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Not the worst, but that's a low bar

Production Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Meta for 9 years
August 12, 2023
Menlo Park, California
2.0
Doesn't RecommendPositive OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Working at a global scale, Meta has to solve some unique problems few other companies have the opportunity to see. Meta will often be at the forefront of new technology, or sometimes is creating that new technology, for solving problems. Smaller companies often have to settle for commercial off-the-shelf products that half-work or don't actually properly work, but Meta can do it properly. Your managers will most likely care about you and do their best to support you in whatever you need. Base pay is probably a bit lower than other similar companies, but overall benefits are incredibly hard to beat.

Cons

Upper management doesn't care about you at all. Your immediate managers do; their managers probably do. Beyond that, it's uncertain, and by the time you get to the VP level, they don't care about the individual person.

Diversity support is a joke. You're supported as long as you fit one of these very specific, predefined Silicon Valley molds. Otherwise, you get support for what fits in that rather small space.

Talking about what's wrong is strongly discouraged. There's even a policy that people have fallen afoul of just for criticizing that same policy's impact on discussions about how to improve life at the company.

Career progression is less about what you actually do and more about how much a bunch of people think you do. I've done some huge things, well-received by people and still talked about today as a good example of a company-wide, high-impact project, but I got a bad rating. And I've very recently had a year where I did basically nothing all year but made a bunch of upper managers happy and got a great rating.

The way multiple layoffs have been handled has left us not knowing whether it's even worth working hard for a great rating anymore, since we've seen high performers fired and low performers safe. At first, layoffs were held dishonestly, but then subsequent layoffs were handled in possibly one of the worst ways to respond to those criticisms.

Advice to Management

Whatever you're doing, just stop. Decide whether you want to run a California-centric coding shop with yes-men employees who do as they're told, or if you want to run a global tech company that solves real problems and actually helps people.

Right now, you're very strongly doing the former while claiming to want the latter. Once you've decided what you want, actually do it.

Then start treating your employees better. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions right now say the opposite of your words.

And while you're at it, get rid of CEE entirely. There's a very good reason your Pulse scores are so low.

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
3.0
Culture and Values
2.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
1.0
Career Opportunities
2.0
Compensation and Benefits
3.0
Senior Management
1.0

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