Facebook was once considered one of the best places to work in tech, offering enviable perks, interesting work, and a fun, youthful culture. However, in recent years, the company has faced a number of scandals, downward revisions in projected earnings, key executive departures, and slowing user growth. This has led many to question if Facebook is still a desirable employer.
The Good
There are still many advantages to working at Facebook:
- Competitive compensation: Facebook offers very competitive salaries, bonuses, and stock options. The average Facebook software engineer earns around $121,000 a year.
- Benefits: Facebook provides excellent health insurance, 401(k) matching, paid leave, fertility benefits, and more. The company offers 4 months of paid parental leave.
- Perks: Facebook offices feature free gourmet meals, on-site services like dry cleaning, transportation stipends, gym reimbursement, and more.
- Flexible work: Many Facebook employees have flexible work hours or work remotely. The company offers up to 20 days a year to work from home or another office location.
- Education: Facebook offers tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year for continuing education.
- Travel: Facebook employees get to attend out-of-town team-building events and global conferences.
- Work at fast pace: Facebook operates innovative products at massive scale, offering opportunities to work on complex engineering problems.
In short, while no company is perfect, Facebook offers higher than average compensation, strong benefits, enviable perks, and interesting technical challenges for engineers.
The Bad
However, there are also downsides to working at Facebook today:
- Public scandals: Facebook has been mired in public scandals over privacy, election interference, spreading misinformation, antitrust violations, and more. This embarrasses employees and damages morale.
- Slowing growth: After years of explosive user growth, Facebook’s main app is nearing saturation. Young users are migrating to other platforms like TikTok. This reduces the excitement around the company’s mission.
- Intense pressure: With growth slowing, Facebook employees face intense pressure to launch successful new products and features quickly. Work/life balance suffers.
- Leadership issues: Key executives like the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have left Facebook. Some cite disagreements over ethics and the company’s direction.
- Stagnant stock: Facebook’s stock price has barely budged in 2 years as scandals mounted. This reduces the value of stock compensation.
- Office return mandate: Unlike other tech companies, Facebook is requiring all employees to return to the office full-time. Some employees prefer more flexibility.
In summary, the scandals, slowing growth, pressure, leadership losses, share price stagnation, and inflexible work policies have damaged morale at Facebook.
Compensation and Benefits
Let’s take a closer look at Facebook’s compensation and benefits to see if they still stack up well against competitors.
Salary
According to levels.fyi, which crowdsources tech salaries, average base pay at Facebook is:
| Role | Average Base Pay |
|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $121,000 |
| Senior Software Engineer | $153,000 |
| Engineering Manager | $218,000 |
These salaries are competitive with other major tech companies in high cost-of-living areas:
| Company | Software Engineer | Senior Software Engineer | Engineering Manager |
|---|---|---|---|
| $121,000 | $153,000 | $218,000 | |
| $128,000 | $170,000 | $215,000 | |
| Microsoft | $124,000 | $158,000 | $188,000 |
| Apple | $138,000 | $178,000 | $233,000 |
So Facebook remains competitive on base pay, especially for more senior roles.
Bonuses
The average Facebook bonus is 21% of base compensation. Bonuses are semi-annual based on company and individual performance. 21% is a generous bonus percentage compared to other tech firms.
Stock Compensation
Facebook employees receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) as a significant portion of compensation. The median Facebook software engineer receives about $200,000 in RSUs vesting over 4 years. The value depends on the stock price at vesting.
Recently, Facebook’s stagnant stock price has reduced the value of RSUs. But they can still yield six-figure income if the stock rebounds.
Benefits
Facebook provides the standard big tech benefits package plus some unique perks like:
- Insurance – Medical, dental, vision, life, disability. Facebook covers 100% of premiums for employees and 75% for dependents.
- Time off – 21 paid days off plus 12 paid holidays. New parents get 4 months paid leave.
- Retirement – 401(k) plan with company match. Facebook matches contributions immediately up to $7,500 per year.
- Transportation – Free commuter shuttles and public transit passes. Free parking and EV charging stations.
- Meals – Free gourmet breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered on campus.
- Wellness – Onsite gyms and health centers. Gym membership and fitness devices reimbursement of $720/year.
- Family – Fertility benefits, surrogacy and adoption assistance, free breast milk shipping for moms traveling for work.
Facebook goes above and beyond when it comes to benefits. However, some tech companies like Stripe and Brex now offer unlimited vacation time off.
Perks
Facebook offices feature all the expected tech company perks and more:
- Services – Onsite services like haircuts, dry cleaning, vehicle maintenance, and doctors save employees time.
- Discounts – Employees get discounts on gyms, phones, entertainment, travel, and more.
- Development – Access to conferences, speaker series, classes, hackathons and training.
- Fun – Game rooms, karaoke, parties, team events, free swag and more help people enjoy work.
