This article has more red flags than a Chinese embassy.

> At Facebook, it was normal to work 12+ hours a day.

That is called unpaid overtime.

> Mark constantly pushed us to have a sense of urgency.

That is how you stop employees from reflecting on their situation and how you set them up for burnout. Sure, they're all 20-somethings and can pull all-nighters but that is literally burning the candle at both ends.

> Even our customer support team was filled with Harvard PhD’s.

Conflating "A PLUS players" with "Harvard PhDs" says more about the monoculture of early Facebook. Notably Zuckerberg himself is a Harvard drop-out.

> Mark recognized that having a work environment you want to work in would [..] make the existing [employees] [..] stay later at night

This is not about creating a "work environment you want to work in", this is about creating an atmosphere of group pressure and lock-in:

> Delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered

In other words: people are expected to come in before breakfast and stay until after dinner. This means they're expected not to have families or relationships outside work except whatever fits in weekends or late evenings. This helps isolate them, giving the company more weight in their social sphere.

> All expenses paid company trips to Las Vegas, Free happy hours every Friday

In other words: frequent "team-building events" except they're framed as social outings with your colleagues - who if you're staying from before breakfast until after dinner (and sometimes even for all-nighters) are your entire social circle.

> Subsidized housing. $600/month if you lived within 1 mile of the office.

That $600/month is effectively just a bonus paid out to employees moving closer to the office. But framing it as a subsidy prevents employees from asking why (hint: again reducing the time spent outside the office as living close makes the paid breakfast/dinner/laundry more appealing than if you have a longer commute) and it creates lock-in by enticing employees to commit to a more expensive apartment closer to the office and not thinking about the high rent they're actually paying because it is offset by the "subsidy". It also means if they get fired they suddenly pay $600 "more" in rent and will likely want to move away quickily, reducing their influence on their former colleagues still living close to the office.

> Mark didn’t accept anything less than perfect. If he thought something was shit he would tell you and you’d have to start over.

Doing detailed checks for punctuation, spelling, grammar and branding on everything public is one thing. But this makes it sound like Zuckerberg would come in after 90% of the work was done, tear it to shreds and tell people to start over - that would normally be the opposite of making employees feel appreciated or like they're given free reign but makes perfect sense if you instead want to make them internalize "what would Mark do" instead of following their gut.

> When your team feels like an owner, they will act as an owner.

Yes, and they won't be an owner. And they'll find out when they get fired on the spot and are left with nothing except the accrued compensation for their work. Again, this is about making people overcommit the way they would for their own startup or their own family and to go beyond their limits until you no longer have any use for them.

> My boss was fired the day I started. My next boss was fired a month later. I got fired in 9 months. [..] He removed the people that were holding Facebook back immediately and he quickly promoted the ones that were helping Facebook achieve its goals

In other words every employee was constantly at risk of getting on the wrong side of Zuckerberg and being fired on the spot - despite all the commitment demanded of them. This is an entirely one-sided relationship and it's exploiting it to the fullest extent.

> When I was at Facebook all I did was think/talk/dream about Facebook. Facebook was my girlfriend. It didn’t feel like a job, so I put in all my hours.

Heck, if you think anything I said is exaggerated, this is the author literally agreeing with me: Facebook was their life while they were employed by Facebook - and yet they were fired after a mere 9 months. They didn't own anything. They committed their life to the company until it all got taken away from them. And here they are proudly talking about wanting to continue the cycle of abuse in their own company.

I'm not saying this doesn't work. But this should put some of the early Web 2.0 era "Facebook is a cult" allegations into perspective - and I don't just mean the secret hoodie linings. These are literally social manipulation tactics we know from cults. Like, this is cult 101 stuff: https://people.howstuffworks.com/cult4.htm

- Isolation: I think I've already explained that aspect.

- Induced Dependency: This is literally what all the Web 2.0 boom era on-site "perks" are for (three meals, laundry service, housing subsidy, etc)

- Dread: The constant sense of urgency, the random firings, the risk of having your work torn apart for being "shit".

Facebook isn't a cult. And Facebook isn't alone in this - other companies like Google are well-known for having engaged in similar manipulation tactics. And many have likely come out successful or were able to use their employment history as a career boost or to write influencer think pieces like the author, but these are still deliberately manipulative cult tactics and they're specifically used to make employees overcommit at the expense of their private life. And of course they also prevent any moves towards unionizing but that's probably just a coincidence.

EDIT: The author's "how I got fired" actually repeats what I said: https://noahkagan.com/why-i-got-fired-from-facebook-a-100-mi...

> They walked me back to the office and removed my laptop and my cell phone. Then I proceeded to the Verizon store to use their phone, called my gf (at the time) and drove to the house I shared with 6 other FB guys. Packed up all my stuff in my CRX, [..] and drove to my friend Johnny’s place.

> To spell it out. Facebook was my entire life. My social circle, my validation, my identity and everything was tied to this company.

At the same time blaming themselves for not putting the company first enough:

> I wanted attention, I put myself before Facebook.