Background

Meta is one of the largest software corporations in the world today. There are several town hall meetings conducted in Meta, where many Meta employees interact with each other and exchange their views about their experiences in the company. There have been multiple such town halls after some congressional hearings. There were various issues that needed to be addressed, and the senior management at Meta took the opportunity to discuss more with their employees. Employees also addressed their queries directly to the Chief Operating Officer. Many employees mentioned that they hesitated to directly speak with the COO to share it. There was a pressure felt among the employees at Meta where they felt they were supposed to act as if everything is fine. But that actually hurt them. The pressure was to always show that employees at Meta loved working there. Employees at Meta felt that there should not be any such pressure where they have to pretend that they love doing their job when actually they do not feel that way. Such a statement by one of the employees at Meta was loudly appreciated by their colleagues at the town hall in Menlo Park, California. Prepare yourself with the Meta coding and practice interview questions below.

Read more: Why is Meta not hiring? »

Meta Work Culture

The culture of work at Meta is focused on employees prioritizing their work above everything else. Employees at Meta felt the pressure that they have to comply with their managers requests at all times. There was a peer feedback process which forced Meta employees to be cordial with their colleagues. This would help them get favorable feedbacks which can stay in their career for a long time. Employees were not able to escape from the work culture that has developed at Meta. This type of work culture is preventing Meta employees from sharing candid feedback on events and situations they are experiencing. There has been events of governments spreading misinformation to influence elections and the misuse of private user data. Both of which could have been addressed or mitigated sooner if employees had spoken out. In the current work culture at Meta rarely employees speak out their mind. Many have said some problems would not have appeared as widely and publicly in all the newspapers if employees had addressed and discussed these issues openly and taken care to resolve them quickly. Financially as well this type of work culture has affected. As such news stories get published, the share price of Meta also suffered extreme volatility due to the negative news publications.

Meta Performance Review

Meta had the reputation of being one of the best places to work in Silicon Valley. However, over the last several years, this has changed due to multiple concerns regarding the work culture and data collection and data privacy issues. There were several surveys conducted where employees at Meta were asked to anonymously share their review of the workplace. Meta lost several spots in this ranking and continues to lose. Meta employees do not complain in the workplace. There is a work culture at Meta that prohibits them from expressing their miserable condition if they're feeling that way. Employees feel the pressure to act as if they love the place. Employees in general give the common feedback that Meta is definitely not the best place to work. Employees often request anonymity when describing the Meta's work culture. There is a concept of stack ranking in the employees' performance evaluation system. The stack ranking system is the systems that was used by Microsoft in the past. Many employees at Meta describe the environment as a top-down approach. The top-down approach means that major decisions are made by the organization's leadership.

Meta Freedom of Expression

Employees often feel that they are discouraged from voicing any grievances or difference in opinion. This is in contradiction to many of the values that Meta had focused on where employees should be able to voice independent thoughts and views. There has been an incident in the past where at an all hands meeting, one of the employees asked a difficult question regarding a Meta program. Even though the question was answered honorably and respectfully during the meeting, the employee received disrespectful calls from the team that was running that program. This was an example of what employees experienced if they voiced their candid opinions and asked tough questions to the senior management. Employees often also highlighted that anytime they shared such dissent or a grievance, they always had to receive aggressive calls or explain themselves to other teams on this. Several such reports have come out from employees who worked in the organization earlier. Meta employees also highlighted that too much individual voice is not something that is encouraged at Meta with such large scale operations ongoing. Employees highlighted that it can be compared with an army. If the army is large, they have to follow the leader. And Meta has been hiring aggressively for the past few years which has led to a large workforce.

Meta Work Transparency

Employees at Meta felt that the team members were supposed to trust their leaders and follow orders. Employees often felt that they had to avoid having hard conversations in the company. Many employees at Meta saw the effect Meta was having in several elections globally, but the culture at work prevented them from speaking up. Meta also laid off one of their editorial staffs from their trending news team after there were reports of suppressing conservative stories. The incident was related to an instance where some employees from the Meta news team leaked to the press that they were suppressing stories that were more conservative leaning. Then after the election Meta employees were discouraged from speaking up and the senior management at Meta also denied accusations that Meta had impacted any election by using its platform. With the algorithms and user base that Meta has, it is a vast incredible platform that can be misused. An ethical and governing body should be present at all times to see that there is no such misuse intent from users and advertisers using that platform. However, we see examples of opposite things happening at Meta, where employees were trying to highlight that they were suppressing some specific stories, and instead of allowing it, they were told not to share these details.

Meta Ethical Biases

As a social media platform, Meta should remain neutral to any ideology and share everything from all perspectives. Meta should be allowing everyone to share healthy views from their perspectives and not prohibit them from expressing themselves. Many employees at Meta consider the work culture there as a bubble. In this bubble at Meta, employees are discouraged from sharing challenging feedbacks, or expressing critical comments to their managers. The senior management at Meta has expressed repeatedly on a lot of values that they want to see in the organization. However, in reality, very few of those were put in practice. Employees at Meta highlighted that they were not having sufficient critical conversations and were not able to express their views freely. Employees at Meta felt that the senior management needed to introspect and ask themselves if there were sufficient hard conversations and candid discussions that were happening. In Meta's performance review system, employees were required to get reviews from about five of their peers twice a year. The peer review system was focused on building bonds between individual members. However, this system created a lot of undue pressure among the employees who were forced to make friendships with colleagues at every possible opportunity.

Meta Peer Review Pressure

The friendships that were encouraged by the Meta performance review system were focused on getting a good review instead of an actual friendship. Employees were feeling the pressure to have lunch together, or hang out after work in order to get a good review for their performance. Meta employees often compared this review system like a popularity contest. Employees were often finding workarounds to get good performance reviews from their friends. The peer review system enabled providing feedback directly to their colleagues or their managers. The feedback was provided as anonymous and could not be challenged. The peer feedbacks had a lot of value and figured prominently in the performance review of the employee. Many of these feedbacks stayed in the employees' profile for several years while they worked at Meta. Many employees complained that even if they had personal commitments or family problems that required them to attend their personal life more, they were not provided sufficient space and time. Employees who failed to attend different team building events had to deal with critical reviews from their respective managers.