Inside Meta: A Deep Dive into the Company and What It‘s Like Working There
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is undoubtedly one of the most influential and innovative tech companies of this era. As Meta continues to shape the future of social connection, communication and even how we experience reality, there is intense curiosity about what happens inside this tech giant and what it‘s like working there.
In this comprehensive guide, we analyze key elements that current and prospective Meta employees should know:
Meta by the Numbers: Staggering Growth Over 18 Years
It‘s hard to believe Facebook started as a dorm room project for Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard and is now a mega cap company with over 85,000 employees globally.
Here‘s a snapshot of key milestones in Meta‘s exponential growth over nearly two decades:
- 2004 – Facebook is founded, gains traction on college campuses
- 2006 – Opens access beyond colleges, reaches 12 million users by end of year
- 2008 – 100 million active users
- 2012 – Reaches 1 billion monthly active users
- 2014 – Acquires WhatsApp for $19 billion
- 2012 – Launches IPO, valued at $104 billion
- 2017 – Reaches 2 billion global users
- 2018 – Acquires Instagram for $1 billion (originally acquired for $715 million in 2012)
- 2021 – Changes parent company name to Meta, surpasses 3.5 billion users across family of apps
As Meta expanded its family of apps to include acquisition like Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as make big bets on future platforms like virtual and augmented reality, its employee base has rapidly grown too.
Here is how Meta‘s headcount has ramped up over the years:
- 2006 – 150 employees
- 2012 – Over 4,000 employees
- 2016 – Over 15,000 employees globally
- 2020 – Over 58,000 employees
- 2022 – 85,000+ employees globally
That‘s over a 500x increase in employees in 18 years – a testament to Meta‘s ambitions that require world-class talent across domains like engineering, design, research, operations and more.
Current Employee Demographics: Inching Towards More Diversity
Given its scale, Meta employs people from dozens of nationalities and walks of life. However, there have been valid criticisms about lack of diversity – especially in leadership roles.
Here is the latest breakdown of Meta‘s employee gender representation:
- Global Gender Split – 77% Male, 23% Female
- US Employees – 75% Male, 25% Female
- Tech Roles – 83% Male, 17% Female
- Non-Tech Roles – 72% Male, 28% Female
When it comes to ethnicity, progress has been made to close gaps but there is still work needed:
- 41% White (down from 51% in 2014)
- 12% Asian
- 5.4% Hispanic
- 3.9% Black
- 3.2% Two or More Races
It‘s no secret the tech industry has faced challenges in improving diversity. Meta launched a diversity report in 2014 and has slowly updated demographic data since then to show incremental progress.
The lack of diversity also extends to key leadership roles, especially technical ones. Out of Meta‘s top 142 most influential engineering managers and directors, only 3% are Black and 4.3% are Hispanic. Meta still needs more inclusive hiring and promotion practices to ensure diversity scales to higher levels.
Revenue Sources Fueling Meta‘s Bottom Line
Meta has two primary engines driving its gargantuan revenue – advertising and virtual reality products/services.
Advertising via Facebook and Instagram accounts for 97% of Meta‘s revenue. This is largely driven by targeting ads to users based on data collected about their demographics, interests, and behavior across Meta‘s platforms.
While controversy around user privacy and data practices erupted in recent years, advertising remains central to Meta‘s business. However, changes to data privacy regulations could impact targeted advertising capabilities going forward.
Meta‘s second revenue contributor is its Reality Labs segment which includes VR/AR products like Oculus and portal video calling devices. This currently makes up less than 3% of revenue but is an area of future investment especially for Meta‘s ambitions around building the metaverse.
Here is a breakdown of Meta‘s revenue by segment:
- Advertising: 97%
- Reality Labs (VR/AR products): 2.8%
With Meta expecting slower advertising revenue growth in 2024, it is doubling down on virtual and augmented reality technologies. However, Reality Labs has been losing over $10 billion annually – leading to Meta‘s first ever layoffs in 2022.
Recent Layoffs: Macroeconomics and Rising Competition
After 18 years of incredible employee growth, Meta faced harsh economic realities in late 2022. High inflation, global recession fears, and a slowdown in digital advertising led Meta to lay off 11,000 employees in November 2022.
This represented 13% of Meta‘s workforce and marked a dramatic shift after decades of growth. Other factors also contributed to the layoffs like budget cuts and rising competition from apps like TikTok. Key teams affected were recruiting and business teams.
As economic headwinds persist into 2023, observers expect hiring freezes and cost cutting to continue across the tech industry. Meta projects weaker advertising demand as advertisers tighten budgets amidst uncertainty.
These layoffs signal the end of an unprecedented bull run for Meta and big tech companies fueled by digitization, remote work trends, and record venture capital investments flowing during the pandemic.
The economic downturn is pressuring all tech companies, but Meta also faces stronger competitors eating into its dominance over social media advertising and engagement compared to just a few years back. It remains to be seen how Meta adapts to these changing tides.
Inside the Different Business Units: Varied Priorities
While most people associate Meta with Facebook or Instagram, it has grown via acquisitions into a tech conglomerate with multiple business units – each with unique targets.
