Pros: I learned tons about computer vision and deep learning while working on an augmented reality team. I have a PhD in another technical field with a lot of computational research experience, so I found being part of a research team extremely interesting. I listened to lectures, assisted in various projects, trained models, and learned Facebook infrastructure. And I only worked 8 hours a day while getting paid a lot. I would happily grab another contract, likely with a different team to get a variety of experience.

Cons: Conversion to full-time requires going through the full interview loop. Of course, I bombed my interview despite having several teams ask me to join. Turns out with a family and job, I just didn't LeetCode enough (though they could just look at all my commits to see if I could code or not – hint, I can, which is why specific teams asked me to apply!). If you work 2 years, you can't grab another contract for another 1 year.

Pros: Collaborative culture, competitive pay & benefits

Cons: Work-life balance is not always good.

Pros: Working at Meta is very good, with nice conditions.

Cons: a small impact on the product