Current and former Meta employees say its move towards the metaverse has caused disruption and uncertainty, as some feel funnelled towards AR and VR initiatives
Shifting a 68,000-person social networking company toward the theoretical metaverse has caused internal disruption and uncertainty.
Context & Ripple Effects
This January 2022 report landed one month after Meta folded its AI group into Reality Labs, redirecting the company's premier research team toward metaverse work — an early signal of how far the reorganization would reach. Employees describing themselves as 'funnelled' toward AR and VR initiatives framed the pivot as something happening to the workforce rather than with it.
The disruption documented here became the through-line of Meta's next four years: reporting on devastated employee morale under Zuckerberg's efficiency drive, staff not actually using the Quest for work, and ultimately plans to cut roughly 10% of Reality Labs — with headset and Horizon Worlds teams hit disproportionately. What reads in 2022 as internal friction reads in hindsight as the first crack in the pivot.
First-order effects
- Meta's 68,000 employees face reassignment pressure into AR and VR initiatives regardless of their existing teams or expertise, with the AI group's absorption into Reality Labs as the template for how the company redirects talent.
Second-order effects
- Internal non-adoption compounds the disruption: when even VR-unit employees don't use the hardware for work, the funnelled workforce becomes a skeptical internal constituency, feeding the morale collapse reported through 2023.
Third-order effects
- The pattern ends in retrenchment — the 2026 Reality Labs layoffs concentrate cuts on the very headset and Horizon Worlds teams employees were funnelled into, suggesting top-down strategic redirection without organic buy-in produces expensive reversals rather than new businesses.
The trend: Meta's metaverse pivot is becoming the case study in how a founder-led strategic redirection collides with workforce adoption — the 2022 disruption report foreshadowing the division's eventual shrinkage.