When people talk about great work culture, the two company names I hear most often are "Zappos" and "Rackspace"--someone might even throw out that big old giant "Google," especially if discussing amazing perks like free child care and laundry facilities for all employees. One name you don't hear? "Facebook." It's one of the most referenced companies of the last five years, a cultural phenomenon, and yet, no one really knows much about the inside of "the mighty book of faces." Until now.
On June 15th, 2009, TechCrunch.com's MG Siegler enticed geeks everywhere with the title, "Behold! The New Facebook Headquarters." What follows is a collection of photos--and one twenty minute video--shot during the Facebook "open house," to which Siegler and others were invited. It's an interesting journey.
By checking out the post and the video, you get a good sense of how the company wants to be perceived by the media, and potential employees, but there's no work culture that's really palpable during this tour, which I suppose is reasonable.
Facebook appears to be creating a Zappos-style work environment in their new digs, which used to be owned by HP. Vaguely reminiscent of an Ikea store, the new Facebook campus has lots of interesting talking points, delivered by a tour guide who looks like he woke up and decided to go for the "emo" look that day:
- The building, which used to belong to HP, was originally wall-to-wall cubicles
- No cubicles now--all open workspaces and new-concept desks "designed for collaboration"
- Facebook likes to "capture intelligence" of coworkers by encouraging conversation between individuals so that others overhear their conversations (how social)
- The conference rooms downstairs are named after condiments and video games
- According to emo tour guide, an important part of Facebook culture are "Gribbsteaks," which he says is Facebook's interpretation of the "dot com era's" razor scooters
A funny moment occurs at 3:19 in the video where the guide compares trying out new things like desk orientation to how Facebook makes changes to their "product." He says, "we do this in the product a lot--we'll roll things out on a small scale, figure out what we actually think about it, and learn by actually getting real data, and then get bigger..." Ahh, yes. Like that whole "we own your content" debacle? Maybe they should apply this revolutionary process to the goal of becoming profitable?
On a more serious note, it does seem like the Facebook crew has put a lot of thought into creating a collaborative and modern work environment. Not really surprising, but we'll have to see if this effort also produces a unique and vibrant work culture like Zappos.
