The Frank Gehry-designed headquarters that Facebook moved into in 2015 was a cavernous, elongated warehouse with concrete floors and a deliberately unfinished feel.
At the very centre of the 500-yard, open-plan sprawl was a nest of desks where Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants could congregate. The massive scale, the bustle and the sense of a central group thrown together in a makeshift work environment seemed the perfect physical expression of a company that had always sought to “move fast and break things”.
Seven years on, Zuckberberg’s company, now known as Meta, is under pressure to move as fast as ever. Apple’s new privacy rules have taken a big bite out of Meta’s profits from targeted advertising, even as Zuckerberg rallies his troops to fight back against the threat from TikTok and lead other tech companies in building a more immersive version of the internet known as the metaverse.