
Meta’s entire 24-person team works and lives together in the same estate - jenskanis
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/19/tc-cribs-meta-the-sprawling-rural-ranch-where-augmented-reality-magic-is-made
======
huhtenberg
This is seriously f#cked up.

I can understand 3-4 people who are equals between themselves pulling this
off, but with 24 people there's _no way_ everyone likes the arrangement, so
having everyone to be in it 24/7 is wrong.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I think it's safe to assume everyone there is pretty ok with it. It's not like
anyone there doesn't have 3 recruiters/week asking them if they want a more
traditional arrangement.

~~~
rayiner
The negative reaction isn't because anybody thinks those engineers are being
held against their will. It's to avoid the race to the bottom that could
happen when some fad-addled PHB decides that nerd labor camps are the latest
hot trend.

Mechanisms of social disapproval don't exist because anybody cares overmuch
for the choices of a few people. They exist to forestall potential trends.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Ok - this negative reaction is to prevent others from competing with us in
dimensions we can't win on.

Thanks for putting it out in the open so we can discuss it directly.

~~~
rayiner
I'd say it's more a matter of "preventing others from dragging down society to
competing at a level we as a group don't find socially acceptable." This is a
legitimate function of society, and opprobrium and derision is a key tool for
enforcing social norms that keep a check on undesirable behavior.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Apply your logic to another group which is dragging down society to competing
at a level "we" don't find socially acceptable. Yay for slut shaming?

(For the record I don't advocate slut shaming and enjoy the company of
promiscuous women. Just pointing out that Rayiner's logic applies equally well
here.)

~~~
rayiner
"Slut shaming" is sexual morality + misogyny and sexism against women. I'd
argue that it's the latter elements that make it objectionable. I don't think
there is anything wrong, per se, with gender-neutral social norms that
discourage certain undesirable behaviors in the marketplace for sex and
relationships. For example, I'm not one of those people who think prostitution
should be legal even when its voluntary and not abusive. I also think its
shameful behavior for banks and VCs to be investing in companies like
AshleyMadison. Like I said, barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for
liberal pluralism.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Slut shaming need not be sexist - it can merely be sexual morality, or simply
the economic "avoiding undesirable competition". Justification for targeting
women specifically is quite simple - like employers, they hold "market power".

In any case, I'm glad you honest and intellectually consistent about your
views. Sadly it's quite uncommon to see.

------
mseebach
Yup. We're all liberal pluralists. Live and let live.

Except, of course, for employment choices. We all agree that traditional
working environments with all their industrial era baggage sucks, but if I
don't leave on the minute after a 40 hours work week, and I don't get paid
overtime (so much for the industrial era baggage) it's incontrovertible
evidence of rampant exploitation. Employees to claim to like their workplaces
are brainwashed because the only reason you like your workplace is if you
drank the koolaid - and of course hating your job is evidence of incompetent
management. Remote work is the thing of the future, except companies that
provide for easy remote working are under deep suspicion for tricking their
employees to work during their free time.

HN is really, really schizophrenic on work. The middlebrow is strong with this
one.

~~~
pjc50
Anything can be made to sound bad if you oversimplify. Any community can be
made to sound incoherent if you collapse the opinions of very different people
on top of one another.

It's pretty obvious that the article is describing an unusual arrangement that
won't suit everyone - although it's not specific to tech, there are other jobs
where you get stuffed into a remote, often mostly young male, community for
months at a time. Oil, the military, certain religious and agricultural
communities.

~~~
it_learnses
I sense deep irony in this comment...

~~~
pjc50
?

------
damncabbage
So... Not for anyone with a significant other. Or a family. Or an aversion to
spending all day and night with your co-workers.

~~~
lhgaghl
or black metal

~~~
adefa
Cradle of Filth are actually one of the best contemporary dark-wave bands in
the world.

------
activepeanut
Nice sweatshop.

Is this the latest, legal, technique to discriminate against older workers?

~~~
theorique
How does this discriminate against older workers?

