I worked at Google for several years and moved to FB for a year now. Though they are two of the best companies to work for, the differences are like night and day! I didn’t expect it to be so different. I thought Google would be my end all be all but after years of being recruited by FB, I decided to give it a try. I wouldn’t have thought it, but I personally felt I found a company better than Google - at least for me. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked google but I’m much more proud and engaged at fb even after a year here. Since I’ve left, google has asked me twice to come back... For those who’ve worked at both, what are the pros and cons of both? Do you prefer one over the other? Would you go back to the first company or are you happy where you’re at?
Can you comment on reasons why someone may not enjoy the transition? Declined Facebook for Google earlier this year, been wondering if I’ve made a mistake ever since. Thanks for the post.
I moved to Google less than an year ago after a few years at FB. Pretty much the same story as yours, they had been trying to recruit me for years and I eventually decided to give it a try. What I like more at Google: - Higher density of senior engineers - Infrastructure is way more stable. - Diversity of products to work on. At FB there are many things to work on, but ultimately you'll be working on a social network product. - Engineering offices around the globe if I want to transfer it off the bay area. - Monthly RSU vesting - Work directly on my server - GSuite (at Facebook I had to use MS office, Outlook, Quip...) - People care about quality way more. At FB nobody really cared about writing tests. - Peer review cycles in March instead of December. - Levels are visible (you can opt out tho) while at Facebook they are completely hidden and you are not supposed to tell your level to others. - Complexity over "impact". At Facebook people were encouraged to focus on short term projects so they could show user impact in every cycle. At Google people are usually expected to work on more complex, longer term problems. What I miss about FB: - Food is definitely better. I am actually not a big fan of foods provided by tech companies but Google's food is complete crap when compared to FB's, specially if you are not vegetarian. - Facebook's microkitchens are an order of magnitude better. - I like zuck's leadership style. - Memes when reviewing/accepting diffs - Easier to find tools for a specific task. Google has lots of different tools trying to do the same thing and it's quite confusing. - Their stack makes it easy to prototype new tools. You literally just write a few lines of php and it is working. - People seemed more friendly overall. - Using FB@Work is awesome for work. You can effectively do any kind of communication there. At Google we still rely too much on mail lists, like we were in the 90's. - It's a huge corporation that still felt like a startup. Google not so much. All in all I don't regret going to Google. As a backend engineer I'm really happy with the stable infra and the SREs helping keeping the services up. However I still think FB is a great company and would consider going back one day when I feel like I'm done with Google.
This is actually really well written. As someone potentially looking at these two, this helps a lot.
Whenever a friend is considering both, I give the following rule of thumb: If you want to launch lots of products to the public fast (amount of impact) go to FB. If instead you care more about tackling complex problems, go to Google.
Google was much more structured. Everything was already built and in place. Googles internal tools are much easier to use. But then again, they have years on FB to build those out. When I first started, one tool I was using was crap and years after, it was much better so I can see FB improving there. Now that I have something to compare it to, google is much more corporate. Facebook feels much more like a startup but with an abundance of resources. Google moves incredibly slow. Facebook moves fast. The bad side to this is some people can’t keep up. I’ve seen people who came from years google come to fb and quit after a few months cause they couldn’t handle the fast pace. The food is so much better at fb. When I used to bring food home for my spouse from google he got so sick of it; even he agrees fb food is much better. Google, at least the org I was in, is very political. It was so apparent in the people who moved up but were assholes and didn’t do as much work compared to my nice coworkers who were the top performers and are not moving up cause they don’t shmooze. Again, this is my org, I don’t think it’s all orgs. At google, my coworkers were there for 6+ years with not promotion. They got stagnant. It’s hard to move up. At fb, I see an effort from managers, again just in my org at least, to help with growth intentionally. I was promoted to a higher level in my first half and and my year mark, I was given the opportunity to take on a whole new role for a semi new program we’re launching. I know that would have taken much longer at google since I stayed in the same role 4 years as my coworkers as I mentioned. Google had more space. I would drive in, park and get to work. At fb, they built the offices in such an inefficient way that there are so many people directing traffic it’s annoying. Parking is annoying too. I think this will be fixed as we get more buildings up like 21 and they open up the sf office to more teams. Facebook is much more transparent. In fact, that’s what taught me to grow. I was so stagnant at google cause they don’t encourage you to open up and speak your mind. You obviously can do that but seeing my female leads and managers just stay quiet made me learn to be that way too. At Facebook, it seems everyone can speak their opinion openly. Sometimes that causes friction but for me personally, it’s really taught me to speak up which