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Though it is part of a major international company, the 500-employee strong Boston arm of social media giant Meta — known until recently as Facebook — has its own culture and personality. Challenging work, creative thinking, and commitment to community all contribute to employees giving their workplace a thumbs-up.
In a word: Connections
View from the top: “Everything is talked about very openly internally,” says Perry Stoll, engineering director and domain lead for community and culture. “You’re not going to get better if you can’t talk about the challenges you’re facing.”
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COVID connections: When the pandemic shut down the Boston office just months after Kimberly Wilson started her job as office lead for communications, culture, and events, she was intimidated: She’d hardly had any time to develop the sense of belonging she was tasked with creating. But then she was inundated with messages from her new colleagues introducing themselves, sharing office insights, and inviting her to virtual coffee. “It didn’t end up being scary or hard,” she says. “I felt like I belonged.”
Intellectual engagement: Meta’s social media apps generate an enormous amount of data. Finding efficient ways to process that information is an immense and ongoing challenge. That’s exactly why software engineer Gabriela Jacques da Silva wanted to work there in the first place. “I was looking to come to a place where you could work with really large-scale systems,” she says. “Seeing how people get together to solve these problems is really exciting.”
TO PARTICIPATE IN NEXT YEAR’S TOP PLACES TO WORK SURVEY: Visit bostonglobe.com/nominate.