~~~
activepeanut
Would your bring your wife and kids into this environment? Or even just a
date?

You have to be part of a very very narrow demographic to be compatible with
this type of work environment.

~~~
theorique
Fair point. So it is probably incompatible with workers who have their own
families. And probably more 23 year old hackers are unattached than 35 year
old ones.

------
bakhy
The next Heaven's Gate (?)

EDIT: On a serious note, it is quite frustrating to me to read things like
this. My colleagues so willingly giving up any life whatsoever, dedicating
themselves to their company 24/7... How do you compete with such lunacy? I
don't really fear much, I know these are fringe cases and most people are
probably with me on this. But, the USA and this startup scene is definitely
the last place on earth I would want to be. Proud drones, flaunting their
having successfully reduced themselves to cogs in a machine. This is just so,
so wrong.

------
k-mcgrady
Surprised at the negative attitude in this thread. It's certainly not an
environment I'd like to work in but all the people working there don't have
to, they choose to. It's probably also a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to
rent in SF which I'm sure a lot of them like. Without knowing working
hours/salary it's hard to say exactly how good or bad it is but the most
important thing is that with so many companies having difficulty finding
talented engineers all of those people are working there because they want to.

~~~
davidgerard
And the free E-meter is not to be sniffed at. Those things are _pricey_.

------
vidarh
I can understand people considering it fucked up, but I've also done this on a
smaller scale (my first startup - we were 5 people initially and 3 of us lived
in the office, and the other two spent most of their waking time there too)
and it can be awesome for a while if you're young, without dependents and
enjoy what you're doing.

In fact, I'd recommend the experience for a year or two. It was a bit like an
extension of university dorm life. And it was a lot of fun that first year.

Living in the office (we had our separate rooms, our breakfast table was in
the reception area; our living room was also the meeting room...) and being
used to bizarre sleeping patterns provided a lot of unintentional
entertainment.

Like the time I happened to be up at 3am on a Sunday morning, and the support
phone rang (we ran an ISP), and I decided I might as well pick it up, only to
hear a lot of noise on the other end before a bewildered voice told me he'd
called in pure frustration and didn't actually expect anyone would answer, and
had gotten so surprised he actually dropped the phone.

And this is a bit sad, but one of my best memories from that year (1995) was
staying up late at night to max out our little ISPs 512kbps line downloading
Netscape 2.0 right after it had been put on the FTP site.. Font color,
animated gifs and livescript/javascript!

~~~
goldfeld
So I suppose you were a founder of the startup, or at least an early employee
with the expected benefits. It sure is great! Like this dear CEO of Meta, he
wakes up with a big smile on his face thinking of his equity and all these
employees who probably have little enough or none and put in just as much time
as he does, and are presumably as immersed in it as he is.

Frankly, I felt filthy hearing him talk about productivity and evening
brainstorming sessions and people talking in the kitchen, you know, furtively
at 3am, about his great company and product. Does it occur to him that his
employees are humans and might be interested in talking about other things?
Every mention he makes of spontaneous social interaction involves
"brainstorming and great ideas." The dream of every founder, that he could
scale his (warranted) passion down to all those who have not nearly as much
stake in it but should love it all the same! Yuck.

If you want communal living, there are cooperatives and similar arrangements
with equal stakes. If you want to play capitalism, don't play fucking coy.

------
jboy
Many of the comments in this thread are depressingly similar to same-sex slut-
shaming.

"I can't or don't want to do that, so I don't think you should be allowed to
do that either. I'm going to judge you and speak badly of you, to try to
punish you for doing something I don't want to, and discourage you and others
from doing something I don't want to."

Meta is a start-up (cool) creating augmented reality (very cool) hardware
(even more cool) for _interactive_ interaction with virtual overlays (just
unbelievably cool). I'm a computer vision / computer graphics guy, and
everything about this project looks technologically awesome, with potentially
world-changing applications.

They went through YC and are still getting positive press, so the start-up is
looking about as successful as a start-up at this stage can be.

I bet you that every single one of the employees loves this idea, loves
working on it, and honestly believes that Meta is going to change the world
and be the next Apple. When I was in my twenties, I worked crazy hours and
slept under my desk for a lot less.

EDIT: Added the word "same-sex" before "slut-shaming" to clarify the
comparison I'm making.

