Welcome to the Hotel California
Inside the Facebook campus: a disillusioned experience reflecting on the allure and control of big tech companies.
Twelve years ago today, I climbed out of a taxi in Menlo Park, California and was greeted by a large billboard featuring the ubiquitous blue thumb of the Facebook logo, whose head office we were there to visit. This was my first experience of visiting the "campus" of a big tech firm: previously I'd been to satellite offices in smaller countries which didn't feel like the real thing. As I scanned around the set of buildings peppered with busy-looking computer nerds, I could feel the excitement tingling within me.
I'd permanently deleted my Facebook profile just a few months before, which made things quite challenging when building a Facebook app as part of my then-job. I'd already decided that the social network did more harm than good, and wanted no part in it.
Walking into the main building, however, was a severe test of my faith: look at this place. Graffiti lined every wall (with pens for you to add your own). Classic video game machines punctuated corridors; break rooms with wall-to-wall free snacks and beverages were everywhere. There were vending machines selling Apple accessories and skateboards to take you to your next meeting so you could literally move fast and break things. And did I mention the free canteen?
You can check out any time you like
I'll admit it: my head was turned. What would it be like working somewhere like this? A big paycheque, a cool office, and exciting mottos all over the walls on posters. Multiple kinds of free bacon. But then I went to the bathroom.
In there were boxes and boxes of toothbrushes and toothpaste, plus other free toiletries for staff. I thought I saw a sign for a laundry room somewhere, too. I grabbed a toothpaste tube (hey, free swag is free swag) and then it hit me: they don't want you to leave this place.
Not for any nefarious reasons, of course. The whole ethos here was to empower the clever, awkward men (and they usually were men) to keep their heads close to their Macbooks and continue producing world-changing code. If that meant giving them somewhere to go and freshen up, maybe wash their dirty clothes... and perhaps lay down and grab a few hours' sleep in some quiet back office before the next marathon hacking session? Well, that's just how you enable growth.
I felt fooled. They had built this place to appeal to exactly my demographic: young men with computer skills and no other commitments. Graffiti everywhere to make you feel that what you were doing was edgy, alternative. Snacks and meals to keep you boosted so you'd forget the long hours. Video games from the classic era to enforce the "culture fit" – you remember Street Fighter II, right?! Of course you do! Hadouken!
These young men—these boy kings—had built this place in their own image, and they'd rewritten history along the way. The notion of ethics in technology, the idea that social networking could lead to genocide or worse, this was all just bad press and bitter critics. But I could see how easily even a Facebook sceptic like me could've been persuaded to help enable it.
AI is doing something similar today, I think. Young men, excited by the prospects of solving planet-scale problems with their ingenuity, leap into problem spaces with brash confidence and altruistic ego. They dangle tidbits to governments ("Nation states are absolutely going to have a say on what is ready for deployment or not", says Satya Nadella of Microsoft) while unleashing unknowable outcomes that apparently cannot be held back. And I think some of this starts life as graffiti walls, ping-pong tables and free candy bars for the people powering the machinery underpinning it all.
Four kinds of bacon, though...
Mini-feels this week
I bumped into my friend Dave in the supermarket yesterday and we briefly shot the breeze about life, work and our imminent dinner plans (we were both there at 5pm picking up something to cook that night). He skeeted (skote? I still don't know the proper BlueSky nomenclature) me later that night to say:
"When I got home I realised that was one of the most Men Meeting Unexpectedly Outside Of A Pub interactions ever. In the booze aisle? Incredible."
I loved this. Tell me in the replies to this email – what's your favourite semi-awkward man encounter with someone you're mainly used to seeing in a pub?