Product Management at Meta vs. Google or My Take on How to Evaluate your {Google,Meta} Offer
Since returning to Meta in February, I’ve fielded a small deluge of calls from Meta people considering Google offers, Google people considering Meta offers, and non-aligned candidates considering both.
At face value, Meta and Google are similar companies. They both sell ads on the internet. They both build iconic consumer products used by a huge fraction of humans on Earth. They both encourage bottom-up innovation. They both built similar internal tools. They both use the same employee leveling system.
However, product management at these two companies is quite different. There are certainly people who thrive in all environments, but I think that it is easier to be successful if you align your employer’s values with your own.
Quick background: Meta and Google are both gigantic companies and I obviously can’t speak for every team. I worked at Meta from 2018-2022 on speech, social audio, and language modeling, at Google from 2022-2024 on maps and language modeling, and now I am back at Meta working on the voice assistant for Ray Ban | Meta glasses. The scope of my current team at Meta is very similar to my last one at Google, so I feel like I have a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison of corporate culture in the applied AI space.
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 prioritize work-life balance, stability, and job security, Google could be a great place for you.
