Meta is bolstering perks like happy hours and company swag as it pushes staff to return to office, despite its ‘year of efficiency’::The company has revived a number of employee perks, according to Bloomberg, including branded t-shirts, laundry services, and free haircuts.
Imagine having to endure a happy hour wearing your Meta t-shirt while zuck monitors your joy level through a huge camera in the corner of the room.
And the happy hours are unpaid time.
Meta prides themselves on a ‘family’ culture.
Zuck on a mic: “Please increase your happiness by 14%.”
Why not simply increase basic pay? The younglings no longer want these “”“”“”“”“”“”““perks””“”“”“”“”“”" because they know it comes with many caveats.
They can’t. Workers at Meta were paid well and then they got to work from home. There isn’t any amount of money that will make those workers want to give up their new work life balance. Perks is the only option.
Google had it right back in the day. Free shuttle rides to work. Onsite massages, dry cleaning, free cafeterias, etc. if you make it so people don’t have to do those things when they get home, they will work longer. It still doesn’t compare to wfh but it was close.
I work in tech and my workplace is also getting deeply aware that layoffs and cost cutting policies have a lasting negative impact on the happiness levels. What a fucking aha moment…
Besides, It seems like, as the economy starts to hit bottom, companies are getting aware that the fight for talent will start again soon.
One thing about tech workers is historically they will crunch themselves hard to minimize downtime and meet deadlines because they care about their code and infrastructure. That totally breaks down when they see a bunch of their friends get shitcanned or sees their company making greedy decisions at the expense of their employees.
Upper mgmt “We need our employees back in the office.” Lowrt mgmt “Did you see the numbers? Since our employees started working from home, we’ve been smashing targets.” Upper mgmt “Yeah that’s why we need them back. Just imagine how much better the numbers could have been if we were making sure they weren’t slacking off.”
I wonder if it’s also that now their investors are going to expect growth on top of whatever accelerated growth they have experienced in this WFH era. meta wants a nice, predictable cruise uphill, not a sprint that they’ll now need to continue, progress be damned.
Side note: that’s a theory I’ve had regarding technological advancements in devices like phones. Apple, Samsung etc. want small incremental advancements they can drip-feed to consumers for stable growth, so they probably try to keep the big leaps infrequent. Yeah I know Moore’s Law can’t go on forever, and it might be getting to that point soon… alright I’ll take off the tinfoil hat.
Leave the tinfoil hat on. There is a precedent for exactly what you are describing. When radios went from valve to transistor, radio manufacturers kept the number of transistors low and only slowly increased radio quality over the years. They were able to make higher quality radios from day 1 but didn’t so they could sell more radios.
Am I out of touch?
No surely one more pizza party will turn this around.
Free prison style head shave whilst your shovelling garlic bread down your gullet too!
As someone at a FAANG company, there is one “perk” that these companies offer that few others can match, and that’s freedom of movement. There are few companies where you can join in NYC, work a year, then move fully to London, Berlin, Sydney, Singapore, etc - all sponsored and paid for by the employer. Not only that, but where the employer will pay to find permanent residency and citizenship.
IMO, these are the true perks of the tech industry, and a reason why so many young people are ditching FAANG companies lately, as they start to cut back on allowing people to move teams internationally.
My org at Amazon was polled on retention, and over 50% of the team wanted to move teams after the layoffs. Amazon no longer sponsor international visas, and lots of people wanting to move to North America or Europe are jumping to other companies that will allow them to do so.
Funny enough, for the cost of some of the stupid events that my work have put on for RTO, they could have funded several visas and moves for candidates that wanted to try a new team. Hell, some literally cannot go to their current office, and would love to move somewhere where they could - but no, gotta keep those retention figures low to help the bottom line…
Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I’ve never felt like moving to a different country to work. I can barely imagine moving from the east coast to the west coast. Perhaps I’m missing something, but never once have I visited a place and said, “I would love to spend 8 hours of my life every day in an office here.”
But I am at the ripe old age of 30, so maybe I’m past that demographic
I can definitely appreciate that. I’m 36, and am considering a move now, but that’s mostly because I’ve often worked for small companies and moving hasn’t really been an option.
