Anyone who works at Meta or knows anyone who works there will tell you the same thing: it is not a happy place. Particularly with seemingly endless layoffs and the company’s focus on AI, the atmosphere has become increasingly grim.

The Applied AI team, comprising roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers, recently experienced an expletive-laden meltdown during a presentation. The outburst reflects simmering rage among employees tasked with training AI models to perform tasks that humans can do with ease.

Employees describe being forced into the group with no real choice: join or quit. Many call themselves “draftees.” Their assigned work? Generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models. “It’s literally the gulag,” one employee told Wired. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” said another.

In a leaked audio recording, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained his reasoning for drafting employees rather than outside contractors: Alexandr Wang, who sold his data-labeling startup to Meta, knows the data-labeling world well; and, according to Zuckerberg, the average Meta employee has “significantly higher” intelligence than third-party contractors.

The mood across the company is dark enough that Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, felt compelled to address the “brutal” environment on a call with employees this week. Meanwhile, earlier reports suggest the Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, a 12-year veteran of Meta who was previously a vice president in its Reality Labs division.