

Several former employees said that peers and managers iced them out because they had personal commitments or problems that required significant attention outside of work.įor instance, one employee who left in recent weeks said a manager was critical in a public team meeting because the employee didn't attend a team-building event outside work. "Your negative feedback can haunt you for all your days at Facebook." "You have invisible charges against you, and that figures mightily into your review," said an employee who left in October. That feedback is typically treated as anonymous and cannot be challenged. Peers can provide feedback directly to their colleagues, or they can send the reviews to the employee's manager. "You can cherry-pick the people who like you - maybe throw in one bad apple to equalize it." "It's a little bit of a popularity contest," said one manager who left the company in 2017. This peer review system pressures employees to forge friendships with colleagues at every possible opportunity, whether it be going to lunch together each day or hanging out after work. Many former employees blamed the cult-like atmosphere partly on Facebook's performance review system, which requires employees to get reviews from approximately five of their peers twice a year. The company's culture of no-dissent prevented employees from speaking up about the impact that News Feed had on influencing the 2016 U.S. He said "it was very much implied" to him and his teammates that they trust their leaders, follow orders and avoid having hard conversations. In this employee's two years at Facebook, his team grew from a few people to more than 50. "If you have an army, the larger the army is, the less individuals have voice. "What comes with scale and larger operations is you can't afford to have too much individual voice," said this person. The sentiment was echoed by another employee who left in 2017. "I never felt it was an environment that truly encouraged 'authentic self' and encouraged real dissent because the times I personally did it, I always got calls," said the former manager, who left the company in early 2018. Fischer took the question and answered, but within hours, the employee and his managers received angry calls from the team running that program, this person said. 7 in the last year.įormer employees describe a top-down approach where major decisions are made by the company's leadership, and employees are discouraged from voicing dissent - in direct contradiction to one of Sandberg's mantras, "authentic self."įor instance, at an all-hands meeting in early 2017, one employee asked Facebook Vice President David Fischer a tough question about a company program.

According to Glassdoor, which lets employees anonymously review their workplaces, Facebook fell from being the best place to work in the U.S. Meanwhile, Facebook's reputation as being one of the best places in Silicon Valley to work is starting to show some cracks. Amid these scandals, Facebook's share price fell nearly 30 percent in 2018 and nearly 40 percent since a peak in July, resulting in a loss of more than $252 billion in market capitalization. They say Facebook might have have caught some of these problems sooner if employees were encouraged to deliver honest feedback.

This culture has contributed to the company's well-publicized wave of scandals over the last two years, such as governments spreading misinformation to try to influence elections and the misuse of private user data, according to many people who worked there during this period. Several former employees likened the culture to a "cult." The episode speaks to an atmosphere at Facebook in which employees feel pressure to place the company above all else in their lives, fall in line with their manager's orders and force cordiality with their colleagues so they can advance. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
