A Look Inside Facebook's Campus, Part 2

Are you a Pirate, Ninja or Jedi Master? Another cool piece of art at Facebook's HQ

Part 2 of 2. See Part 1 here.

This is the second of a two-part article about my visit to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. I must say that it's pretty impressive. I can't think of many other companies, (maybe Google but I've never visited them), that offer the same level of benefits and perks. 

The Food

Sweets Store
Baked goods, ice cream and froyo...all free. I'd gain 100 pounds if I worked here. Seriously. I imagine that the people who work here have developed some sort of internal mechanism to avoid eating ice cream and brownies every day. 

Facebook has a lot of  free food on campus

Snack Stations
There are a ton of these stations all over the place. You have your choice of soda, Odwalla juice, milk, Starbucks Frappacinos, chocolate bars, candy, chips. yogurt...etc and even Chinese drinks and snacks. You will never go hungry at Facebook.

There are two free cafeterias which have great food as well. The quality if much better than the run-of-the-mill cafs you might be used too. They also serve Mexican Coke which uses real sugarcane that the US version does not use.

Cafeteria One

The seating area here is pretty large and it was designed to be "noisy". The low ceiling makes the cafeteria sound louder which makes the place seem like it's bustling with life. In the mornings, there is a breakfast buffet and a juice bar and at night, gourmet suppers. The meals here are pretty good and the only other company that I can compare this to is Zynga and the food is pretty much at par.

Cafeteria 2

This cafeteria has sound absorbing panels on the ceiling and is smaller than the first one. It's only a few steps away from the other cafeteria so you really have your choice of where you want to eat. On Friday nights, they serve bar food here and when we went the line up was pretty long. 

There is also a pizza place, a burger joint and a taco place among other things so quite a lot of choices for food on campus. There are a handful of shops that are franchises that are subsidized (a specialty coffee shop, and a Sushi place) but everything else that I posted here is free.

Game Room

Not quite the same size like at Zynga but than again, Facebook is not a gaming company. The arcade that you seem on the right most side is actually a PC with a monitor running some sort of emulator for all the old school consoles (NES, Super NES etc) with what seems to be every single game ever created.

Other Random Stuff

Internal Touch Screen Maps
Touch screen map to help you find people. Search for their FB profile and it tells you where their desk is. Useful when you have 18 buildings.

Arsenio Hall has a room named after him. Clever.

Newspaper Clippings

In case Mark forgets about all his success, he just has to walk down the aisles.

Mark Zuckerberg's Office
Here is Mark's actual office. Now what really surprised me is that his office is just a corner conference room that is 100% accessible by anyone, including a visitor like me. What? Can you imagine any other company that is worth billions of dollars having their CEO's office on the ground floor and open to anyone to walk in? I've worked in way smaller companies where the CEO who is usually secluded in an ivory tower or at least in an executive hallway. I didn't know what to think of Mark before, all I knew about him was what I saw from presentations and the film, "The Social Network" (yeah I know, not quite the best representation), but it seems that he is a down to Earth guy.

Mark Zuckerberg's office. Accessible and down to Earth.

Last but not least, Chiao and I playing human Tetris

Inspired by the Japanese TV Game Show

Thanks a lot for the visit Chiao! It was a pleasure to see everything that Facebook offers and I appreciate the time it took to tour the campus.

See more pictures on Flickr below: