Facebook Reviews

I have been working at Facebook full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – I never knew a company could move so fast and get so much done while still kind of being out of control. The norm wasn't to follow a policy or to go by the book, but instead to continually innovate and ask why we do things the way we do. I was constantly challenged by the high caliber of my peers around me. I worry that I may never find such a great work environment again.

Cons – Work/life balance is great at Facebook, IF your entire life is Facebook. The lines begin to blur fairly early on between personal and work. This probably isn't a problem for the majority of early 20 somethings working at FB, but I found it challenging as a 30 something with kids.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Facebook as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Great environment, wonderful co-workers. I really enjoy meal time. Constant learning involved, which helps you grow in knowledge as a person and employee.

Cons – When you are responsible for such a vast network it can become very stressful when trying to get certain things fixed by the deadline.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Facebook full-time for more than a year

Pros – amazing brilliant people, great morale, tremendous perks, amazing product, so much room for the company to grow...we are changing the world

Cons – the work is so interesting it can become difficult to disconnect

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Facebook as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Best place to work for.

Cons – It has grown too quickly after the IPO.

Advice to Senior Management – Zuck is Awesome.

– I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Facebook full-time for less than a year

Pros – Awesome coworkers, challenging projects, hacker culture, not being afraid to take risks, amazing infrastructure, hardly any bureaucracy

Cons – Can't think of anything here.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Facebook full-time for less than a year

Pros – Incredibly intelligent and friendly people. The world's most interesting data set. Amazing perks. Truly motivated to bring people together.

Cons – Can be a noisy environment

Advice to Senior Management – Sharing an open floorplan is great, but the point of the openness is to understand (a little) what the people around you are working on. But when people aren't speaking english, exclusively, it feels a little divisive.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Facebook full-time for less than a year

Pros – 1) everyone is insanely smart. so it's a great place to progress.
2) despite 1) people have no ego. no one is territorial. you don't like something and think you can do better? go at it.
3) the internal culture build around the "hack" directive is very strong, very motivational and makes me feel very comfortable
4) immense data to analyze
5) everyday a chance to make an impact

Cons – ok, so it's not in downtown san francisco. that's really because i have to say something here.

Advice to Senior Management – stay focused and keep shipping

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Facebook full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Lot of independence in choosing your projects, recognition for innovation, complex problems, daily code pushes to production, awesome peers.

Cons – Constant inflow into upper management chain from other companies, so harder to move up the ladder if you're not on a crucial project.

Advice to Senior Management – Recognize engineering contributions in non-product areas for promotion as well.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Facebook as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Free food; mostly cool/smart co-workers; ability to be overpaid in an awesome city; a name on your resume that'll get you an interview at almost anywhere; you get to be on Facebook all day; endless opportunities to socialize with alcohol; on-site ergonomic support.

There is also the enticing opportunity for a full-time position. This is the carrot they dangle in front of you to do awesome work without much guaranteed reward. Beware. There are indeed a decent number of contractors who capitalize on this and eventually get full time employment. However, whether you are given the opportunity can depend on factors largely out of your control - managers differ in their desire to hire contractors full-time, openings may or may not exist, etc. Just be sure to manage expectations. You can put in 60 hours a week and not get a full time position. The transition from contractor to FTE seems to be changing and whether it will become more/less difficult I'm not sure. Just don't expect it.

Cons – Being treated like a second class citizen; endless opportunities to socialize with alcohol; being surrounded by many people who are constantly posting on their profiles about how great they, the company, and their lives are; increasingly inconvenient scheduling; having no expectations/accountability; you have to be on Facebook all day; not being challenged; dealing with the nightmare known as ZeroChaos.

I feel the need to elaborate on what I mean by "being treated like a second class citizen." Essentially, the full time employees regard you as a human being and for the most part will help you out and make you feel like a part of the team. But being excluded from company functions because of "legal" reasons, not having access to certain things, and not having your manager know your name after you've been there for a while will make anyone feel like they are not respected. It's not that your co-workers treat you as second class, it's just the institutional nature of having contractors the way they do.

Advice to Senior Management – You can't have it both ways. You want to attract the best talent to do what's considered mundane and repetitive work ("core work") yet you also want to save money by having them be contractors. The brightest people won't put up with being second-class citizens. The goodies of free food and zero accountability/expectations can only be appealing for so long. If you want the best workers, you're going to have to treat them better. Don't hide behind 'legality' as the cause for excluding contractors because Facebook HR and ZeroChaos said on the record that many of these things were due to manager discretion.

With essentially no meetings with contractors, you set forward a system with no positive or negative feedback. There are certain people that will take advantage of this and do terrible work. Facebook's philosophy of "hey let's treat our workers well and they will reward us with hard work and loyalty" seems to work. It's called efficiency wages. The opposite strategy of treating contractors poorly yields predictably opposite results. Don't be surprised if in the near future you have feces hitting the fan as this gets increasingly worse.

The carefully crafted FBATX culture that used to be envied throughout the company is now disappearing. That's what happens when you have 50 contractors in the office. That's 50 people that can't go on offsites, can't go to round-up, are barely introduced to their co-workers, aren't included in hacks anymore, and are included in zero meetings regarding the happenings of their team and the company. When I started everyone came up to me and was genuinely concerned with my well-being. By the end, there were so many contractors coming in that it was hard to tell who was at lunch as a visitor and who had been working there for six months. It's easy to be the "best place to work for" when contractors don't actually work for you.

If you want to save money by hiring contractors to do core work, outsource it to a developing country or something. You can't have talented people in the office surrounded by more lavishly treated FTE's and expect them to do amazing work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Facebook

Pros – free food, laundry service, gym, shuttles, coworkers

Cons – friends of sheryl sandberg, over 4k employees

Advice to Senior Management – listen to your employees when they tell you something's wrong

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend