Meta

• Opportunity to write software that gets used by hundreds of millions of people
• Opportunity to see how a successful company is run
• Opportunity to launch often
• Potential IPO

• Frontend work (i.e., work done in most of the product-oriented teams) is mostly mundane PHP and nothing intellectually challenging from a Computer Science perspective. (Backend may be different, but I never tried that.)

• Potential to get judged too quickly for performance. They are less willing than other companies to let you try something different, which may be a better fit if you are not performing well enough on your current project.

• Chaos that may hurt you: you may start out on one project but be expected to do something else for no good reason, that may not be the best fit for your skills.

• Some managers are too busy to give useful, frequent feedback.

• I get the impression that they manage by a bell curve but are not being transparent about it.

Be absolutely honest to new hires about where Facebook stands on the spectrum between 'severe' and 'forgiving' for performance reviews, especially when you let new engineers choose their initial team. This allows them to choose their teams carefully and pick a project they know they will do well on, instead of just one that catches their interest but is not necessarily a good fit for their experience and skills.