What it does: Instagram is a social media site and app oriented toward image and video-based sharing.
Mission: Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.
Best known for: Creating an entire generation of new social media influencers.
Size & presence: 450 employees working across the U.S.
The good bits: One of the most influential social media companies in the world, and continues to grow more userbase every year—making it a great place to learn about what goes on behind the scene.
The not-so-good bits: The company is mired in many controversies, partly due to the nature of the business.
Instagram’s beginning started as Burbn, a Foursquare lookalike created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriege. After several evolutions, it started looking like the Instagram of today, and not long after that, it caught the attention of Facebook (now known as its parent group, Meta), who acquired it in 2012.
Since then, the mobile app continues to grow—-to the point that it now has a site of its own—and is presently ranked among the top 5 most popular social media in the 2020s.
Working at Instagram gives you the type of vibe that you usually see from different Instagram users on your timeline—except this is your life; not theirs.
One Instagram employee shares (on Instagram) that she has unlimited free food, a comfortable working environment, and even first-class international flights.
Work-wise, Instagram is very similar to other Big Tech companies—you will be engaged in cross-functional projects and may even collaborate with fellow employees located halfway across the world.
Instagram doesn’t really offer too many work opportunities specific to recent university graduates, nor internship positions. Perhaps it is due to its status—being a subsidiary of a much larger company, Meta, and thus most of the opportunities for recent university graduates are concentrated more there instead of on Instagram.
In Meta, internship positions available are usually for recent university graduates in computer science and engineering.
Despite this, it is still possible to get an entry-level position at Instagram in some cases, though opportunities available may be scarce.
The recruitment process in Instagram roughly occurs similarly to that of other companies. Interested individuals would need to submit their application to their site, and a recruiter would later reach out for a phone interview.
If the applicant passes, a face-to-face interview would be conducted. Depending on the role, assessments may also need to be completed. Finally, an offer would be made when the applicant passes.
It’s possible that you may undergo a Meta interview process called the full-loop interview if you are applying for a software engineering job, which involves “3 to 5 different conversations, each lasting about 45 minutes,” divided into three parts: coding, design interview, and getting to know you. The whole process happens in one go instead of in phases, so it’s best that you come prepared. The full-loop interview usually happens in person, but the terms are subject to changes, depending on the situation.
Recent university graduates and experienced professionals alike can expect to around $150,000 per year, which is the median salary in the company. Different departments may also have different salary ranges, such as Sales at $163,000 and Marketing at $138,000.
Aside from that, Instagram also offers “flexible working hours, generous vacation days each year, and family-oriented work policies.” Plus, many of its roles allow its employees to work remotely or a combination of in-office and remote working, as with many tech companies these days.
Most of Instagram’s social contributions are done through Meta, its parent company. Some of these are through exclusive tools that the company offers for non-profit initiatives, such as fundraising efforts.
Instagram’s influence on more than 1 billion users across the world has generated a lot of controversies—and most of the cases involved are related to its role as a platform that polices its users. The most recent of this was in May 2021, when The Washington Post reported that there were a lot of accounts associated with indentured servitude in the Middle East, targeting women in Asia and Africa; which Instagram failed to notice until this recent discovery by the media outlet.