Meta

Facebook is a top tech company like Google, LinkedIn, Apple, and many others.

All of these companies offer basically the same thing: great engineers, good money, free food, impacting zillions of people, and interesting tech problems.

Facebook has a few things that set it apart:

1. Openness. Root on every box, access to every source repo. I very rarely had to wait to receive credentials to do anything. At other jobs, you're often blocked sitting at your desk for a few days waiting for access to some repository.

2. Control over your career. You don't get hired into a specific team – you choose it. (In recent years, they've added a list of teams you can choose from, but there's still a lot of variety.) And if you get bored or feel stalled, you're encouraged to switch teams.

I don't think other companies offer those things. The real list of pros is huge, but since they could be applied to other companies, I don't include them here.

The only reason I left is because I always wanted to start my own startup. Otherwise, I would have stayed forever.

With everyone switching teams all the time, there is often a lot of lost tribal knowledge. So there are parts of the codebase that no one understands anymore.

Since the Great Shift to Mobile, there has been a focus on quality at the expense of moving fast. I really liked the "Move Fast and Break Things" mentality of Facebook when I joined, and though people disagree with me, I prefer it to the "don't ship it until it's perfect" mentality. I think many of the independent Facebook apps waited too long to launch.

Another thing that no one will agree with me on is the work-life balance. I have noticed a trend of people working less, hackathons running during the day, etc. I think your average employee is less driven and moves slower than a few years ago. This used to be a place where people were obsessed with shipping above all else. It isn't that anymore. This is a pro for some people but not for me. I'm giving it a 5 because I think it's good for your life, not because I agree with that balance.

I wish the PR team was more proactive rather than reactive. I understand how press cycles work, but Facebook does try to do the right thing and constantly gets skewered. I think shaking this team up a bit would help.