~~~
doesnt_know
The comments in here are absolutely nothing like slut-shaming. It's insulting
you even equate the two.

Sexism is a such huge issue (especially in this industry) that you should
probably consider educating yourself before you vomit ignorant comments about
it.

~~~
jboy
Your mention of sexism in the technology industry suggests to me that you
interpreted my comment as men slut-shaming women. I agree that sexism in the
technology industry is an important and sensitive issue.

My comment wasn't intended to suggest one gender slut-shaming the other
gender; people of a gender can (and certainly do) slut-shame members of that
same gender to control them and keep them in line. This is the comparison I
was making.

In retrospect, I see that my comment was not sufficiently clear in this
regard. Please re-consider my comment from this clarified point of view.

My point is that many of the comments in this thread suggest that Meta is like
a cult or a sweatshop, or that the situation is "fucked up", etc. The
commenters are implicitly trying to punish Meta for engaging in a behaviour
with which those commenters do not agree.

What is wrong with someone choosing to devote themselves to a start-up about
which they are enthusiastic? What's wrong with believing in something and
devoting yourself to it for a while? Does it hurt anyone other than
themselves? Why then is it so important for other people to disparage that
person's choice so vocally?

Likewise, what is so wrong about a company where enthusiastic employees live
in this arrangement? If you accept my axiom that the employees _are_
enthusiastic about the start-up (based upon the reasons I outlined in my
original comment), then why is this arrangement "fucked up"?

I hope you will re-consider your assertion that I am uneducated and that I am
vomiting ignorant comments.

------
anjc
Beautiful residence, but it's still striking me as an overbearing set up. I
suppose people are choosing to be there. He says they're getting 3x more work
done, but i'd love to know why, in terms of work hours etc.

------
KennyCason
At Datarank we spent our first two years living together. The first year was
four of us in one big house, and the second year we lived in two neighboring
two-bedroom apartments. While at times you can definitely feel cramped, 99% of
the time it's pretty awesome. I do believe that living/working together
increased our productivity a lot. It also made brainstorming ideas much easier
as we would often times spend late nights in the kitchen/living room talking
about our company, whereas in a traditional office setting that may have ended
at 5-6pm everyday. Props to Meta for making it work with 24 people, that seems
intense. :)

~~~
not_paul_graham
This seems like a good solution when all your employees are young males
without spouses/kids. Also works if most of the folks living together are
founders (vs early employees).

Personally I'd probably not want to be part of a young company where there was
so much peer pressure [1] to stay with the founders and other team members in
a cramped up apartment. But then again maybe I'm not the target hire anyway.
Also, I'm not claiming to speak for all females on the planet, but most of
"my" female friends would probably avoid working at such a company.

Of course if you are starting a start-up you gotta do what you gotta do to
survive and minimize expenses, and all that but it seems like a practical
arrangement if you are the founder and not an early employee with meager
equity.

[1] Fear of missing out on critical decisions that happen before the slumber
party for instance.

~~~
rayiner
What, you wouldn't want to live, as a woman, in essentially a geek version of
a frat house?

------
pavlov
Kool-Aid on the house around the clock. But does it take a tangy flavor when
the funding runs out?

