How Facebook is turning to meta.

The Instagram engineer packed his bags for the December break as the boss dragged him to a virtual meeting to discuss his 2022 career goals.

Their speech soon took an unexpected turn. Forget the goals, the boss told him. In order to be successful with Meta, a major Facebook and Instagram company, he has to apply for a new position in the growing reality and virtual reality teams, he said. He says the company is looking for people.

The engineer, who had worked on Instagram for more than three years and wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, was shocked when he was forced to re-apply. He says he has not decided what to do.

Former CEO and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has been promoting the company since announcing his bet on Metavers in October. Under this concept, his company – renamed Meta – introduces people to virtual worlds and experiences across a variety of software and hardware platforms.

Since then, Meta has made significant changes, according to current and former employees. It has created thousands of new jobs in the hardware and software labs for metavers. Administrators urged employees working on social networking products to refer to those added realities and virtual reality roles. The company has outperformed its competitors, including Microsoft and Apple. And some brands, such as Oculus Virtual Reality, have officially changed their name to Meta.

The move is part of a series of major changes to the Silicon Valley company since Zuckerberg announced that Facebook should move its social networking site from desktop computers to mobile devices. The company has redesigned its energy and resources to create mobile-friendly versions of its products. The upgrade was highly successful, leading to years of growth.

But now it is even more challenging to change the course of the company. Meta has more than 68,000 employees, more than 14 times that of 2012. The business is based on online advertising and social networking. And while the shift may give meta to the next level on the Internet, the meta version remains largely a theoretical concept. Unlike the one that was widely used in 2012 when smartphones were switched to mobile phones.

According to nine current and former Meta employees who have not been allowed to speak in public, the result is an internal disruption. While some employees are happy about the meta pole, others have questioned whether the company is harming the new product without addressing issues such as misinformation and extremism on social media. Employees were expected to have a positive attitude toward innovation or release, and one worker said that there were some who did not agree with the new mission.

According to the two employees, the company’s focus is on metrics such as Facebook and Instagram. Some groups on Facebook and Instagram have reported a decline in the past four months, expecting a budget for the second half of 2022, less than in previous years.

A spokesman for Meta, which reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday, said the company was not the only priority for Metros. He added that due to the new direction, there has been no significant reduction in employment for existing groups.

Adam Draper, Managing Director of Boost VC, Venture Capital Company, which invests in companies focused on “sa-fi technology”, said Meta’s new bet was a good time.

“With VR / Web3, there will be full-fledged economies and countries that will be built digitally, and we are currently scraping the surface,” he said. Meta said that because of products such as Oculus headphones, Meta was at the forefront of virtual reality: “This is the science of the future, and Meta has taken bold steps to make it a reality.

The beginning of the division of the Facebook pillar has begun with a high profile. In September, long-time chief technology officer Mike Schroeder announced his resignation. He said he would step down by the end of 2022. Zuckerberg replaced Andrew Bosworth, better known as “Boss.” Products such as Oculus headphones and Ray Ban Stories smart glasses.

The rise of Bosworth was a sign to insiders that Zuckerberg had taken serious reality and balance seriously. Zuckerberg was a student and Bosworth was an assistant teacher at Harvard Artificial Intelligence. Zuckerberg dropped out of university and resumed his relationship. Bosworth eventually moved to Silicon Valley to work for Zuckerberg.

Since then, Zuckerberg has moved to Bosworth for a major initiative. A.D. In 2012, Bosworth was commissioned to build Facebook mobile advertising products. After administrative matters in the Oculus Fantasy section, Zuckerberg sent Bosworth in August 2017 to take the initiative. Virtual Reality Business The name of the Reality Lab later changed.

In October, the company said it would create 10,000 metric jobs in the EU over the next five years. That same month, Zuckerberg announced that it would change its Facebook name to Meta, adding billions of dollars to its efforts.

Real Estate Labs is now leading the way in the company’s transition to meters, the staff said. Employees in production, engineering and research are encouraged to apply for new roles there, while others have been promoted in the social media sectors, directing similar activities under the auspices of Meters.

More than 24% of the more than 3,000 vacancies listed on the Meta website are for role-playing or virtual reality. The works are in cities including Seattle, Shanghai and Zurich. The company’s free virtual reality game for Horizon “Gaming Engineering Manager” includes a list of candidates’ responsibilities to anticipate new ways to practice concerts and conventions.

Metavas Internal Recruitment increased at the end of last year, according to three Meta engineers, whose managers mentioned job vacancies in Metraver-related teams in December and January. Others who had not boarded the new mission left. A former employee said he quit his job after feeling that his job on Instagram was not worth the company; Another said he did not think it would be better to create meta metavas and was looking for a job in the competition.

Two people who know about the move say that Meta has deceived dozens of employees from companies such as Microsoft and Apple. In particular, Meta is employed by a company that specializes in products such as Microsoft HoloLens and Apple’s secretive augmented reality glasses project.

Representatives of Microsoft and Apple declined to comment. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have previously reported on some of the workers’ activities.

Meta employees have been asked to contribute to the change in other ways. According to an internal review by the New York Times, they were asked to sign up for Project Arya in November to gather information for future spectacles.

According to the memo, workers can “earn points and win” by wearing glasses and collecting information on the device’s cameras and sensors. When asked to wear T-shirts describing their employees as “research participants” to reduce personal privacy concerns, they said they were told they could not see or hear the raw data contained in the glasses. Note:

Employees are able to register for Oculus Quest headphones and use them for meetings in Horizon Workrooms.

Two people with knowledge of the project said that Meta is developing other wearable technology products including health and fitness tracking capabilities. The data has already been reported on the smartwatch. According to Ray Ban Storis, the smart glasses used by people to record videos are a stepping stone for many people to put smart technology on their bodies.

In the days leading up to the company’s international meeting, Zuckerberg took questions from staff about the change.

Two staff members who listened to the virtual meeting said that she was “happy” about the opportunities of Meters and told the audience to anticipate the endless opportunities available to people around the world.

Many employees have expressed interest in using emojis. But in an interview with The Times, one staffer wrote: “Who is the elephant in the room asking how all this works? not at all”

This article first appeared in the New York Times.