Surprised at the negative attitude in this thread. It's certainly not an environment I'd like to work in but all the people working there don't have to, they choose to. It's probably also a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to rent in SF which I'm sure a lot of them like. Without knowing working hours/salary it's hard to say exactly how good or bad it is but the most important thing is that with so many companies having difficulty finding talented engineers all of those people are working there because they want to.
Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
31–40 of 96 posts
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#32I can understand people considering it fucked up, but I've also done this on a smaller scale (my first startup - we were 5 people initially and 3 of us lived in the office, and the other two spent most of their waking time there too) and it can be awesome for a while if you're young, without dependents and enjoy what you're doing.
In fact, I'd recommend the experience for a year or two. It was a bit like an extension of university dorm life. And it was a lot of fun that first year.
Living in the office (we had our separate rooms, our breakfast table was in the reception area; our living room was also the meeting room...) and being used to bizarre sleeping patterns provided a lot of unintentional entertainment.
Like the time I happened to be up at 3am on a Sunday morning, and the support phone rang (we ran an ISP), and I decided I might as well pick it up, only to hear a lot of noise on the other end before a bewildered voice told me he'd called in pure frustration and didn't actually expect anyone would answer, and had gotten so surprised he actually dropped the phone.
And this is a bit sad, but one of my best memories from that year (1995) was staying up late at night to max out our little ISPs 512kbps line downloading Netscape 2.0 right after it had been put on the FTP site.. Font color, animated gifs and livescript/javascript!
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#33This is clearly Carcosa.
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#34And that is how to not get female employees.
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#35[deleted]
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#36I can understand people considering it fucked up, but I've also done this on a smaller scale (my first startup - we were 5 people initially and 3 of us lived in the office, and the other two spent most of their waking time there too) and it can be awesome for a while if you're young, without dependents and enjoy what you're doing. In fact, I'd recommend the experience for a year or two. It was a bit like an extension…
So I suppose you were a founder of the startup, or at least an early employee with the expected benefits. It sure is great! Like this dear CEO of Meta, he wakes up with a big smile on his face thinking of his equity and all these employees who probably have little enough or none and put in just as much time as he does, and are presumably as immersed in it as he is.
Frankly, I felt filthy hearing him talk about productivity and evening brainstorming sessions and people talking in the kitchen, you know, furtively at 3am, about his great company and product. Does it occur to him that his employees are humans and might be interested in talking about other things? Every mention he makes of spontaneous social interaction involves "brainstorming and great ideas." The dream of every founder, that he could scale his (warranted) passion down to all those who have not nearly as much stake in it but should love it all the same! Yuck.
If you want communal living, there are cooperatives and similar arrangements with equal stakes. If you want to play capitalism, don't play fucking coy.
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#37At Datarank we spent our first two years living together. The first year was four of us in one big house, and the second year we lived in two neighboring two-bedroom apartments. While at times you can definitely feel cramped, 99% of the time it's pretty awesome. I do believe that living/working together increased our productivity a lot. It also made brainstorming ideas much easier as we would often times spend late n…
This seems like a good solution when all your employees are young males without spouses/kids. Also works if most of the folks living together are founders (vs early employees). Personally I'd probably not want to be part of a young company where there was so much peer pressure [1] to stay with the founders and other team members in a cramped up apartment. But then again maybe I'm not the target hire anyway. Also, I'm…
What, you wouldn't want to live, as a woman, in essentially a geek version of a frat house?
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#38This is seriously f#cked up. I can understand 3-4 people who are equals between themselves pulling this off, but with 24 people there's no way everyone likes the arrangement, so having everyone to be in it 24/7 is wrong.
Also, what happens if I really like the product, and I am eager to work on it, but not 24x7? I suppose I'm not welcome then? This is just sick, IMO.
did you watch the video? nowhere does it imply you're forced to work 24/7 - it's a huge house, I suppose you can just go somewhere else when you need some time alone.
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#39Run your company how you like, of course, but I doubt the benefits of the arrangement outweigh the smaller recruiting pool it leads to.
Re: Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate
#40At Datarank we spent our first two years living together. The first year was four of us in one big house, and the second year we lived in two neighboring two-bedroom apartments. While at times you can definitely feel cramped, 99% of the time it's pretty awesome. I do believe that living/working together increased our productivity a lot. It also made brainstorming ideas much easier as we would often times spend late n…
After university I hunted for and found my 1st 1bedroom apartment. Even in my little dorm room I didn't feel cramped and I definitely got along with my roommates in most cases. But there are so many tangible benefits to living on your own.
- Personal hygiene: my roommate wasn't the cleanup. In fact, the only time he got into it was when he had company (a girl) coming over.
- Personal finance: I was able to get the landlord to split the rental but this was not the case for heat, electricity, cable, and internet.
- Personal space: We were both guilty of this. Our girlfriends, unofficially, moved in at some points. Normally, not a problem but if you've ever had to wash your face in the kitchen sink because the bathroom was occupied for hours sometimes.
Sometimes you have to pullback and focus. If you are constantly surrounded by the same faces it can be easy to do "work" without actually doing anything productive.