Are people who complain about poor WLB at FB just inefficient or is it really that bad?
Baystate Health
wzGR12
Sep 12, 2021
17 Comments
I keep seeing people complaining about WLB at FB and how they regularly put in 60+ hour weeks, but I'm wondering how much of that is inefficiency of these people? I've known people who sit at their desks for 10-12 hours a day and get nothing done because they're not good at their work, inefficient, or watching youtube videos half the time, and then say they're "working" 50-60 hour weeks and moan about it.
When you quantify your "work" hours, are you including all the time you're sitting there texting your friends and liking Instagram pictures?
comments
I show up around 1030-11, work for 2 hours at desk and have a few meetings.
Take a 45 min lunch with team.
Work/ meetings all afternoon.
Hit the gym at 430.
Grab dinner on the way out around 6. Don’t look at laptop until next day.
E5 at 5 yoe but maybe I’d be E6 by now if I wasn’t such a bum lol.
Doing the work well or sustainably is not as important as over-communicating and maintaining relationships. If you don't get this, I could see how you could burn yourself out at FB.
(Still not sure what I like better myself, and I feel like over time FB and GOOG culture are converging anyway.)
As of me, I have had halves when I enjoyed to put 50-60 hours per week of work and then halves when I put <25 hours. And honestly both were equally rewarding. Only thing changed was better prioritization, communication, alignment and delegation.
1. Up or out to E5 - you need to get to e5 within a few years and, unfortunately, some people will never make it. This can be extremely stressful and they will find themselves working hard until managed out.
2. Fb pays for performance- this may sound like a positive thing and its one of the reasons why people join fb (big bonuses and refreshers for good work, fast promos). For some it really is great but for for.others it can be insanely stressful. The whole performance system means that if you accomplish additional great things, you can get significantly more pay. Some people have e a hard time managing their time when they know that if they can accomplish major achievements - they can potentially double their pay.
3. The people around you- since fb has the brand of paying top dollars and promoting quickly it attracts some of the most ambitious people that dont mind working a lot. This can be stressful for people around them that dont want to feel like they are falling behind (even if nothing will happen if they do).