Personal experience: I left a cool job at Meta with a salary of $370 and I don’t regret it one bit

Eric Yu, a 28-year-old former software engineer at Meta, quit his $370 job after suffering panic attacks and hitting the lowest point of his life. He told why this job was not suitable for him, reports Insider.

Photo: IStock

In 2016, after a series of interviews with Google, Meta, and Palantir, Eric was returning home when he received an offer letter from Facebook to become a software engineer.

“At that very moment I felt as if I had reached the top of a mountain. A few days later, I also received an offer from Google,” he says.

Getting job offers like this was a huge goal of his. Eric worked hard at school, and it seemed to him that he had finally gotten his life together.

“But I was very torn between Facebook and Google. At the time, Facebook was more like a startup and less "corporate" than Google. I also liked his campus better, so I chose Facebook,” Yu says.

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Eric recalls that the first year and a half at Facebook were quite good. He was a college graduate with dreamy eyes and a passion for his work. But after about two and a half years, Eric began to experience anxiety.

First panic while working

His usual day began at 7 am. Eric worked until noon, had lunch and a couple of meetings, and then dived back into intensive coding blocks from 14:30 pm until 17:00 pm.

“Even after a working day, I couldn’t disconnect from work - I was always thinking about problems at work and what I needed to do. I think the pressure and environment of working in tech made it incredibly difficult for me to switch off after work,” he says.

In November 2019, Eric experienced his first panic attack while working from home. It was around 16:00 pm and his left little finger was completely numb. At first he ignored it, but it got worse: within an hour, his ears were ringing and his heart was beating very fast.

Eric zoned out and felt intense thoughts.

“It was like a water dam—if there was too much water on it, it would break and all the water would pour out. The more I tried to hide my feelings, the more I felt like they would suddenly burst out. Luckily, my girlfriend Wanda (now my fiancee) was there and recognized it as a panic attack,” he says.

At the time, Eric didn't know what a panic attack was, and he thought it was an isolated incident. But in the following months it continued and got worse. For six months, from March to September 2020, Eric was at the lowest point of his life.

“Every day felt like a routine: I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was still working. My productivity started to drop—I couldn’t focus on code or meet deadlines,” he says.

Sharp reprimand

Meta has a fairly high code quality bar, and the code reviews were rigorous. At other companies where Eric interned, the reviews were very lenient - someone quickly looked at the work and approved it. But Meta places a lot of emphasis on proper coding, and it is necessary to follow certain design patterns and architectural styles.

Eric collaborated with different teams to determine the best way to write code.

“There was some tension at times, and after numerous reviews I received harsh feedback on how to fix the code. Sometimes it made me feel bad,” he says. “In my opinion, there is a constructive way to give feedback: “Hey, I like your attempt and maybe there are ways to improve it in this regard.” But some Meta engineers lacked tact and nuance: “This is really bad. You shouldn’t have written it like that.” This type of feedback makes it seem like it is a black and white issue and often misses the emotional aspect of the communication.”

Processing

Eric worked longer hours than most of his team and even worked on weekends.

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Every time his team created a new feature, they tested it. Then, if the feature worked well, they distributed it around the world. If that didn't happen, they used that knowledge to figure out what we wanted to build next.

“I remember one time I was the only engineer on the Android team because people were either just on vacation or on mental health leave. I didn't want my team to slow down because of me, so I felt pressure to work. My delays would have affected the progress of the entire team,” says Eric. “So I did my best to achieve the goal: I worked until 8 pm (much later than most employees), and I also spent about four hours a day on weekends, just to make sure I could keep up with the pace.”

Looking back, Eric says his workload at the time was potentially unhealthy. He should have just told his manager that he couldn't handle it and that he needed more people to help.

Low rates

The final straw was when Eric's manager questioned his 'commit count'.

The process in which engineers write and add their code to the code base is called committing. There was an internal dashboard where employees could see how much code each teammate had written in a given time.

“I don't think it was helpful to make the process so public and it was definitely stressful. I checked the dashboard every few weeks to see where I was in relation to the team, the organization as a whole and the company,” says Eric.

Eric recalls that when he had just moved to a new team, the manager pulled him into a conversation and said that he was upset about the number of his commits - Eric was slightly below the average of most of his team members. But when Eric took over, the new team wanted to build a new strategy, the plans were not very clear, so he was not delegated many clear projects. This was an important reason.

“It is disappointing that management looks so closely at the number of commitments to measure employee success. I believed that the number of code in itself does not prove anything - skills such as mentoring, project management and interpersonal management should also be valued. But my manager had a different point of view, and this conversation was the last straw that convinced me to leave Meta,” says Eric.

New goal - leave Meta

Towards the end of 2020, Eric and Wanda began to think about what their lives would look like in the next 10 years. They decided they needed exit plans because neither of them wanted to work in tech for that long.

“One night we were on a whiteboard discussing all the different ways we could make money—drop shipping, brand affiliate marketing, and real estate. After assessing the risks and returns, we narrowed the range of issues to real estate and Airbnb. But this was during the Covid-19 pandemic and we weren’t sure if we wanted to go all the way into it,” says Eric.

“So we started with a cheaper way to get into real estate. Our plan was to buy a house, live in part of it, and rent the rest to someone else. Our plan was simple: We wanted to buy a property with a low 5% down payment and a mortgage payment that would be less than what we were paying for rent in San Francisco,” he says.

They bought a five-bedroom house in Redding, California, four hours north of San Francisco. Although they lived in a detached guest house in the backyard, their main house brought in about $8000 a month on Airbnb.

Essentially, they lived for free and received money every month.

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“We felt confident in the property and saw its potential. I even made it a personal goal to leave Meta when I started making $10 a month in real estate,” says Eric.

They purchased two more properties in 2021, and by the end of that year, Eric had reached the $10 per month mark. He then bought two more houses in 000 and another in 2022. Eric quit while everyone was still working from home due to the pandemic. The experience was disappointing, he says.

“I was at home and did not see my colleagues in person; there was no farewell party or official farewell. After the last meeting, I closed my laptop and felt relieved: “Wow, I’m done,” Eric says.

“I know it sounds crazy to leave a $370 job. Staying at Meta for the rest of my life would guarantee financial security, but I knew it wasn't for me,” he said.

But earning passive income from real estate is not the end for Eric either. It just gives him time and space to figure out what he really wants to do with his life once his finances are in order.

“I'm still exploring right now, but I know my goal will be to build community and help others make meaningful changes in their lives, just like I changed mine,” says Eric.

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