There is definitely value in doing this when you’re young, especially moving to a big city out of college/university. I’ve found a surprising number of people in their thirties doing the same in big tech, mostly because there is more job security with experience, and having money + your health is a great thing if you want to try something new.
I think it’s an age thing yeah, but also it just comes down to circumstances. Id imagine that the people who are just packing up and moving to different countries every year for work don’t have a large family/friends support network around them
For me, moving to a different country would be a nightmare in more ways than I can count, I’ve got pets I’d have to arrange transport for, a wife I’d have to get on board (can’t even imagine if I had kids), all our family and friends are from the state we live in today.
But if you already had family/friends in that country, or if you were solo and your fakily/friends were already a distance away, then it wouldn’t be so bad
100% agreed. I left the States in 2017. Job searching is tricky now but it’s an absolute deal breaker… Remote or goodbye. I will accept nothing else.
MAAANG
Company swag? Nah, just pay me more I wouldn’t want people to know I work for meta.
Alright lemmings reality check time. Would you take a job offer from meta if it was in your field and the pay was good?
Benefits matter, too.
I’m in the AAA gaming industry. EA laid me off earlier this year, and so I wound up looking for work elsewhere.
I’ve learned that really - the pay doesn’t matter if you hate your life every day. If I wanted good pay, I would learn COBOL and write software at a bank. What matters the most is the quality of the team you’re working with (primary), and what benefits your employer has (secondary).
If Meta were to call me up and say “Hey, we want you to be on a team with the greatest coworkers you’ve ever had,” then I’d at least hear them out. What is their culture? Do they believe in crunch? How do they handle sick days? Vacations?
And yes, WFH is part of that, too. But if they were willing to pay to relocate me, buy me a house near a metro station… yeah, I’d take it.
But if they were to offer me that exact same deal - except there’s no guarantees about production schedules/timelines, there’s the “bus problem” (where the project couldn’t survive someone important being hit by a bus), there’s a lot of crunch (or just bad experiences from friends who’ve worked there… Blizzard offered me a sweetheart deal and I said no because of that history)… I’m less likely to want to bite.
And everyone has different preferences. I’ve known some people who love the office. I don’t mind it myself, with the right group. But everyone has to make their own call.
Metro station… oh you sweet summer child. You know what public transit is available near the Meta campus? Maybe, and I mean maybe, a bus stop to get on the homeless express across the bay.
I’m a little sad. My last studio was literally next to a Gold Line station here in Los Angeles. I could bike to the Gold Line and make it to work, and the Gold Line ran frequently and late.
My current job is a mile away from a Metrolink station. On the one hand - at least there’s a nearby station! On the other hand - the Metrolink trains are running the wrong direction for me, I’d need to make a connection at LA Union Station, and the latest one that goes the direction I need it to go (while still allowing me to make my connection) leaves at 5 (which is still considered core working hours for me).
The schedule is like… impressively bad. I’d use it if they ran it later, but they don’t seem to think anyone could possibly be headed in any other direction other than “towards LA” in the morning and “away from LA” at night.
That’s a pretty privileged position to be in. Not everyone can say no to a job because the quality of the team isn’t to par because they are more interested in keeping food on the table than being happy at work.
I did and still am.
Happy hours never went away. Swag also never went away. I don’t know if the writer here actually knows anyone or just overheard someone talking about that stuff and assumed it was new.
Covid did reduce the amount of stuff being bought. Freezer went away so ice cream went away. Less alcohol in the game rooms (though no shortage during happy hours), custodial stopped working on weekends (not too many people here anyway, just don’t leave food in your trash bin anymore). They cut a “health” allowance from 3k to 2k =(
Anyway, it’s easily the best decision I’ve ever made. I make twice my city’s median household income. The push for RTO blows (I’m convinced Lori/HR need to justify their existence). At first it was 3 days, now we just got told two specific days (happy hour days are going to rotate, RIP). There’s even a whole HRIS system in place for compliance tracking and all kinds of other wasted money/man hours that went into this. Makes no sense. They keep reference “the data” and “studies” but aren’t showing us what they’re saying. Nevermind that the C suite all got Exceeds Expectations after having to fire dozens of thousands of people (we still believe executive performance = company performance).