- Sabbatical – After 5 years full-time employees can take 1 month paid sabbatical.
These perks improve work/life balance. However, some employees report that the “always on campus” approach can blur work/life boundaries.
Culture
Facebook is still known for its open, fast-paced hacker culture. However, the public scandals have impacted morale and culture.
Positives
On the positive side, Facebook culture offers:
- Youthful energy – The average employee age is 29 years old.
- Casual environment – Employees dress casually. First names and informal communication are the norm.
- Flat structure – Bureaucracy is minimal and employees can challenging leadership.
- Transparency – CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosts weekly Q&A sessions.
- Mission-driven – There is pride in connecting people around the world.
However, the trust and optimism have faded somewhat in recent years.
Negatives
On the flip side, critics point out:
- Growth mindset gone – Innovation matters less as growth stalls.
- Unforgiving reviews – Peer reviews can be hyper-competitive vs. collaborative.
- Lack of direction – Loss of key leaders like the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp raises concerns.
- Unethical reputation – Scandals around privacy, elections, misinformation etc. embarrass employees.
- Bureaucratic – More layers of management and process now impede the hacker way.
In general, Facebook is still known as a good place for ambitious young engineers to learn and grow rapidly. But the mood has soured somewhat as the company’s reputation declined.
Work/Life Balance
Work/life balance at Facebook is considered standard for tech. Here are some of the key considerations:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| – Flexible hours for many roles | – Pressure to work long hours as needed |
| – Remote work up to 20 days/year | – Expected to be on email and Slack outside work hours |
| – Generous vacation time | – Hard to disconnect from work fully |
| – Good parental leave policy | – Constant need to keep skills up-to-date on own time |
| – Onsite services save time | – Campus environment blurs work/life lines |
In moderation, the intense environment provides opportunities for rapid growth and development for young workers. But it can damage work/life balance long-term without discipline.
Reputation
Facebook’s reputation has taken a beating but remains strong overall among the general public. But among the tech community, the reputation decline is more pronounced.
On Glassdoor, current and former Facebook employees give the company a still-strong 4.3 out of 5 rating as an employer. 78% would recommend the company to a friend.
However, among engineers at tech companies and startups, there is more wariness of Facebook’s reputation. Concerns mentioned include:
- Privacy issues and lack of ethics
- Spreading misinformation
- Monopolistic tendencies
- Stifling innovation
- No longer mission-driven
These factors have led many of the “best and brightest” engineers to favor opportunities at companies perceived as more ethical like Google or fast-growing startups.
Growth Opportunities
The ability to take on increasing responsibility quickly is a huge benefit of working at Facebook. Thanks to the flat structure and fast pace, young engineers can take on leadership roles much faster than at older, more bureaucratic companies.
One analysis found that the median engineer gets promoted every 12-18 months at Facebook, much faster than the typical Fortune 500 company promotion cycle. And leading teams and products early in your career sets you up well for future success.
However, with growth slowing, there is more competition for the best roles at Facebook now. And other tech companies are now providing similarly rapid growth opportunities.
Location
Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, California with offices around the world. Here are some key considerations about Facebook’s work locations:
- Headquarters is in Menlo Park near San Francisco. This is very expensive for living costs.
- Major office hubs like New York, Seattle, Austin also have high living costs.
- International offices like Singapore, London, Dublin help serve global user base.
- Remote work available makes location more flexible.
Facebook will require all employees to return to office locations once COVID-19 restrictions end. This eliminates permanent remote work flexibility that some other tech companies offer.
Job Security
Facebook has thrived for nearly two decades and become one of the world’s most valuable companies. But recent trends around growth slowing, executive departures, and reputation declines have introduced some uncertainties.
While Facebook remains highly profitable, here are some of the key risks to job security:
- User growth slowing or reversing
- Ad targeting and measurement changes reducing revenue
- Tougher data regulations requiring costly changes
- Shift in users to newer platforms like TikTok
As a result, analysts believe Facebook will need to evolve its business model and offerings to maintain growth and profitability. This introduces some uncertainty relative to the relentless growth of Facebook’s first 15 years.
Conclusion
In summary, while Facebook remains a desirable place to work in many ways, cracks in the company’s image are starting to show after years of PR scandals, growth slowing, and leadership losses.
For engineers early in their careers, Facebook still offers exceptional opportunities to take on responsibility rapidly and learn high-scale engineering best practices. The compensation, benefits, perks, and work/life balance remain very competitive.
However, for more experienced engineers looking for interesting technical challenges and a strong company mission and ethics, other options in tech may hold more appeal than Facebook in 2023.
Facebook retains key strengths around compensation, benefits, growth opportunities, and work/life balance. But its reputation decline among tech workers and slowing innovation raise doubts if Facebook can remain a top destination for top talent long-term.