Product manager compares work-life balance at Google and Meta, reveals which company is ‘better’
A man who has worked at both Meta and Google said that while both companies are “similar”, one offers “growth”, and the other “prioritises work-life balance”.
A product manager working at Meta, and who had earlier worked with Google, shed light on which company to consider if one is seeking “work-life balance”. Daniel McKinnon, in his blog, said that while both companies are “similar” at “face value”, one offers “growth” and the other “prioritises work-life balance”.
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“Meta and Google are both phenomenal technology companies where great PMs can thrive. If you are looking for convexity and growth at the expense of stress and pressure, Meta is probably a better fit. If you would like to prioritise work-life balance, stability, and job security, Google could be a great place for you,” wrote McKinnon.
In his blog, he discussed the differences in work culture at both companies in depth. Meta is a “dynamic company” but is not “stress-free.” At Google, there is no “pressure,” and projects can “span decades.”
He also said that although transparency at both the companies has “declined”, Meta is still more transparent. “It is much harder to find out what is going on inside of Google,” he further wrote.
McKinnon thinks that Meta is a “quasi-academic, truth-seeking organisation” where “dissent is encouraged” and decisions are made on the basis of “data”. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t tend to make for a more “collegial work environment”.
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The product manager at Meta says that if conflicts arise on a project, the company “request reviews from the battling parties and make a call based on their judgment”. Google, however, doesn’t have “any intervention from leadership”, and teams and divisions have the “freedom to pursue their own priorities”.
He also talked about career growth at both companies and said that it is “much faster” at Meta than Google. He added that “it is much easier to get fired for poor performance at Meta than Google”.
McKinnon worked at Meta from 2018 to 2022 as a product manager for Applied AI Research. During his stint, he worked on speech, social audio, and language modelling. From 2022 to 2024, he was the product manager of Vertex Generative AI at Google and worked closely on maps and language modelling. McKinnon returned to Meta as product manager of Reality Labs in February this year and has been working on the voice assistant for Ray Ban | Meta glasses.