Difference between Google and Meta from a SWE perspective
After graduation from university in 2020, I had the opportunity to work in Meta as a Software Engineer. In 2022, I switched job from Meta to Google. As a junior engineer, I’m very very lucky to have chances to work in both FAANG companies. Today I wanted to share my personal thoughts on the difference between Google and Meta in terms of engineering, career growth, culture, etc.
What they have in common
First I wanted to acknowledged that Google and Meta share a lot of things in common. Both are giant tech companies with ten of thousands of employees, offering huge office spaces plus free cafeteria, gym, shuttles. Both offer very decent compensation packages, health benefits, employee perks. Teams work in very specific areas. You will find it hard to find a team who has end to end ownership of a single product. In terms of tech, they both use a monolithic code base, very similar source control tools, very similar internal task management tools. And both companies build most of their underlying infrastructures on their own. When I moved from Meta to Google in 2022, I was surprised to see that almost every process infra I used in Meta has a Google version!
Now let’s take a look at their differences.
Product Area
Google has a very wide product area, ranging from Search, Gmail, Maps, Drive, Android, Pixel, Cloud, Youtube, Chrome, Photos. However, products that Meta developed are centered around social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, Quest.
Engineering Culture
I’m sure you might heard one of Meta’s slogan is “move fast”. Yep, it’s true. It’s faster to build a product in Meta than in Google, because there are less processes involved. In Google, you need a design doc, you need to present your idea in design review, and you need people to approve it to get permission to start a project work. During code review, you need owner to approve the business logic changes, and you need language expert to approve for readability. You need to provide 100% test coverage for your functions. At last, you need leaders to approve experiment launch. In Meta, however, you can start implementation without having to ask approval for your design doc. You can see codebases where they have very little test coverage. Anyone can approve your code review. As long as the experiment data looks good, you can just launch it without any approval.
Secondly, the processes are more top-down in Google while more bottom-up in Meta. In Google, engineers don’t have a lot flexibility when it comes to influencing product development. A lot of the decisions are already made from leaders higher up, and engineers main job is just to implement it. However, in Meta, engineers have more power to negotiate with leaders about the directions of a product.
The quality of a product is better in Google than Meta. It’s mainly due to the slow processes, urging engineers to obey strict processes. With the amazing test coverages, more than enough comments, internal documentations, cautious approval processes, it’s very hard to break production.
Anyway, this is just a general observation. The actual detail varies a lot from team to team. In Google, you can also see a “move fast” team, vice versa in Meta. For example, from my own experience, the team I worked on in Meta was actually a very quality driven team. We were very cautious about experiment launch, migration, latency issue, etc. The team I’m working on in Google values Agile development process, sometimes I can see refactoring effort being deprioritized over urgent features.
Career Progression
In general, the velocity of career progression is faster in Meta than Google. Meta sets a timer for mid-level engineers to get promoted to senior for like 3 years (from entry to mid-level is around 2 years). So in Meta, assume you join as a new grad, you are guaranteed to become senior within 5 years (or else get managed out). Part of the reason for faster promotion is because it’s easier to get a bigger scope project because leaders move around often, leaving opportunity open for those who are interested in taking over. However, in Google, promotion is slower. There is no official timer for any level. If people are ok with it, they can stay at their current level forever. There is a popular saying that the terminal level in Google is L4 (mid-level), which also reflects the difficulty getting to L5 (senior).
Interview Experience
Generally speaking, it’s harder to get interview chance with Meta, but it’s easier to clear the interview loop compared with Google.
Google interview questions are harder than Meta. Mostly likely you will be asked 1–2 hard questions in the onsite loop, and none of those questions are previously available online.
For college interns to get a return offer from Google, they need good performance from intern team, and 2 extra rounds of coding interview. For Meta intern conversion, you only need the former. Also you don’t need a team to get a Meta offer. After you join the company, there will be a 2–3 month bootcamp process where you can pick your favorite team. For Google, even after people clear the hiring committee, they need to struggle through the team match phase as well. For college interns or new grad, that process could be very slow.
On top of that, for experienced hires, Google are known for “down leveling” candidates. Often you can see people give up Google offer because they can not get their desired level here.
I have written Junior SWE interview preparation guide for FAANG companies if you are interested in preparing for interviews!
Team Mobility
Very often you will see a Googler work on the same team for 10+, 15+ years. However, it’s extremely unlikely in Meta. In Meta, on average people spend 1–2 years on a team and then move on to another team. One reason is because product evolution is faster. The feature that one team is working on might not be useful in 1 year for example. Another reason is because Meta encourages employee to switch teams to learn new products. However, in Google, being an expert in one team, one product, one technology seems to be more beneficial to gain deeper insights, find opportunities, and level up in the future.
So that concludes my personal opinion on the difference between Google and Meta. Although they have similar scale, each place is very unique in their own way. I’m very grateful that I have the opportunity to work in both amazing places! And I hope this insight is useful for people who are interested 🙂