in turn helped me feel as though I’ve grown more at fb than my 4 years at google. My team at google usually consists of 25-50% contractors. I hated how they were treated at google. They always come in so bright eyed and excited to do amazing work so they’ll get converted. Although many of them were amazing at their job, only 1 ever got converted. The top performers didn’t get converted, but the one who played her cards right with the managers did. That was actually one of the reasons I left was to take a personal stand against google that I hated how contractors were treated. At fb, the contractors on my team all got converted in a year or less. I just feel much better about how fb treats contractors. I asked my google colleagues if things have changed in that front. They said it’s worse - they hire people for a year contract and have fired people in 2-3 months because of performance. I hope google changes their stance on that cause it rubs even the FTEs wrong. Writing this down to an anonymous group really helps clear things up for me. With 13 years of industry experience, it’s not about the money or perks anymore ; it’s really just about being in an environment where I’m proud to work and thrive in. I guess I answered my own question and it explains why I wasn’t jumping on it when google asked me to come back. :)
Thanks for this. I left Google as a TVC because of this. I joined and immediately started busting my ass, working weekends, working holidays to churn out cool helpful tools and it didn't help me one bit to be converted. Left for a decently senior FTE position at another FANG and more than double the money... To this day I still have a bad taste in my mouth over the whole contractor thing, and actively try to bring my friends and former hard working TVCs over.
Good write up, but please don't take food home, specially not to your husband. This is considered really unethical both at Google or FB.
I am very thankful to folks for sharing valuable information. I denied fb offer earlier this year and have been wondering about the life on the other side ever since. I might decide to go there upon completion of my first year mainly because I am finding it hard to get impactful projects here - can someone with more knowledge about this respond? I have heard it's easy easier to make impact at fb than goog.
Hands down easier to make an impact at fb. If you think about it, google has been around a long time; they’ve had years to get to where they are and brilliant people to make things come together. If you think of an idea, most of the time it’s already done. In fact, I slightly remember there’s a team you run ideas through so they check if it’s already something being worked on. At fb, things are still coming together which is frustrating at times when you’re used to everything being all laid out at google but then that makes more room for opportunity and impact. No company is perfect but depending on what you value in a job, in your case, impact, then you have a much better chance to make an impact at fb in my humble opinion. Thee may be people that’ll disagree but this is coming from my 4 years experience at google and exceeding goals but not feeling like I was making an impact, to coming to fb and just feeling like I’m growing so much here from a promotion in my first half to pivoting my career on a new team at fb within a year.
I too wonder if I could have more impact (back) at FB, but this sounds like impact for selfish reasons. If Google had good building blocks and you have to actually do something new to have impact that's actually a good thing. I miss a few general tools at FB but I generally find that the infrastructure is so optimized and single-purpose at FB that they're utterly unprepared to do anything new. That's part of why the Facebook creative labs failed. It was almost impossible to reuse architecture to do anything that wasn't connected to the canonical Facebook graph.
Spent 5 years at Google and have been at Facebook for 3 months. I hesitated to make the move and the large comp difference tilted the scale. Google was by far the best company I had worked for, until Facebook. I think FB is a younger version of Google with lots of opportunities and in a way it feels like you've already "seen the future", especially if you transfer to work in the same function. Highly recommend both companies, but would pick FB all else equal if you are interested in growing fast.
Omg I say the exact same thing to people! I thought google was the best company until I came to fb! It’s not for everyone but I love it here.
Completely agree
Any Google or Facebook recruiters here to help me get out of Amazon?
Lol
I’m engineering (not recruiting) but I can probably add you as an engineering lead if you like. Hmm.. that will require you trusting me to keep your blind name a secret and vice versa. Maybe it’s a bad idea.
Which would you say is better for new grad? I need to start applying by next year.
If you ❤️💲then you should join FB
Haha ok that definitely makes sense. I tried getting an internship there for summer 2018 for the sweet returning intern bonus, but couldn't even get an interview! Hopefully things will be different for new grad. I really like Facebook's open source contributions and greatly respect their engineering, so I am very excited by the prospect of working there.
Yea actually I was about to ask if any former Amazonians who are now at FB or Google - how the cultures differ? Esp in autonomy, responsibility, politics
Interested in this as well!
You should start a thread. There are plenty of them. I’m sure they’ll give you the deets.
I hope you do realize that this post is depressing for people who have worked at neither companies!
😂🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃
There is always a better company and smarter ppl out there. Fact of life.
Thanks for sharing this. I've been at Google forever and am curious what it's like on the "other side"