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Tuesday 3 September 2013

Facebook employees reveal the worst things about working for the social network -

Facebook employees reveal the worst things about working for the social network - 



Earlier this year Facebook was voted the world's best employer but it seems that not all employees agree with this accolade.
One former employee said he was expected to separate his boss's dirty laundry, while another claimed there was "no privacy whatsoever" at the company.
An apparent lack of professionalism at Facebook was criticised by an engineer, which was said to lead to "uncomfortable situations".
Another criticised the long working hours which he claimed sometimes involved being oncall for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
According to Business Insider, the disgruntled employees posted their opinions on question-and answer- website Quora.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, is the highest-paid executive at the social networking giant, but one employee said they were "constantly being distracted by [her] extracurricular activities."
Sandberg released her first book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead earlier this year.
There were some more lighthearted complaints including not having room "for all the food".
Facebook is known for offering its employees free meals as well as various other perks. Its culinary team even have their own Facebook page.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Facebook's interns are earning up to £47,000 ($74,000) with at least ten roles commanding six figure salaries.
A spokesperson for Facebook said that the company would not comment on the story.
What did Facebook's employees complain about?
1) Long working hours
Keith Adams, an engineer at Facebook, said that he was expected to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks of the year: "During on-call duty, engineers are responsible for keeping the service up and running, come what may. For those weeks I don't leave town on the weekend.
Another former employee said that they were put on a strenuous performance improvement plan: "I was working 12-14 hour days, on my phone constantly and being hyper aware of my performance."
2) No privacy
An anonymous Facebook engineer said that because the culture of Facebook encourages employees to "be themselves" the company lacks "professionalism":
"At most companies, you put up a wall between a work personality and a personal one, which ends up with a professional workspace.
"This wall does not exist at Facebook which can lead to some uncomfortable situations."
Another employee said that workers have "no privacy whatsoever at work. At any time."
3) Lack of focus
A former intern at Facebook said that there had been a "complete lack of focus" on their team while at the company.
Another employee said that Facebook did not yet have a functional infrastructure and that trying to figure out how to do "cool" things with a team of 4,000 people is far harder than doing them with a team of 500:
"We're growing so fast and have never emphasised organisation, polish, or stability."
A former employee said that this lack of focus had a big impact on workers: "Instructions were not clear, everything was a guessing game, and I was immediately set up to fail. And when I didn't perform, I was told I lacked intuition as a professional.
4) Not as exciting as it seems
While Facebook may seem an exciting company to work for, the reality is different according to some employees. Said one source: "Knowing that you are part of an overhyped public company that was supposed to be valued over $200 billion by now but which had a dismal public offering that left many employees feeling totally helpless as they saw the value of their stock collapse."
One anonymous former employee said: " It was probably my worst professional experience to date. I was temporarily assigned [as an admin] with very little guidance or support, serving two of the worst leaders I've ever interacted with.
The team treated me like garbage and I was asked to really inappropriate tasks.'
Those tasks included separating the director's dirty laundry.
5) Poor attitude of executives
Referring to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, a source complains that the two spend way too much time on "extracurricular activities" and allegedly copying off the competition (i.e., Poke, which bears a resemblance to Snapchat).

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