Recently, a Meta employee named priiir (online name) posted a thread claiming that he is the only non-Chinese person in his team and cannot integrate due to his lack of proficiency in Chinese. In the Silicon Valley, at technology companies and instit

A “language siege” is unfolding in Silicon Valley.

There are too many Chinese people at Meta!

Recently, a Meta employee with the online name priiir posted on Teamblind to voice his complaints.

He mentioned that most of the team members, including the management, are Chinese. They communicate in Chinese during daily work, even in shared spaces and meetings.

This makes priiir feel extremely isolated as he doesn't understand Chinese.

He felt excluded from team discussions and decisions, especially when other members were using private WeChat groups to communicate.

Indeed, as Meta accelerates its investment in AI, Chinese employees are becoming increasingly common at Meta, as seen by priiir.

Especially after Meta established its Superintelligence Labs (MSL) at the end of June this year, it has brought in a large number of Chinese AI elites, including Alexandr Wang and Zhao Shengjia.

Meta's Chinese Face

At Meta, especially in the MSL department, the faces of Chinese people are very noticeable.

For example, Meta's first Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang and Chief Scientist Zhao Shengjia.

Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang

Alexandr Wang joined Meta as its first Chief AI Officer this June, leading the Meta Super Intelligence Lab (MSL).

Prior to that, Alexandre Wang founded Scale AI in 2016 while he was still a 19-year-old student at MIT, providing critical data and infrastructure for large model training.

Zhao Shengjia

Zhao Shengjia

Zhao Shengjia joined Meta's MSL department as the chief scientist in July 2025. He worked with Alexandr Wang and Zuckerberg to set the research agenda and scientific direction for MSL.

Previously, Zhao Shengjia served as a researcher at OpenAI, where she participated in the creation of models such as ChatGPT and GPT-4.

Changhan Wang

Changhan Wang

Changhan Wang is a research engineer at Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, mainly working on research in natural language and voice processing.

Xian Li

Xian Li

Xian Li is a research scientist at the FAIR team, and her research interests mainly focus on scalable training methods for fundamental models.

Xin Luna Dong

Xin Luna Dong

Xin Luna Dong serves as the Chief Scientist of Meta Reality Labs, responsible for leading machine learning efforts and working on building intelligent personal assistants.

Prior to joining Meta, Xin Luna Dong spent nearly ten years working on knowledge graph at Amazon and Google.

In addition, Clara Shih, who is in charge of the Business AI business line, and Susan Li, the Chief Financial Officer of Meta, are also Chinese.

Susan Li

Susan Li has been serving as the Chief Financial Officer of Meta since November 202211.

She joined Facebook, the predecessor of Meta, in 2008 after working as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley.

One netizen mentioned that Priscilla Chan, the wife of Meta founder Zuckerberg, is also Chinese, which might also increase Meta's acceptance of employees with Chinese backgrounds.

If you stand in the office areas of Silicon Valley giants like Meta, it's not surprising to feel like you've been transported to China in an instant.

Can't understand Chinese and get into the core circle?

Not only Meta, but also teams from OpenAI, Google, and other companies have many Chinese members.

In addition, there are well-known Chinese experts such as Li Feifei (Stanford computer science professor, former chief scientist of Google Cloud AI/ML, and advocate for people-centered AI) and Huang Renxun (founder of Nvidia).

Chinese immigrants have become an important force in the Silicon Valley and even the global AI and technology industry that cannot be ignored.

Recently, the chairman of Cheetah Mobile (a company) Fu Sheng also mentioned the amazing scene he saw in Silicon Valley:

Without understanding Chinese, it is difficult to integrate into the core team of Meta AI.

During the meeting, English was spoken, but after the meeting, everyone spoke Chinese together. So this time, it was the foreigners who were left confused.

And not only do people speak Chinese, but even the large models are now speaking 'Chinese'.

Major products of companies such as Cursor and Windsurf have been revealed to be using domestically developed open-source large models as their foundation.

Compared to the situation two years ago when domestic models in China were borrowing from foreign ones due to the popularity of ChatGPT, the situation has now completely reversed.

So much so that some netizens predicted that more and more foreigners will have to learn mathematics and Chinese in the next few decades.

So some netizens forwarded the post from priiir and commented below, Have you ever considered becoming a Chinese?

Big Tech in Silicon Valley Face Cross-Cultural Challenges

In the case of priiir, what's worse is that he felt he was marginalized by the team and even suffered unfair treatment.

He saw some Chinese people being easily recruited solely because they belong to the Chinese community circle.

A Chinese manager will only hire Chinese employees, and if they do hire non-Chinese employees, they are likely to be targets for dismissal in the future.

As the only non-Chinese employee in the team, priiir expressed uncertainty about whether they could stay for a full year because they can only be transferred to the team after one year.

Staying in his original team seems to be a bit like ticking by like a prisoner in years for him now.

A former Meta employee advised priiir to consider relocating their team early on. If Zuckerberg doesn't care about this issue, there's almost nothing an individual can do.

If a team is to be adjusted, where can it be adjusted?

In addition to Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon... almost all multinational giants have team members across multiple cultural backgrounds.

This has also made the priiir experience win the empathy of people from many other cultural backgrounds.

A netizen mentioned that in a team dominated by Indians, Indian managers only hire Indian engineers. Different cultural backgrounds, but the same scenario is playing out.

As a global hub for tech talents, the Silicon Valley attracts talents from different cultural backgrounds all over the world.

Working here, cross-cultural integration is a must, and an open mind that seeks common ground while preserving differences is very important.

As one netizen mentioned in his message, forget cultural differences, put down titles and self-esteem, and work hard.

Opposition will only lead to company closures, layoffs, economic downturns, and a series of bad news.

References:

https://x.com/chinesegon/status/1985417313848529394%20 

https://www.teamblind.com/post/political-chinese-culture-at-meta-2vx8g0a1 

This article comes from "Xinzhiyuan" on the Weixin Official Accounts, Editor: Yuan Yu