As the flagship platform, Facebook is core to Meta‘s advertising business and the hub bringing its family of apps together. Priorities here are accelerating development of AI recommendations, Reels, business messaging, and the metaverse via Horizon Worlds.
Facebook aims to keep users engaged via personalized, relevant feeds despite rising competition. With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook needs to evolve content formats and privacy/data practices while maintaining trust.
With over 2 billion monthly users, Instagram is Meta‘s fastest growing app – especially alluring for younger demographics. Priorities include more video via Reels and shopping via Instagram Shop – both presenting monetization upside.
Instagram also aims for deeper integration with Facebook‘s messaging infrastructure for seamless communication and transactions across Meta‘s platforms.
WhatsApp has over 2 billion users too but remains early stages of monetization since Meta has kept it ad-free since acquiring in 2014. Priorities are expanding business tools for SMBs, facilitating commerce, and payments in top WhatsApp markets like India and Latin America.
There is also a major engineering push to consolidate infrastructure with Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messages for smoother cross-app communication.
Reality Labs (VR/AR)
Meta is staking its future on emerging platforms like virtual and augmented reality which it believes will supersede mobile phones as the next frontier. Products here include Oculus VR headsets and Meta smart glasses.
It‘s still extremely early with under 200 million global VR users. But Meta is investing billions on future compute platforms and devices, digital worlds (metaverse) and other immersive experiences long before business viability.
For those working in Reality Labs, the environment combines ambitious moonshots and rapid experimentation amidst extremely uncertain outcomes and timing.
Meta Compensation: Lavish Perks and High Salaries
Meta offers exceptionally high compensation packages – competitive salaries coupled with signing bonuses and ample allowances/perks across business units and global offices.
As benchmarks, software engineers earn $170,000 annual salary on average which can reach $300,000+ for senior talent. Product managers earn similarly, ranging from $150,000 to $250,000+.
Bonuses range from 10% to over 50% of salary while equity grants make up the largest chunk over time – easily over $300,000 over 4 years. Benefits like 21-28 paid days off, 17 week gender neutral paid leave, medical insurance, etc continue rising too.
However, amidst the recent layoffs, Meta has paused many discretionary perks around food, wellness, events, etc. Hiring has slowed dramatically too. The lavish perks that became symbolic of big tech companies during the roaring 2010s may taper off somewhat if economic instability persists.
Working at Meta: Always Changing, Often Chaotic
Working at this tech behemoth offers opportunities to build products used by billions with access to cutting edge resources – unmatched scale and impact potential.
However, the environment can often feel chaotic and political due to massive internal user bases, huge coding repositories, quick iterations, ambiguous decision rights – requiring patience to navigate uncertainty.
The pressure around continuously evolving highly successful products leads to constant re-prioritization and changing roadmaps. Blind, Glint and other employee feedback platforms have been filled with complaints about communication gaps, mismatched incentives and coordination issues leading to ineffective workflows.
There is also intense scrutiny of Meta‘s societal impact with concerns around screen addiction, mental health, privacy, spreading misinformation, polarization and more. This touches most teams in some form – requiring both thicker skin and deeper empathy of end user perspectives.
While met with controversy initially, Zuckerberg has focused more intently on addressing such issues since 2018. This includes investments in oversight bodies like the Oversight Board, more transparency around internal research, launching new tools to boost safety/security, etc.
Teams like Integrity, Trust & Safety, Responsible AI, and Communications face immense responsibility and challenges in shaping ethical standards for how technology platforms should operate at global scale – where sociotechnical decisions become extremely complex with many tradeoffs. This emerging territory calls for both nuance and moral courage.
For those attracted to such intricacies though, Meta offers unparalleled learning – both technical and philosophical. Just don‘t expect stability.
Future Outlook: Cautiously Optimistic
Given the economic crosswinds hitting the tech sector, Meta expects operating conditions to remain challenging in 2024. Cost cutting and slowing investment will continue until visibility improves.
Hiring is also stalled across many teams outside critical positions for higher priority initiatives. For those who do get Meta offers, expect more scrutiny on performance and impact to continue earning the lavish perks and compensation.
However, Meta remains well positioned to weather turbulence compared to most tech firms given its still huge cash reserves. And engagement on its platforms continues growing.
As macro conditions stabilize eventually, Meta aims to emerge more disciplined – reaffirming commitment to key focuses like:
- Responsibly evolve Instagram and Facebook feeds via AI recommendations
- Expand Reels and Stories as future-oriented video formats
- Build the next compute platform via virtual and augmented reality
- Expand messaging, commerce, payments across apps
- And construct the next chapter of social connection – the metaverse
The coming years promises to challenge Meta‘s talent and leaders to architect this future while also enhancing safety, transparency and due diligence around socioethical considerations.
For those invigorated by such complex challenges at scale, Meta offers unparalleled opportunities to learn and make global impact. The ride will be bumpy but one can expect transformational personal and professional growth in ways only Meta can catalyze.
So while Meta cautiously braces short term obstacles, its long term ambitions remain irrepressible. The era-defining platforms and digital worlds it imagines are closer than they appear. 2023 will sort the heroes who wish to architect this future.
