To Have Zucked and Lost
I wake up at 6:45 A.M. in a hotel room and start following some people who look like me. Soon a herd of young early-twenty-somethings begins to form and amoebas its way across suburban Palo Alto. We’re all funneled by exceptionally loud organizers into a bus and driven to 1 Hacker Way, a.k.a. Zuck-town (or Zuckerberg, I guess). I sat next to a Journalism intern; he blew my mind by telling me that Facebook wants to hire journalists, but why? It was a different time.
I’m greeted by some really cool l33t playfully calling me a n00b,
but it’s too early and I’m too sensitive to being patronized.
Would you greet your new employee with a reminder of how inexperienced they are?
They also had a pirate flag (yarggh maties!). I can’t call it dumb because my workplace has a pirate flag, so I’ll call it a cheap appeal to make me forget that my work is at best meaningless and at worst spreading click bait and anti-vaxxer propaganda.
But the worst part of working at Facebook and the orientation were all these signs that made feel bad for not being as excited as they were to be there.
The also had Black Lives Matter signs mixed in, which is an excellent movement to support. They should’ve destroyed all their signs except Black Lives Matter.
But apart from that we got:
- BUILD SOCIAL VALUE
- EXPECT TO FEEL DIFFERENT (like after eating the food?)
- MOVE FAST (like to the bathroom?)
- DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS
- PROCEED AND BE BOLD
- FOCUS ON IMPACT
- THIS IS YOUR COMPANY NOW
- NEW WAYS OF SEEING
- MAKE SPACE TO THINK
- BE THE NERD
- STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING
- NOTHING AT FACEBOOK IS SOMEBODY ELSE’S PROBLEM
- BE OPEN
I mean BE OPEN? We were told on that stage to never talk to reporters, ever.
And Oh My Hashem, there was this one post with Mr. T on it that said “I pity the fool who doesn’t use ⌘T”, what does that mean? I don’t have a mac but I assume it means open a new tab? What fresh hell of office humor is this? Why make someone feel bad about how they use a computer? Who would laugh at that? No one? Is that the point?
We recently bought a succulent and we’re naming it “Succerberg”. Every time I see it I’ll think of free food, meandering around the office, not working, and listening to The Adventure Zone. That’s what’s so great about Facebook, that’s why you should work there.
That and $9,000 a month.
I was not asked to come back full-time.