A recruiter just reached out to you on LinkedIn to see if you’re interested in joining “The largest social media network” instead of just telling you it’s Meta. You may be tempted to respond, so you can tell your buds you “work at Meta”, but hold on there. Let me tell you all the pros and cons of working as a contractor at Meta.
About me
- I was a contractor at FB/META.
- Technical role, writing code, but more of what Meta would call a “Production Engineer”
- I was a contractor for 5+ years (This is a point of contention in a few of the other places I’ve posted, because a lot of FAANG Employees don’t know contractors can go beyond 2 years, but more on that in a bit)
- I was part of 1 company, but at Meta there are many contracting companies, and some people jump between companies.
- I worked in the Bay Area, so I will only speak on those offices, though I did travel a bit
Types of Contractors
There are two main types of contractors, but oftentimes both are referred to as either “Contractor”, or “Contingent Worker”.
Standard Contractor
- 2 year limit
- After 2 year, option to hire on Full Time is Present
- If not hired, you are unable to work as a contractor at the company for 6mo — 1yr
- Usually this type of contractor is put on a specific project or a couple
Vendor Contractor
- No limit
- No explicit option to hire on Full Time, and if the option arises, there is a substantial Poaching Fee that the FAANG company must pay the contracting company to convert.
- If you decide to leave, or are terminated, you are unable to work at company for 6mo — 1yr
- Usually this type of contractor is no different than an FTE in responsibility, and in many cases, will do nearly identical duties.
Life at Meta
Treatment of Contractors — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The treatment of contractors at Meta is nothing short of incredible. Working with individuals at Meta as a contractor, I found myself less confident when trying to speak to them, due to the status I held, but this was quickly washed away by the people themselves. The people who work at Meta are truly some of the nicest, and greatest people in tech. They treat you as an equal, and take everything you say under consideration. The badges at Meta are nearly the same as well, with contractors being more or less identical to FTEs, so nothing is signaling that you are a lesser being to the masses.
Access to amenities as a Contractor — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Meta facilities are top notch, and everything is open to you as a contractor, except the gym. There are discount coffee shops, beer fridges, kombucha and cold brew on tap, endless drinks, snacks, and so many free restaurants I didn’t even get the chance to eat at them all. The campus is so nice, that when I had friends and family visit, I would take them to the campus to show them around and treat them to the free sweet shops and food as well. There’s even a music room and arcade, among other things. There are buses that shuttle you around from all over the bay area to work, and you have full access to them as a contractor.
Workload as a Contractor — ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This one varies a bit, and I took on more than I was told to for a few reasons I’ll go into on the Pros Cons section. The workload was manageable for everyone I knew. Not a single person was “swamped” or anything like that, and in most cases, once you left, your responsibilities stayed at the office, unless you were part of an on-call, but those are typically paid overtime.
Pros
The MonoRepo
All of Meta’s code is in one place, and viewable to all, even you. You could see the code for Instagram, change the color of the background, and submit it for review. (Not that something like that would get approved) This is secretly the biggest plus of working at Meta. When you submit code for review, in many cases you are being reviewed by some of the best engineers in the world. These people will tear your code to shreds, and your ego with it. It will hurt, and you will grow as a result. There’s a disclaimer on diffs (pull request) that warn you to “go easy” if the writer is an intern. No such warning for contractors, so you best be prepared. This means that the code you write and put into production is visible to EVERYONE at Meta. Even Mark himself could look at the code you’ve written. Don’t let this scare you though, take the criticism in stride, fix it, resubmit, and lump by lump, you will be a better software engineer in the end.
The Scale
The things you see at Meta are operating at a scale that has never been seen before. When you have the chance to observe the inner workings of things (due to the MonoRepo and just as you go along) you will see what worked and what didn’t at scale. This is incredibly valuable to understand how to scale things and what technologies perform best, as well as when and where to use them.
The Internal Tools
Let me tell you, this one has been the hardest on me in my post-Meta life. Slack is bad, Teams is bad, all these distributed SaaS tools are mostly bad. There is something inside of Meta that can’t be explained until you’ve seen it and understood what you were seeing. They have literally re-made entire companies internally and in many cases, they’ve done it better. There is an internal form of Facebook that is the best version of Facebook that Facebook could ever be. It really is something to behold. The candor and open-ness inside of that version of Facebook (called workplace) is staggering as well. There are channels for everything, and they have their own pages with moderators and tons of other features. There is even a page where people share their income, and it is quite depressing to look at when you’re a contractor, so maybe skip that one. Meta’s approach to building all the things themselves lend itself to an internal platform that was interconnected, meaning there were small quality of life things that were prevalent in almost every page you touched, some of these things have entire SaaS companies built around providing an inferior experience to smaller companies, but in reality it’s just only possible when you’re at Meta’s scale. This is almost a Con because of the pain of life after these tools.
