7 ms·

Politics aside, many Facebook employees come across as rather childish, incapable of taking care of themselves. The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Zuck

by _qulr 6y ago

Politics aside, many Facebook employees come across as rather childish, incapable of taking care of themselves. The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Zuck has to scold them by asking rhetorically whether they joined the company for the free food. And one employee asks if they can go live on an island by themselves, apparently like Lord of the Flies. Of course one may fairly ask whether Facebook's hiring process produced this result. The staff skews... young. As an outsider, I get the sense that Facebook is more like a college dorm than a workplace. No coincidence I guess that Facebook started in a college dorm.

Traster 6y ago
If you want to talk about childish, should we talk about the sort of answer Zuckerberg gave. Atleast the guy there for the snacks was getting snacks until recently, I'm worried about the guys who think they joined facebook because: >you’re here for some combination of reasons around the mission of the company, the impact that we can have in the world, trying to make sure that that’s as positive as possible
- _qulr 6y ago
  > Atleast the guy there for the snacks was getting snacks until recently IMO destroying civil society for snacks is a worse reason than destroying civil society intentionally. The pettiness of the tradeoff makes evil people look good by comparison.
notacoward 6y ago
Yes, it does seem like a college dorm. Sometimes it's even intentional, as in the design of the MPK campus. A lot of the perks serve the same purpose as a college dorm: eliminate the need (or even desire) to go off campus, maximizing time-on-task for the organizational purpose. That's not entirely a bad thing, though it does grate a bit for older employees such as myself (for two more days) sometimes. The "live on an island" thing is different. It sounds like a reference to the policies around WFH and changing locations, though I'd left the Q&A by that point so I can't be sure. That's actually a pretty complex topic, so I'd be a bit cautious about oversimplifying or taking out of context.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > It sounds like a reference to the policies around WFH and changing locations Yes, but that was also behind the snack complaints. According to the article, everyone got monetary bonuses, but it seems the problem wasn't the cost of the food, it was not having "hired help" to stock and cater the food for you.
  - pb7 6y ago
    I wonder if you'd feel differently about the "hired help" if companies like Facebook and Google stopped paying that "hired help" while they sit at home doing nothing during office closures.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      Not quite sure what you're arguing here?
- sjg007 6y ago
  "Living on an island" is an allusion to Randism.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Or even a Randian illusion.
jhanschoo 6y ago
> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! I don't think there's anything unusual about talking about that in a company-wide Q&A. It's minor, but people will want to know how they should adjust their budgets and how long. This is a good platform for such a question since it's something that affects everyone in the office.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > It's minor, but "A major sell to candidates is our office perks include free food" "with work from home, we’ve lost a huge financial part of our package" https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... Perhaps they don't know how much food costs, having never gone to the grocery store. ("How much does a gallon of milk cost" is the classic political gotcha question.) Or they don't know how to cook. Those are possibilities.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    Young urbanites don't cook. They don't drive, how do they get groceries. They probably have a single frying pan. For these people, free food at work might be a large portion of their daily caloric intake, outside of the beer/booze.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      I don't know why this is downvoted. Honestly, I bet a lot of employees were fine with living in apartments with minimal kitchens (most studios have the kitchen be a single long counter in a corridor of the apartment) since they would be getting their meals at the office anyways.
      - wreath 6y ago
        Yep - When I started cooking more meals and larger portions because I'm home most of the time and wanted to gain weight, I noticed that my kitchen is really suboptimal for this. Prepping breakfast and or a quick supper does the job, anything a bit more elaborate becomes a hot mess due to space and appliances.
linuxftw 6y ago
I went on site for an interview with FB a few years ago. College atmosphere is exactly as I'd describe it. Free cafe for the kids, they were brewing beer in one corner of the office, they were keen to point out all the stuff they had available for just hanging out with the bros. If you want to work at FB, show up on a skate board, with beat headphones and a zip down hoodie. Don't show up looking like someone that works in an office.
scottlamb 6y ago
> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Free food, including meals. If Facebook is anything like Google, some single people were literally using that for every meal and snack 5/7 days per week. It's tasty, nutritious food, and you don't have to prepare it or do dishes. Sure, an adult should be able to take care of this on their own, but this is a major perk, not just a box of granola bars on a shelf. It might cost them $100 per week (~$5,000 per year) to match their food intake via cooking at home. Much more if they start ordering a lot of take-out. That's a fair chunk of compensation they're not getting anymore. This absence is not at the top of my list of pandemic or employer complaints but I can see how it might be near the top of someone else's.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- _qulr 6y ago
  From what I've seen, I don't think $5K per year is a big chunk of a Facebook engineer's compensation. In any case, the bigger issue is that this situation exposes how utterly dependent these engineers are on their employer, not just for money but for basic life functionality. Only a tiny number of companies in the world offer this level of "service" to employees. What happens if and when they no longer work at Facebook? The company has seemingly turned its employees into helpless children, or at least never forced them to grow up after leaving college. If "continue to live like you're in the dorm" is a "perk", maybe it shouldn't be.
  - scsilver 6y ago
    I think thats an unfair, and frankly agist extrapolation. I can cook for myself every day and there is plenty of inefficiency in that action. Its wasteful, the food isnt as good as a professional, I have to shop and waste gas, I have to pay retail pricing. Or I could use the shared resource thats done professionally and efficiently. We are engineers, are we not programmed to reduce complexity and waste. I dont think its fair yo assume they couldnt cook for themselves if they thought it was needed.
    - 6y ago
shrewduser 6y ago
Trust me, the vocal minority there are extremely sheltered, self centered and live in a weird unreality. The majority of employees who come from the real world aren't that bad but also tend to keep quiet. I often think that people who spend too long at the top of maslow's hierarchy of needs just end up losing touch with reality.