~~~
nnnnni
More like burning acridness: [http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/suicide-note-
reveals-taste-...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/suicide-note-reveals-
taste-of-cyanide/2006/07/08/1152240534587.html)

------
rodgerd
Startup or cult?

~~~
Centigonal
That's really the first thing that comes to mind, isn't it?

I mean, I feel like it could go either way: eccentric jazz musician Sun Ra's
Arkestra lived (and still mostly live) communally in a Philadelphia row house,
and they haven't gone insane. On the other hand, the demands of a business are
different from those of a musical group.

It seems like, for young tech people, the pendulum is swinging in the
direction of communal living. Co-working spaces, specialized housing for
groups of tech-entrepreneur-types[1], and more holistic workplaces (Google
providing day-care, lots of startups bringing a chef on board to do meals in-
house) seem to be in vogue right now. This looks like a particularly extreme
extension of that trend (especially since they're leaving the city, a
fundamental fixture in the SV startup culture), but I guess we'll see how it
works out.

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tech-entrepreneurs-
rev...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tech-entrepreneurs-revive-
communal-living-4988388.php)

~~~
lhgaghl
They may not have gone insane, but Sun Ra has been on Saturn.

------
tptacek
I don't understand how this could be a lawful arrangement. How do you run a
company that structurally precludes hiring people with families?

~~~
yummyfajitas
I imagine it's as lawful as employment on an oil rig, a distant lumberjack
camp, pipeline work, etc.

~~~
tptacek
That's a good question. Lumberjacks and pipeline workers are not required to
live in company dormitories; the North Dakota gas boomtowns have cheap family
housing, and, presumably, subsidized housing provided by employers is
considered employee compensation. Workers on oil rigs have no choice but to
live on-site. What's the argument that says you can rig a software company in
such a way as to precluding hiring people with families?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lumberjacks and pipeline workers are often required to live in encampments
near the work site. Some jobs require living in isolation.

These jobs don't "preclude hiring people with families". If a person with a
family worked there he'd probably do the same thing as the oil rig worker -
live on site and skype his family at night.

The only difference I can see between this job and oil rig work is that the
software guy probably has a few recruiters/week emailing him opportunities he
likes more.

~~~
tptacek
That's not the only difference. Pipeline workers who work at remote
encampments work in shifts, like truck drivers; they get prolonged time back
at home. That's not how a software job works; that time at home is like PTO.

Also, pipeline workers _need_ to work on remote sites. Software developers do
not. That will matter at trial.

~~~
nknighthb
What if the company is based in northern Alaska? What if work hours are
2000-0400?

It's hard to make out a disparate impact claim to begin with. Doing so on the
basis that you don't like the living arrangements would seem impossible. What
limiting principle would the courts apply that wouldn't result in legal
liability for every company that doesn't allow employees to telecommute?

~~~
tptacek
It's funny you bring that up: employers need to be careful about asking where
employees live, out of concern of giving the impression that a candidate's
selection depends on where they live or are willing to live. You can ask "can
you arrive at the job site reliably every day at 8:45AM", but you cannot
safely ask "do you live in the Chicago metro area".

In practice, people do casually ask where candidates live (usually to find out
if they require relocation), but companies also don't tend to select only
employees willing to live in a dormitory.

Requiring employees to work at a particular job site is uncontroversial; in
fact, it's overwhelmingly the norm for all employment. The same thing is
absolutely _not_ true of requiring employees to live at a particular location.

~~~
nknighthb
I notice you didn't answer my question, or provide any practical reason why my
hypotheticals are better than Meta's actual practice. Disparate impact claims
must demonstrate actual harm to a protected class as distinct from the rest of
the population, they don't consist of pseudolegalistic "well, as long as you
didn't _say_ it..." arguments.

~~~
tptacek
Huh? I just pointed out that candidates can make claims simply because
prospective employers ask them where they live. I have a hard time believing
that yours is a good-faith response.

~~~
nknighthb
If your assertion is accurate, it's presumably an overreaction to concerns
about being sued for redlining. But that's irrelevant here, to the point of
being utterly off-topic. Meta's policy poses no risk that knowledge of your
_present_ address would be used to discriminate against a protected class.
Instead, it is part of your duties as an employee: Live in this house.

You would first have to establish that that duty has a statistically
significant harmful effect on persons over 40 that it does not have on other
groups. This will not be easy, people under 40 have families, too!

