X is turning Meta’s morale problem into recruiting bait.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, publicly encouraged “neglected Meta employees” in web, data engineering, and data science to consider joining X, saying the company would “match or even exceed any snack budget offer.” The post followed reports that Meta leaders are trying to rebuild employee morale after layoffs, including through career support, cultural efforts, and office perks.
The post signals a sharper recruiting play: X is using Meta’s internal morale problems to make its own pitch feel timely, targeted, and hard to ignore.
A drop in morale follows Meta’s layoffs
X’s recruiting pitch lands at a difficult moment for Meta, which has spent the past several months navigating repeated rounds of layoffs and major shifts in corporate priorities. The changes have helped Meta streamline operations and redirect resources toward key initiatives, but they have also raised concerns among some employees about job security and workplace stability.
Those concerns have become significant enough that Meta executives have begun openly discussing morale inside the company. According to Business Insider, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth acknowledged that layoffs had hurt employee morale and outlined efforts to improve culture, career support, and office perks.
Increasing the office snack budget is one such effort to rebuild trust and engagement and has attracted outsized attention. Meta’s challenge, however, is not simply to offer more perks but to convince employees that they remain valued amid ongoing transformation.
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Meta’s layoffs leave an opening
Meta’s efforts to improve employee sentiment have not gone unnoticed by its rivals. X seized on those challenges using workplace dissatisfaction as the foundation of its hiring message.
Nikita Bier, head of product at X, made a public offer to what he called “neglected Meta employees”, specifically “web and data engineers & scientists.” In his post on X, Bier added that the company “will match or even exceed any snack budget offer.” The offer comes with a base salary range of $180,000 to $440,000.
Rather than promoting its own workplace independently, X built the message around concerns that have lingered within Meta following layoffs and organizational changes.
X’s strategy may be a joke on the surface, but it shows how low morale can become recruiting material for rivals.
Also read: A Five Eyes warning says fake recruiters tied to Chinese intelligence are targeting current and former government employees.