X, even joked that they would match or exceed Meta's snack budget to attract engineers and data scientists.
"Disgruntled Meta employees: X is hiring engineers and data/web scientists. We will match or even beat any snack budget offer," Bier wrote in a post on X.
Neglected Meta employees:
X is hiring web and data engineers & scientists. We will match or even exceed any snack budget offer. https://t.co/UlFh0OcbK2 — Nikita Bier (@nikitabier)
June 18, 2026
This light-hearted pitch underscores a serious reality: in the corporate race to dominate AI, the battle is no longer just about creating better models, but increasingly about attracting and retaining the people capable of developing them. In a subsequent post, Bier shared a link to xAI’s engineering careers page and jokingly invited prospective candidates to mention the word "snacks" when applying.
Apply here to and mention “snacks”https://t.co/mIWOLGhHxQ
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier)
June 18, 2026
Why are Meta employees unhappy?
This recruitment offer comes as Meta employees face drastic changes within the company. Meta is dealing with growing concerns regarding staff morale after laying off approximately 8,000 employees in May of this year and reorganizing thousands more as part of a major push into artificial intelligence. Around 6,500 engineers and product managers were reassigned from various teams to work on AI projects. At the time, various reports indicated employee dissatisfaction with these radical changes. These concerns have been publicly acknowledged by one of Meta's top executives.
According to a Business Insider report, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, stated that employee morale is at an all-time low, as recent mass layoffs and internal AI initiatives continue to cause unease among many veteran employees. Business Insider had previously reported that some employees described their assignment to the mandatory AI task force as "forced conscription" and felt that much of the work consisted simply of data labelling. The company also faced employee backlash in April over an initiative to track mouse movements and keystrokes in order to improve Meta's AI models. Meta attempts to boost workforce morale. Meta's leadership states that it has already begun taking steps to improve morale. In a memo to staff, Bosworth wrote that Meta must be "the best place for the best people to do their best work" and expressed a desire to "reclaim the best of the culture" that initially attracted employees, according to a copy obtained by a famous publication and first reported by another famous publication.
However, as Meta works to regain its employees' trust, its competitors appear eager to capitalise on the uncertainty.