Pros

4 years at Facebook (Meta)

Cons

Department went through a reorg and our team got dissolved

Pros

I’m still a bit new, but I have very good impressions so far. I have 10 years exp at 5+ other companies (although no other tech companies) and this is the best by a good margin. First off, everyone is nice here! Yes, folks are ambitious, but there is a shockingly small percentage of jerks here… not sure exactly how they are weeded out, but I’m grateful for it! Lots of small benefits and well-run systems give the overwhelming feeling that this company just generally has its sh*t together. Shuttles, good food, good internal chat and groups system, not too many meetings or emails (much better than other companies!), great tech stack and automation, etc etc. Pretty good transparency and communication with leadership (e.g., weekly CEO/CTO Q&As). They are open to feedback and change when needed, without too much unnecessary reorg-ing and pivoting. Good examples recently are moving to annual performance reviews after years of complaints with 6-month cycle, decoupling Oculus and FB accounts, and killing facial recognition. Comp is fantastic, and relatively standardized within levels. Engineers don’t have different titles between levels, we’re all just software engineers. This was weird at first, but is a really cool feature that discourages dumb hierarchies. Work life balance is totally reasonable in my experience, but might be different on other teams. Mark is great, I don’t really understand why folks dislike him externally.

Cons

Some risk with new company direction. The metaverse shift is gutsy. It seems like a reasonable move, but if it doesn’t pan out, Meta might not be the same tech giant in 10-15 years. Like any big company, it has its share of internal koolaid/propaganda (but criticism/feedback is still welcomed and discussed openly) The (largely overblown) negative media coverage can lead to some family and friends judging you a bit for where you work, if you care about that sort of thing.