Cons
The Contracting Company
In my case, and many of the others I saw, there is a person planted at Meta with you, as a sort of “Acting Representative” and as your manager from the contracting company. I must have talked to this person 2 times in 5 years. Usually they have another HR type person to take the brunt of the complaints that people have. The complaints are usually pay. In some cases you’ll be making $25/hr ($52k/yr) doing about the same work as your FTE counterpart who makes $150k+. This is made worse by the fact that due to the open-ness, you’ll soon find out the contractor next to you who does less is making $50/hr. This is mostly because in most cases, no one at the contracting company understands what you really do for Meta. Their main goal is typically to land a butt in a seat and take their cut of the contract. So telling them why you deserve more money falls on ears that don’t understand what you’re saying.
The benefits can be very bad, depending on your company. No 401(k) match, Healthcare coverage slightly better than Covered CA (government aided healthcare), and in some cases as low as 5 PTO days a year.
The fact that they leave you alone is also a good thing, since you’ll almost primarily work with Meta employees and other contractors, however there are some interesting caveats that arise as a result of co-employment laws that prohibit the FTE from helping you in certain ways. Basically you need to go through the filter that is you contracting company for anything tangible outside of Meta directly.
The anti-poaching fee is never talked about, but is substantial from what I know, sometimes being 1–3x your hourly times the contract duration. In my 5 years I saw ONE vendor convert to FTE.
Don’t like your contracting company? Tough luck, usually
In most cases, the only way to move contracting companies is to leave Meta for 6 months to 1 year (depends on company). During that time, many who do pursue this end up going to Google to contract, but other companies also arise. The thing is, it isn’t guaranteed, and I’ve seen the comeback fall through, and you have to get that job at Google before you can pursue this. There is no other way to move contracting companies, so research the company carefully before you decide.
Meta sort of hides Vendor Contractors
Most FTEs are not even aware of the existence of a contractor that can pass one year. There are internal profiles that show when FTEs started, and how long they’ve been at Meta. When I started, contractors had this feature as well, however somewhere along the line, they removed it, but only for contractors… There are other ways to find this info, however (which indicates it’s still collected, simply hidden) in a tool called “plusorminus” you can see how you fare, and substitute a username in the URL and viola, you can see theirs too. This is shown as percentages, and took root among people referring to them as “percenters”, like if you were at Meta longer than 90% of everyone else at Meta (FTE and Contractor) at that moment, you were a 90 percenter. This is where the story might get sad for some; there are 90+ percenters that are vendor contractors.
For the people I did interact with, many times they simply thought I was an FTE, because of the things I was doing, or they knew the situation, and voiced their concern that I should be an FTE because of the things I was doing, but nothing ever came of it.
Approaching the end of 2 years as a normal contractor is stressful
For many, coming to the close of the 2 year window leaves some things to be questioned as to whether or not you’ll be bestowed the gift of employment, and this can be very stressful. Depending on your situation, you will need to start looking for another job likely while you’re wrapping up your projects with Meta, and this can be nerve-wracking, from what I hear.
It’s VERY difficult to explain and escape the stigma around “contractors” when you try to get another job
When you inevitably apply for another job, you will be met with people who doubt your ability, sometimes you won’t even get an interview in the first place, but when you do, be tactful with your words. Even though I worked at Meta, with Meta FTEs, doing the same things that Meta FTEs do, I told one company that I worked at Meta. This is not technically a lie, as I had never even step foot in my contracting companies building, and barely interacted with them. Despite this, I received reactions that more or less accused me of being a liar, and after many rounds of interviews, I’d be denied that role.
Over time I learned how to be more tactful about it, and I found a place that understood the reality of my situation, but being amongst people who were trying to get out for years, it is truly a problem that should not be overlooked. Because of this, for some, Meta has become a trap of sorts.
Credit where credit is due
There are those that abuse vendor contractors by having them do all the work they should be doing, and simply acting as the face of the work. They will present your work as their own, and take credit behind closed doors, and when asked how you’re doing, they will say “fine I guess”. This didn’t happen to me personally, but I know a few who experienced this unfortunate outcome.
Not always the best talent in the contractor pool
You will sometimes encounter people who abuse their role as a contractor as well, simply skating by unnoticed, due to the scale of things, and posting to the contracting company that they’re working a full 8 hours. This is possible because as I mentioned, you typically don’t interact with anyone from the contracting company. This can sometimes cause you to take on their work, or a larger workload, and if you have a combination of poor coworkers and the manager who takes credit, then you become the crux of the team, and you’re keeping the wheels spinning all on your own.
Summary
I think if I could do it again, I would, but I would have tried harder to leave sooner. I definitely spent far too long there, and many others did as well, others still trapped. I’m not sure if it was under my control, or if there were forces around the stigma that caused the timeline to be longer than I wanted, but I’m happy now, and I was happy with Meta as a whole. Obviously my experiences are subjective, and not everyone will have experienced the same. These statements are all based on my own experiences, and the experiences of those around me.
