Meta is said to be actively expanding its VR/AR team, causing serious internal chaos

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According to The New York Times, some Meta employees are actively applying for other company positions to embrace the current VR/AR trend, and some employees have chosen to jump ship to companies such as their rival Apple.

Image source: macrumors

Since Facebook changed its name to Meta and began a powerful layout of the metaverse, Meta is said to have undergone a radical transformation, creating thousands of new jobs to develop hardware and software for AR and VR. More than 24 percent of Meta's open hires are for positions in the augmented or virtual reality space, and Meta has ramped up in-house hiring in recent months.

According to reports, Meta is pushing its product, engineering and research staff to apply for new positions on its expanding AR and VR teams. Other employees of the company have also been promoted from the social networking division to the same function, with a focus on augmented and virtual reality.

In addition to internal push, Meta is also trying to poach talent from Apple and Microsoft. To dissuade employees from leaving, Apple offered up to $180,000 in stock rewards to some engineers.

According to current and former Employees of Meta in an interview with The New York Times, the result of this shift has led to serious chaos within Meta. While some employees are excited about Meta's new direction, others have expressed dissent about the way the company treats employees and question whether the company is ignoring existing issues.

One former Instagram employee quit after feeling his job was no longer valuable to the company, while another said they didn't think Meta was the best option to create a metaverse and were therefore looking for work with competitors.

The meta shift to AR and VR's impact on Facebook and Instagram seems to be changing, but teams on both social media platforms are said to have scaled back and faced budget cuts over the past four months. A meta spokesperson said there were no "major" layoffs to existing teams due to the company's new direction.

Source: macrumors