Keep reading on blind about fast PIPs, firing people after 3-6 months, hellish work hours, terrible WLB, etc. This is making me scared to join! Is joining Facebook @ E5 a trap? I have 12+ YOE and i consider myself pretty hard working. I only work 40-45hrs but i try to be as efficient with that time as possible. I rarely socialize, always eat lunch at desk, and i pretty much like to be in a constant state of either coding, designing, or otherwise making progress on things. I hate downtime. At the companies I've been at I have been considered one of the best, fastest, and lowest bug rate coders and I've led system design for some significant systems but i've never worked at a company with as high a bar as FB. Is a super efficient 40-45hrs enough for FB or will i have to work just as efficiently at 60hrs to get by? Is it true that FB will fire people fast even as they are ramping up?
Do you already have E5 offer?
I accepted an offer actually. Now getting scared to join because of all the horror stories on Blind :) 190/15%/500/50
What does 15% mean? 190 base 500 stock 50 signing and ?
I would think of it as a challenge. Hit the ground running from day one. Worst case - you will have to interview at other places soon and that shouldn't be a problem I'm guessing.
Yeah but I don’t want to join a place only to be unfairly fired within 3 months... I always thought management 101 had hire & Fire cultures being a worst practice? How can people focus if they are under fear of being fired?
FB has also invested a lot of resources in extending you an offer. They wouldn't give you an e5 unless they were fairly confident of you being able to handle it. Having said that, it also depends on the team you pick from the bootcamp.
Would like to know as well as i am in the same boat!
You have e5 offer too?
Good luck!
Join to find out :)
I was in your shoes and I rescinded an offer last year for 190/15/600/75. All my contacts at the company told me “yes, there is a lot of pressure to perform”. I decided to stay with my good WLB.
Did you renege?
Yes. Accepted and chickened our after a couple weeks
First of all congratulations on the offer! Sometimes I feel like blind is very skewed and do not trust it blindly. See what I did there? Haha.. Having said that, E5 has high expectations compared to rest of the industry. Initially, it would be hard to get used to it if you've not worked in fast paced environment. Everything at FB moves really fast. It can be good sometimes but not always. Also, WLB depends on the team you join. I have many new grads on my team who push diffs out at 2am. These kind of people make WLB terrible for others on the team. If your new manager is aware of these outliers, they should be able to try to fix WLB but if people are motivated to work late nights and weekends, managers can't do much about it.
Pushing out diffs at 2am why on earth would they need to do that outside of a serious production incident situation?
Man I hate people who do that, it is so fucking stupid and dumb. Get a life or open a side business, don’t raise the bar to 80 hours a week for your team.
Blind experiences are biased towards bad teams and horror stories. Use all the resources at your disposal, take manager support. Stay humble and it is doable. Another easy tip is to join late in a half such that you get tnte as your first rating which can be fully used for ramp up. During team selection get a sense of wlb and join a team with a good culture so it will be easier for you to ramp up. It's really not that bad.
How many hours do you work?
You're worrying too much. If it's a bad exp, then it's a bad exp and you'll be interviewing elsewhere in a few months. If it's a good exp then you're golden. No big deal
Stop being such a wimp! Go in and execute. If its not enough its not enough. Are you really gonna back out if randos on Bind tell you it’s hard? lol
I’m not going to back out but just a little nervous. Out of all the top tech companies Facebook and Amazon are the only ones that have an unusually high amount of WLB complaints. And Facebook seems a good deal worse than Amazon. If this was an offer from Google or any other company we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
I joined as E5. Initially it would be hard, but you will get used to it.
How many hours do you work now? I'm OK putting in some big hours initially to ramp up but is it true that they can fire people within 3 months?
a little know fact: almost every corporation out there can let you go after 3 months. It’s called a probation period and it’s in the fine print. Does it happen often? No in most places - you just need to figure out how likely it is to happen at Fb