Shawn Shen Explains Why Top AI Engineers Are Quitting Meta for Startups

Why Are People Leaving Meta?

Shawn Shen, CEO of Memories.ai, puts it simply: researchers are leaving Meta because the company’s constant reorganisations create instability and frustration. Teams, managers, and priorities can change every few months, making it hard for researchers to focus and make meaningful progress.

Shen also highlights a cultural contradiction: even though Mark Zuckerberg famously said, “the biggest risk is not taking any risk,” Meta’s day-to-day reality has become risk-averse and bureaucratic. Engineers feel their ability to innovate has been curtailed by corporate processes.

Despite offering enormous pay packages, some of which are reported to reach nine figures, many researchers are making it clear that money alone is not enough.

Engineers are increasingly looking for workplaces that reflect their values and give them the chance to do meaningful, mission-driven work.

At Meta, internal gaps and the sense that veteran teams are being pushed aside in favour of newly created elite labs have only added to the frustration.

As many as three AI researchers, Avi Verma, Ethan Knight, and Rishabh Agarwal, resigned within a short timeframe, with some returning to OpenAI. Agarwal summed it up: despite Meta’s “talent and compute density,” he sought “a different kind of risk”

Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and now startups such as Memories.ai, are stepping in with alternatives that emphasize impact, autonomy, and purpose, rather than just salaries. Industry insiders note that AI specialists want to work on problems they care about, not just chase the highest payout