From the first person. What does the Facebook office look like from the inside?

Facebook employees are allowed to bring guests on an excursion to the headquarters of the IT giant. Photo author

I was lucky to see with my own eyes the main office of Facebook, which is located in the town of Menlo Park, California. To get into the hotbed of freedom and new humanitarian ideas I have long been passionate about how I wanted. And it was even cooler than waiting for the New Year as a child!

Having parked the car among the very expensive cars of the employees, we went to the reception. The first thing that caught my eye was that the people behind the counter were dressed without any dress code, like students, in jeans and sweatshirts. The registration itself is done on an iPad: you enter your name, the name of the inviter and your email address. Badges are immediately printed on an orange guest ribbon and - voila - you can go upstairs and wait for the inviter.

Along the way, you can consider the architecture of the new campus Facebook. As conceived by the architects, everything is a bit unfinished, even the builders' inscriptions on the beams are visible, similar to the calculations, but all this, of course, is only part of the author's intention.

We were met by the inviting company employee, and the inspection began. According to Facebook rules, photography is not allowed in work areas. Work areas are where the monitors are. Well, I didn't. Full of interesting things and without monitors.

The first thing we went up to the roof. There is a real garden here.

Yes, yes, this is the roof, and on it is a real tree.

From the roof overlooking the bay.

And on the “old” campus of Facebook.

In addition, everywhere in the bushes of this Garden of Babylon there are tables, armchairs, hammocks, lawns, stumps and all sorts of other things. This “other stuff” includes meetings and meetings between Facebook employees and partners. Birches are not provided for Russian employees. 🙂

There are buffets with freshly squeezed juices in the garden. We took a ginger shot each - a smoothie made from ginger with orange and red pepper in an amount of 25 ml. Very invigorating.

Yes, Facebook territory is like an all-inclusive hotel. An orange ribbon and a badge - and you're in heaven. When I was four years old, my grandfather described communism this way: when you want ice cream, you go and get it. No money involved. And now I finally saw the long-awaited communism!

We walk around the office - there are monitors all around, you can’t take pictures. The atmosphere is completely relaxed, more than half of the employees are not at their desks.

Toilet on Facebook deserves a separate description. In the stall inside hangs the following:

This is an unsolvable problem in the code. Suddenly someone, sitting in thought, suddenly - oppa! - and decide. Anything is better than reading the labels on an air freshener, right? By the way, try it, maybe you can help old Zucker.

For those who stayed up at work, there is a complete toilet set on the table next to the sinks: toothbrushes, toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, a liquid sanitizer and a laptop (I don’t know why, maybe, to solve the problem from the booth).

And here is the dining room of the new campus.

But we are going to lunch on the old campus. You can get there on foot in five minutes, by tram or bike

They didn't give us bicycles because we are guests, not employees. This is most likely related to safety - if we get injured on the bike, the company will have to pay. And so: no bike, no payments. We went on foot.

The Facebook campus is the closest thing to a college town, except it's like the professors have all died out. People of different ages slowly walk along the main street, speech in different languages ​​can be heard from all sides. Moreover, I didn’t notice any groups by nationality - Indians mix with Chinese and white Americans without any problems. We even managed to see a fifty-year-old Russian Facebook employee. Well, this is to the question that worries me, that at 40 years old it’s time to go to the dump.

In the dining room, wives and children visiting for lunch are the norm. There is enough free food for everyone. I chose the dietary option. Well, or almost dietary - grilled meat with broccoli and corn bread.

Drinks to choose from. Alcoholic beverages in a nearby restaurant. In total, there were four (but, perhaps, in fact, more of them) restaurants of different orientations: salad bar, Indian, barbecue, Chinese.

After lunch we went to an ice cream parlor. We didn’t go to the coffee shop with pastries - we ran out of space in our stomachs. But we decided to visit the games and video games room, where employees unwind during a busy working day. A couple of rounds of pinball were nicely refreshing.

Well, if you’ve had enough of everything—hard life, everyday life, and all this California in general—you can let off some steam on the drum kit.

We went further. The meeting room, where the cat from the Facebook human-made smiley menu is stored, was busy. Therefore, the photo will not. But there will be workshops. No, seriously, I'm not joking right now. Attention! If an employee comes to mind doing something with wood on a machine tool, then all the conditions have been created for this.

There are materials and machines.

But it was not the end.

If suddenly (!) An employee of Facebook comes up with the idea to make a 3D souvenir for personal use, they are there too. Instructions are available online. Have fun, Facebook employee!

In short, I liked it!

It’s a pity I don’t know how to do anything to get to work in this wonderful company. But now in old age, shaking a weak cam, I can tell my grandchildren that I saw communism.

In general, I don’t know how Facebook employees in the evening pull themselves out of this whole house. Unless, to ride on this:

PS This I have not been to Google. ????