For spring break this year I am in San Francisco with some of my friends. We’ve done everything you would expect out of a typical touristy trip to San Francisco. We have been to various beaches, the golden gate bridge, and even In ‘n Out. The one part of the trip that I was not anticipating was our trip to Facebook. When my friend told me that we were getting a tour of Facebook from her aunt that works there I was clearly excited; however, I had no idea what to expect from this tour and frankly was not picturing it right at all.
Typically, when I tour a company like that, I get a little bored. It’s really cool to hear about what they do, but it’s just not really my area of expertise and offices are only so interesting for so long, you know what I mean? I was expecting Facebook to be much of the same, but was excited to say that I had been to Facebook because it seems like a cool bucket list item.
We pulled up to Facebook to see an entire campus. The company of Facebook has multiple full-size buildings that span for miles to make up the work campus of Facebook. Each building is painted a bright color and has a number that corresponds to each building. There is a shuttle that must take employees from building to building, and my friend’s aunt taught us that not only do the employees’ cars get valeted every day, but sometimes they run out of space for the employees’ cars because of how the heavily populated campus is day-in and day-out.
Instead of starting our tour in the typical fashion of seeing office upon office, my friend’s aunt had us get on a shuttle and head to one of the buildings on the other end of campus. When we got there, we went right up to the roof of the building, which was an entire green roof. There were plants everywhere, tables to sit at, stands with food, and an amazing view of the state of California. I was shocked to see that this was a place where people actually work.
After that, we went into the building where we were told a little about the layout of that specific building and of campus as a whole. Next, we moved to Instagram’s headquarters. This is only one building on campus and I could only see a small section of it, but it was my favorite part of the tour. Part of this is due to the fact that Instagram is my favorite social media app and the other half is due to the fact that I liked the entire atmosphere of the building. In general, it had a more relaxing vibe than the other buildings because it is a little smaller and there were less people in it.
Then, we went to have lunch on what is called classic campus. Outside of one of the buildings is what can only be described as a small town. There were restaurants, an ice cream store, various shops, and even an arcade. It’s fair to say I had way too much fun playing pinball and Dance Dance Revolution in the arcade.
My general take away is that I was in complete awe of what I saw at Facebook. There was a side to me that kind of wanted to change my major and career path and try to snag a job at a tech company. But most of the time I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that people actually work at that place. It was one of the neatest set ups I’ve ever seen, but by the end of the tour I realized I definitely do not have the attention span to work at a place where I could easily walk outside and buy amazing food, go shopping, or play video games for hours.
Even though it’s not really for me, I am so glad I got the opportunity to tour Facebook. It completely surpassed my expectations of “just another office tour” and I am glad I got to see a different type of work environment. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life and if anyone out there is looking to work in that sort of work force, I would without a doubt recommend looking into Facebook.