It will be further complicated by the fact that the same effect occurs simply
by virtue of a workplace being in a remote, hostile environment, or having
work hours incompatible with a typical family life, requiring a limiting
principle, which you have not provided.

If you pass that hurdle, Meta would have the opportunity to establish that the
policy is based on a reasonable factor other than age. The court would have to
find that Meta's policy and/or its purposes are unreasonable. That seems
unlikely.

~~~
tptacek
Redlining is the process of not giving people mortgages depending on whether
they're from minority neighborhoods. I don't understand how it maps into this
discussion, so I don't know how to reply.

~~~
nknighthb
Redlining has a more general meaning of discriminating against people based on
where they live (e.g. in minority neighborhoods).

If you are not speaking of discriminating based on where people live, then I
have no idea why you are bringing up employers supposedly avoiding asking
where people live. It makes no contextual sense, and has no relevance to this
discussion. Asking people where they live is not, in itself, discriminatory or
unlawful.

It would be great if you would detail exactly why you think Meta's policy may
be unlawful, and do so by reference to actual law, not apparently-random HR
policies that you don't seem to want to explain the supposed basis of.

------
malux85
I would do this. I understand it's not appropriate for some people (families /
children etc)

But there are people like me, who just aren't good at the "real life" stuff.
Give me a place to sleep, eat and exercise (wow - they have a pool!) and I'd
gladly spend the rest of the time hacking on a start-up ... especially if it
was cool technology like Augmented Reality

------
lennel
It would be interesting to be able to measure burnout rate, employee turnover
and just general psychological indicators over time in such a setup.

I find creative thinking and critical analysis often comes from engaging in
disparate actions (as compared to full immersion in work), here I would
imagine group think and not seeing the mistakes you are making as a group
could be amplified easily.

------
renang
I see myself doing this for a short period of time, say one or week.

That's actually a plan I am making with some friends/coders. We may rent a
nice villa somewhere in Spain for two weeks. Get some buzz and some work done.
Would be nice to have ideas flowing and in the end we may leave with a
product.

~~~
mjn
That kind of "retreat" is a bit more conventional I think. It's fairly common
at large companies to occasionally send a team to Vail or Hawaii or a cruise
or something for a week for team-building / brainstorming / etc. But you don't
usually bring your family and actually move in with your coworkers; it's more
of a business trip.

In a more researchy direction, there's a German institute that organizes these
kinds of events. They have a castle in the middle of nowhere, Schloss
Dagstuhl, which accepts proposals from people who want to use it to organize
1-week residential seminars on different subjects:
[http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/dagstuhl-
seminars/](http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/dagstuhl-seminars/)

------
PeonBob
Seems an awful lot like a post-college fraternity...

------
quesera
I don't know about Portola Valley zoning regs, but I hope this article doesn't
draw unwanted attention to Meta's arrangement.

Many/most towns would frown on the number of unrelated people living in a
unpermitted hotel, operating a business with more than a certain number of
employees in a non commercial district, etc.

Legal or not, it sounds like fun for a couple years, if you're young enough to
see appeal in dorm life.

------
mojuba
I bet they won't even consider married candidates, or even anyone over 30.

We did something like this some 14-15 years ago when we were a 7-8 employee
startup, but it was voluntary. Want to stay in the house? Be my guest, we have
plenty of bedrooms. Wanna commute? Any time, but be sure to spend at least 6
hours daily in the office house. Worked like charm.

------
unsigner
So, just like SF, once you finally kick out the annoying non-techies?

------
wglb
A great way to engage the Reality Distortion Field. Which is certainly
functional. And at least faintly creepy.

But I am thinking--where would I put my Ham Radio Antenna?

------
gyardley
Run your company how you like, of course, but I doubt the benefits of the
arrangement outweigh the smaller recruiting pool it leads to.

------
ulfw
The ideal setup for people who literally have absolutely no life besides work.
Kudos.

------
jedanbik
So if you get fired, where do you live?

------
Disruptive_Dave
This is clearly Carcosa.

------
seivan
I'd love this.

