No matter how much you like your job, there are probably elements of it that you could do without, even if those elements are limited to ‘Mondays’.

It’s how you know that you’re human. You should be suspicious of any person who professes to EFFING LOVE everything about the company they work for.

Until recently, if you crossed paths with a Facebook employee, they’d probably have told you that the company was God’s gift to the tech industry – and they would have been lying.

Former employees have come forward to reveal that employees feel pressure to place the company above all else in their lives, fall in line with their manager’s orders, and force cordiality with their colleagues so they can advance, reports CNBC.

Several of them have gone so far as to liken Facebook company culture to a “cult”.

“There’s a real culture of ‘Even if you are f—ing miserable, you need to act like you love this place,'” said one ex-employee who left in October. “It is not OK to act like this is not the best place to work.”

This culture has contributed to the company’s recent wave of scandals, ranging from governments spreading misinformation to try to influence elections to the misuse of private user data, all of which could have been prevented if Facebook employees were actually encouraged to give honest feedback.

Former employees describe a top-down approach where major decisions are made by the company’s leadership, and employees are discouraged from voicing dissent — in direct contradiction to one of Sandberg’s mantras, “authentic self.”

This was evident in August 2016 when the company fired the editorial staff of its trending news team shortly after members of the team leaked to the press that they were suppressing conservative-leaning stories.

Many former employees blamed the cult-like atmosphere partly on Facebook’s performance review system, which requires employees to get reviews from approximately five of their peers twice a year.

“It’s a little bit of a popularity contest,” said one manager who left the company in 2017. “You can cherry-pick the people who like you — maybe throw in one bad apple to equalize it.”

Twice a year, peer feedback comes into play at “calibration meetings” where employees are given one of seven grades. According to two former executives, the grade breakdown is as follows:

• “Redefine,” the highest grade, is given to fewer than 5 percent of employees
• “Greatly exceeds expectations”: 10 percent
• “Exceeds”: 35 percent
• “Meets all”: 35 to 40 percent
• “Meets most,” a low grade that puts future employment at risk, goes to most of the remaining 10 to 15 percent
• “Meets some” grades are extremely rare and are seen as an indication that you’re probably getting fired, according to multiple employees.
• “Does not meet” are exceptionally rare, as most employees are fired before they get to that level.

We’ve already established that Facebook, genuinely, does not care about their employees or the content distributed on their site, so this should come as no surprise.

The lesson here is don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

[source:cnbc]