by _qulr 6y ago

Traster 6y ago

If you want to talk about childish, should we talk about the sort of answer Zuckerberg gave. Atleast the guy there for the snacks was getting snacks until recently, I'm worried about the guys who think they joined facebook because: >you’re here for some combination of reasons around the mission of the company, the impact that we can have in the world, trying to make sure that that’s as positive as possible

_qulr 6y ago
> Atleast the guy there for the snacks was getting snacks until recently IMO destroying civil society for snacks is a worse reason than destroying civil society intentionally. The pettiness of the tradeoff makes evil people look good by comparison.

notacoward 6y ago

Yes, it does seem like a college dorm. Sometimes it's even intentional, as in the design of the MPK campus. A lot of the perks serve the same purpose as a college dorm: eliminate the need (or even desire) to go off campus, maximizing time-on-task for the organizational purpose. That's not entirely a bad thing, though it does grate a bit for older employees such as myself (for two more days) sometimes. The "live on an island" thing is different. It sounds like a reference to the policies around WFH and changing locations, though I'd left the Q&A by that point so I can't be sure. That's actually a pretty complex topic, so I'd be a bit cautious about oversimplifying or taking out of context.

_qulr 6y ago
> It sounds like a reference to the policies around WFH and changing locations Yes, but that was also behind the snack complaints. According to the article, everyone got monetary bonuses, but it seems the problem wasn't the cost of the food, it was not having "hired help" to stock and cater the food for you.
- pb7 6y ago
  I wonder if you'd feel differently about the "hired help" if companies like Facebook and Google stopped paying that "hired help" while they sit at home doing nothing during office closures.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    Not quite sure what you're arguing here?
sjg007 6y ago
"Living on an island" is an allusion to Randism.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Or even a Randian illusion.

jhanschoo 6y ago

> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! I don't think there's anything unusual about talking about that in a company-wide Q&A. It's minor, but people will want to know how they should adjust their budgets and how long. This is a good platform for such a question since it's something that affects everyone in the office.

_qulr 6y ago
> It's minor, but "A major sell to candidates is our office perks include free food" "with work from home, we’ve lost a huge financial part of our package" https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... Perhaps they don't know how much food costs, having never gone to the grocery store. ("How much does a gallon of milk cost" is the classic political gotcha question.) Or they don't know how to cook. Those are possibilities.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  Young urbanites don't cook. They don't drive, how do they get groceries. They probably have a single frying pan. For these people, free food at work might be a large portion of their daily caloric intake, outside of the beer/booze.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    I don't know why this is downvoted. Honestly, I bet a lot of employees were fine with living in apartments with minimal kitchens (most studios have the kitchen be a single long counter in a corridor of the apartment) since they would be getting their meals at the office anyways.
    - wreath 6y ago
      Yep - When I started cooking more meals and larger portions because I'm home most of the time and wanted to gain weight, I noticed that my kitchen is really suboptimal for this. Prepping breakfast and or a quick supper does the job, anything a bit more elaborate becomes a hot mess due to space and appliances.

linuxftw 6y ago

I went on site for an interview with FB a few years ago. College atmosphere is exactly as I'd describe it. Free cafe for the kids, they were brewing beer in one corner of the office, they were keen to point out all the stuff they had available for just hanging out with the bros. If you want to work at FB, show up on a skate board, with beat headphones and a zip down hoodie. Don't show up looking like someone that works in an office.

scottlamb 6y ago

> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Free food, including meals. If Facebook is anything like Google, some single people were literally using that for every meal and snack 5/7 days per week. It's tasty, nutritious food, and you don't have to prepare it or do dishes. Sure, an adult should be able to take care of this on their own, but this is a major perk, not just a box of granola bars on a shelf. It might cost them $100 per week (~$5,000 per year) to match their food intake via cooking at home. Much more if they start ordering a lot of take-out. That's a fair chunk of compensation they're not getting anymore. This absence is not at the top of my list of pandemic or employer complaints but I can see how it might be near the top of someone else's.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_qulr 6y ago
From what I've seen, I don't think $5K per year is a big chunk of a Facebook engineer's compensation. In any case, the bigger issue is that this situation exposes how utterly dependent these engineers are on their employer, not just for money but for basic life functionality. Only a tiny number of companies in the world offer this level of "service" to employees. What happens if and when they no longer work at Facebook? The company has seemingly turned its employees into helpless children, or at least never forced them to grow up after leaving college. If "continue to live like you're in the dorm" is a "perk", maybe it shouldn't be.
- scsilver 6y ago
  I think thats an unfair, and frankly agist extrapolation. I can cook for myself every day and there is plenty of inefficiency in that action. Its wasteful, the food isnt as good as a professional, I have to shop and waste gas, I have to pay retail pricing. Or I could use the shared resource thats done professionally and efficiently. We are engineers, are we not programmed to reduce complexity and waste. I dont think its fair yo assume they couldnt cook for themselves if they thought it was needed.
  - 6y ago

shrewduser 6y ago

Trust me, the vocal minority there are extremely sheltered, self centered and live in a weird unreality. The majority of employees who come from the real world aren't that bad but also tend to keep quiet. I often think that people who spend too long at the top of maslow's hierarchy of needs just end up losing touch with reality.