I’m being offered a role at Instagram in London (first IG team in london) as a Product Designer. It will be 1 manager and 3 IC. I’ve read all sort of horror stories about work life balance being non existant at Instagram, people working at night and weekends and people getting fired if they don’t perform every 6 months, and while I was decided to reject the offer before talking to the team, now after talking to them it kind of makes me curious and I’m like “what if you try….?” Thing is, I have another offer from another company (Wise, formerly Transferwise), much smaller (3000 employees), but still a public company so it’s not a startup either. The people are Wise were absolutely LOVELY, I’ve spoken to the Design Director and VP of Design and the really want me to join and got really good vibes from them. At IG I got “corporate” vibes and “you need to outperform” vibes. But I kind of feel guilty to reject INSTAGRAM. Cos getting an offer from them is a big deal and I’m a bit torn. Any thoughts? I really don’t wanna work after 6pm or weekends and hate my life for the next couple of years, or cry every 6 months in fear that they will fire me if I’m not AMAZING every day or my life. Cos before a designer, I’m a human being. #design #instagram #meta #offer
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Prestige is overrated. Nobody gives a fuck where you work at. Learnt this the hard way. People, Pay and Opportunities (growth) is what should matter atleast imo.
Speaking as a product designer on IG, it’s tough to predict what the WLB will be like in London. The culture of the team is a collective mindset of who you work with. On my team, the engineers, the PM, and all the other cross functional partners all take on a lot of work and move fast, it’s like driving fast on a highway to keep up with everyone else. Since London is a new office, I’m not sure what that local culture will be like compared to the TC-hungry ambitious mindset in the Bay Area. If everyone else enforces their boundaries and refuses to work after 6pm, you won’t have that problem. For me, the most important thing is being able to work on a product I’m passionate about and feeling connected to the work. Even though I do occasionally work nights and weekends, it doesn’t drain me because I enjoy what I do, and it doesn’t feel like just a job. I know this makes me sound like a corporate shill, but I’ve been working at IG for a couple years already and my enthusiasm hasn’t worn off yet.
Thank you so much!! :)
Environment and the system really changes people and how they behave. I know many friends who never work after 5pm before joining, and now they work like crazy at Meta, and it’s not forced. They’re enjoying it. And they are like “I didn’t know work can be this engaging.”
Wow. Interesting. Thank you! Really appreciate all point of views
Just started at Instagram yesterday and I can say it seems to be team dependent. I chose my specific team because I was upfront about WLB and they gave me the run down. I don’t think you shouldn’t join a company because of what you see on Blind. Meta has 80K employees and only a subset are on Blind. As someone said above, London is a different culture than Bay Area so things could be drastically different on that team.
which team do you recommend at IG for designers?
L5 PD at instagram, i love every bit of my job. spent 5yrs at 2 different google teams before and IG is so much better. wlb is really good on my team, to an extent where i’m pissed there’s nobody else staying up late working like me 😂
You can dig into the WLB by asking to talk to people on the team. Instagram is generally a great place to work, it’s the well-being team constantly flagged for poor WLB, btw
Thanks! What’s the well-being team? A team inside IG?
Yeah it’s like a pillar within IG. It’s the one notorious for toxic culture (not sure why) and it’s a bit ironic given the name. Almost everyone on here saying their team is awful is talking about that team lol It’s core function is to like make IG a safer place for teens and mental health (much more than that but to give you an idea)