This is seriously f#cked up.<p>I can understand 3-4 people who are equals between themselves pulling this off, but with 24 people there's <i>no way</i> everyone likes the arrangement, so having everyone to be in it 24/7 is wrong.
Yup. We're all liberal pluralists. Live and let live.<p>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.<p>HN is really, really schizophrenic on work. The middlebrow is strong with this one.
The next Heaven's Gate (?)<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!
Many of the comments in this thread are depressingly similar to same-sex slut-shaming.<p>"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."<p>Meta is a start-up (cool) creating augmented reality (very cool) hardware (even more cool) for <i>interactive</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>EDIT: Added the word "same-sex" before "slut-shaming" to clarify the comparison I'm making.
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.
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. :)
I would do this. I understand it's not appropriate for some people (families / children etc)<p>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
It would be interesting to be able to measure burnout rate, employee turnover and just general psychological indicators over time in such a setup.<p>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.
I see myself doing this for a short period of time, say one or week.<p>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.
I don't know about Portola Valley zoning regs, but I hope this article doesn't draw unwanted attention to Meta's arrangement.<p>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.<p>Legal or not, it sounds like fun for a couple years, if you're young enough to see appeal in dorm life.
I bet they won't even consider married candidates, or even anyone over 30.<p>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.
A great way to engage the Reality Distortion Field. Which is certainly functional. And at least faintly creepy.<p>But I am thinking--where would I put my Ham Radio Antenna?