Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth addressed the issue at a recent employee town hall. He said workers should use time saved through AI to build more products instead of expecting additional holidays.
Bosworth was responding to an employee who asked whether AI-driven productivity gains could eventually translate into more vacation time. According to media reports, he highlighted that the additional time should instead be directed towards creating more products for Meta users.
“I hope that what we do with our extra time is do even more and cooler stuff for the users who use our products every day. We got billions of people using our products every day. I get an extra hour. You know what I do with it? I put it into that,” Bosworth said.
He also questioned whether employees should expect more leave as AI makes their work more efficient.
“Go to your parents and ask them: Hey, like every time I get a chance to talk to my boss, ask me if I can have more days off. Ask your parents what they think of that as a career strategy,” he said.
Bosworth later apologized to the employee, saying he had come down ‘too hard’ on the question and did not intend to do so. He also said he felt the question was ‘tongue-in-cheek.’
The discussion also touched on Meta Days, an internal program that once allowed employees to take two additional days off whenever they wanted. The program was later canceled and replaced by Meta's current leave policy, which provides four working weeks of leave each year, excluding public holidays. Bosworth's comments reflect a wider debate in the technology industry over how companies should use productivity gains from AI.
Several major technology companies have encouraged employees to make extensive use of AI tools. The trend has been described as ‘tokenmaxxing’, referring to increased consumption of AI computing resources. Meta has also evaluated employee performance based on their use of AI tools, according to the report. The productivity push has also faced a practical challenge.
AI tools have become more expensive in recent months, while the productivity gains have not always matched the additional costs. Meta has taken steps to control its internal AI spending. The company introduced token budgets for employees and shut down an internal leaderboard called ‘Claudeonomics’, where employees competed over AI token usage. The developments have led some organizations to reassess whether higher AI usage is directly translating into meaningful business value.
Silicon Valley is still divided over what should happen if AI delivers major productivity gains. One view is that companies will use those gains to increase output. Another suggests AI could eventually reduce the amount of human labour required and give people more leisure time.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stated that AI could make it easier for households to return to a single-earner model. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also spoke about a future in which people work less.
“We weren’t born to do jobs. Jobs are an artefact of the shortage,” Gates said at an Express Adda event in March last year.
He added that moving away from jobs could bring a lot more leisure time and raise a philosophical question about our purpose.
For Meta, however, the immediate expectation is that if AI gives employees more productive hours, Bosworth believes those hours should first go towards building more for the company's users.
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