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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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