How Meta’s recent AI hiring focus is that impacting the rest of the company

Meta's AI hiring surge creates company-wide excitement and talent consolidation. Alex Schultz, CMO & VP of Analytics at Meta, explains how the company's aggressive AI talent acquisition strategy affects internal culture and industry dynamics. He discusses the galvanizing effect of high-profile hires like recent AI executives, the public nature of tech talent poaching between major companies, and how Meta's investment in AI infrastructure and talent mirrors professional sports free agency dynamics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Alex Schultz, who is the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. Alex oversees global marketing, analytics and internationalization for the company's 3.4 billion daily users and was named one of Forbes' Most Influential CMOs in the world. And today, he's going to talk to us about his new book, The Art and Science of Digital Advertising, which is a deep dive into how creativity and analytics work together to drive growth in an AI-first world. All right, my next question for you, there's been a lot of discussion about Meta's AI hiring focus. How has it affected the rest of the company?

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  I think everyone's really excited. Like, the conversations I have is people are super stoked that we're spending all this money on data centers, but we're really trying to bring in the best talent to make the most of it. So so far on my team, there's a level of excitement around this that's really, really high. Let's see how it plays out. But at the moment, it's kind of galvanizing. And, you know, these guys, Nat and Alex, I mean, I've known Alex since he was a teenager. I was actually an investor in Scale AI. And Alex and Nat, they're just very positive guys. Like, when they say things in the company, it's kind of inspiring. And so at the moment, I feel that it's being really uplifting. That's the impression I'm getting. Maybe I have a skewed view, but the people I talk to, they're pretty excited that Mark is taking these risks and taking big swings. And it's certainly what I prefer. I don't want to just futz along. I want to be a

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  company that takes risks and takes swings.

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  It's very clear that Meta is trying to win.

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  Yes.

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  Honestly, sitting on the sidelines, reading the news, sipping my tea, my thought is tech is getting to be more and more like professional sports, where it's like you go and you have your transfer fee or your big free agent signing. And we're all seeing these upstart brilliant people come along. And instead of just starting their own thing, there's so much attraction to get pulled into these larger organizations. It's like a talent consolidation, but it also sort of celebritizes the people that are in the industry, which is kind of fun to watch.

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  Yeah, I think what's funny is it's just become public. So there's this guy Andrew Tullock, who's been doing the rounds, and I love him. I worked with him early on in his time at Meta. I was a big fan. Anyway, so he's now with Mira, Thinking Machines. And Sam poached him from us. Mira poached him from Sam. We tried to poach him back, allegedly. This has been going on. It's just like, now it's in the public a little bit more. And there's more of it. But I do actually think there's a chunk of it that is, the veil has just been lifted on some of the stuff that was going on under the hood.

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  There's the comparison to what's happening in professional sports. There's also a dating metaphor in here, where it's like, hey, I'm a free agent. I can go where I want to. And it's interesting to see it play out in the public. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Alex Schultz, the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. If you'd like to contact Alex, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. And of course, you could visit his company's website, which is And his book launches in early October. So go ahead and get a copy. We'll have a link in our show notes for that as well. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right,

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  that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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