Things are coming back since our stock is back to starting with a 3. The only thing that pissed me off was how many laid off people’s positions were re-filled like 6 months later. It’s like the layoffs were just to get dilute the blood in the water that investors were looking for and hearing about a bunch of layoffs make rich people happy. Other than that, my team is amazing, my manager is awesome, work schedule is extremely flexible (single with 2 kids, I don’t know how I’d manage at any of my previous places I’ve worked). There’s the usual “cost saving” bullshit (although, there are honestly a LOT of areas that have been streamlined without any real detrimental effect, so kudos to that) but honestly that’s not Meta-specific. Meta just makes the news because it serves 1/3 of the planet.
Also, we make fun of Reality Labs for not being profitable and we don’t give a shit about Threads because it was made in a few months by a few people. Twitter isn’t really that hard to emulate.
Reality Labs
I don’t even know what that is.
Threads
I forgot that existed until you reminded me.
Facebook is Facebook. All these social media companies will be passe in 10 years and gone in 20 anyway.
Recruiters keep asking me to apply and I must’ve told them to pound sand about 3 times in the past 2 years.
If it’s fully remote, yes.
It’s just a job, of course I would. I feel like I dislike most companies anyways, including the one I work for so it wouldn’t change much.
In my country… yes. If I get over the 3month (max allowed) testing period, then they almost cant fire me, so i’ll happy take those monies just for showing up. Of course, they dont have offices here :)
I’d apply the same standards as any other offer
Define “the pay was good”.
For what they’re known payscales say they’d pay a dev with my experience? No way in hell. It’s only slightly more than I make now, and I’d have to go back to the office and work for an evil company (though I’m in Insuretech today, so that bit might just be a lateral move…). Plus I live in a low CoL area today, so a bit more money would actually mean a substantial QoL drop.
Now if we’re talking stupid money, like $600k/year, then yeah I’d suck up going to the office and abandon my morals. Frankly anyone here who says they wouldn’t do it for any salary is kidding themselves
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This dude really need to change his haircut lol he looks like he just do it himself at home.
Verily, one must maintain the utmost reverence when discussing our illustrious Emperor. Criticizing his haircut would be an affront to the grandeur and authority of our magnificent Meta Empire. Let us, instead, extol the virtues of Meta and the remarkable achievements of our Emperor.
That’s not hair… that’s skin for his
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All that money, and he still can’t find a decent hairstyle.
He looks like he cuts it himself with nail trimmers.
Say what you want, but its also an iconic look. You recognize his face the moment you see it, with that sorta disinct (but still kinda shit looking) haircut.
But also I dunno, I can understand the vibe of wanting super short hair to keep it up and out of the way, some people just prefer their hair cut to stay the hell out of the way, without committing to being full shaved down.
I try not to judge on such a thing. If he likes that haircut, fuck it, the dude makes more money while sitting down for his haircut then 100 haircuts would cost him to pay for.
He can do whatever the fuck he wants with his hair.
I would rather judge him by his actions, like that shit he pulled with buying “private” beaches and whatnot.
Edit: Actually out of curiosity I looked this up for some updates, and it sounds like he and his wife have been putting in efforts to actually do right by the locals, and that a lot of the bad press was just trying to dunk on him and was largely just stuff going over poorly with locals, so he retracted offers and went back at it again but with the help of local professors to ensure he did it right and in a better way.
It sounds like over the past few years he and his wife have been pouring money, like a LOT of money, into preserving tonnes of wildlife and donating a bunch of money to save large areas that were going to be privately developed, and instead now have enough money to pretty much stay preserved and managed by the locals forever.
https://www.kauaitravelblog.com/mark-zuckerberg-kauai-property/
Not gonna lie, it actually sounds like the dude is trying to put in some real work to do good here, I have to say.
Free haircut, like the haircut Zuck gets? 🤨 No. Thanks.
Wow, what an interesting technology this is!
