Once upon a time (about 10 years ago), you couldn’t go two clicks across the internet without running into a BuzzFeed article. Or, perhaps, a “listicle.”
When I started working at BuzzFeed in 2013, it seemed unstoppable. Approximately 130 million people visited the website each month and the company was reportedly driving nearly $20 million in annual revenue. In January 2013, BuzzFeed raised $19.3 million in a fourth round of funding—bringing its total money raised to $46 million. Plus, Facebook had just majorly increased the views it drove back to publishers.
I became a staff member in June 2013 and worked in three different roles before leaving in 2016. My first job at BuzzFeed was as an “animals intern,” writing articles about animals for an editorial vertical. Then I was an editorial assistant for three editors. My third role was as a creative coordinator; my task was to keep the team “focused, creative, and disruptive.”
During these years, I observed BuzzFeed’s boom firsthand. It was an unrivaled media industry darling that began as an offshoot project from Jonah Peretti, cofounder of The Huffington Post (now HuffPost). His goal was to build “something giant”—which he did.
Much like other aggregate blogs of the time, BuzzFeed found and highlighted interesting corners of the web before they went mainstream. Eventually, the site hired curators and editors, and later its own reporters, to continue finding digital nuggets and turning them into gold. BuzzFeed’s leaders taught staff members to be generalists and stressed that they needed to be knowledgeable both in their own interests and identities and in just about everything else that the internet could find interesting. Over the years, BuzzFeed expanded its news and video teams as the company grew beyond truffle hunting for the viral moments that social media and search engine algorithms craved to creating them in-house.
However, the growth of the site did not always lead to sustainable hiring, firing, and spending practices. Employees, like myself, often felt like parts of a content-generating machine who were managed by inexperienced supervisors and chaotic departmental leaders.
In this way, BuzzFeed exemplified the often-unhealthy startup workplace cultures of the 2010s. The company prioritized offering perks (ping-pong tables, snacks, and parties) rather than increasing pay, encouraged employees to consider each other as family members rather than coworkers, and workers were often let go with little notice.
To be sure, BuzzFeed was not alone in these practices. Many startup businesses of the 2010s, particularly in media, became fertile ground for toxic workplaces. But the BuzzFeed boom is a valuable case study that can help us better understand what it takes to build a healthy workplace culture.
(Representatives at BuzzFeed contacted by Fast Company declined to comment.)
The rise of the perk workplace
I first began “working” for BuzzFeed as an unpaid community contributor in 2012 while still in an undergraduate journalism program. I was enamored with the writers I followed on Twitter (now X) who worked there. Knowing that anyone could make an account to post on BuzzFeed excited me. After my junior year of college, I applied for an internship position. I was told “No thank you” but encouraged to remain an active community contributor and to reapply after I graduated.
When I graduated a year later, BuzzFeed was the only company I wanted to work for. Unfortunately, the only open job opportunity was not an entry-level position. However, the team I had been talking with worked behind the scenes to create an internship position for me within the “animals department.” I was incredibly grateful that they believed enough in what I had to offer. This opportunity allowed me to move to New York later that summer.
The first BuzzFeed office I worked in was an open-plan space, with maybe two or three glass meeting rooms tucked away in one corner. Otherwise, the minimalist office consisted of rows of simple tables facing each other along a wall of windows that looked over Manhattan. The BuzzFeed team was small enough at the time that we shared the floor with other companies, which meant we also shared a bathroom. Our restroom key was attached to a big shark toy so that we’d be less likely to lose it. Roughly twice a week, we would get catered lunch brought in.
The mostly glass office meant that everyone knew when something exciting was happening. When the animals team got to meet and “interview” internet-famous cats Lil Bub or Princess Monster Truck, everyone knew. The same was true for when human celebrities, like Demi Lovato or Adam Scott, came in for interviews and photo shoots.
In-house events became more frequent as the company grew, and once we moved to a bigger office space near Madison Square Park. This new, upgraded space allowed for more catered events for employees, plus quirky content-generating interviews with celebrities. In one instance, Bill Murray stuck one of my colleagues’ fingers into a hummus cup.
It became normal to have your work interrupted to take a large group photo with whichever celebrity stopped by that day. And as BuzzFeed became more established, so did the staffers with their own book launches or major projects for us all to celebrate as well. Work was punctuated with moments of joy and play as we were encouraged to combine lowbrow and highbrow internet interests. We were told to write like we were our readers’ “cool older sibling” showing their younger counterparts a neat, new thing. We didn’t want to sound too stuck up, but we still had to be cool enough to warrant boasting about our discovery.
In this new perk-filled era at BuzzFeed, a major debate occurred over whether we should install a fro-yo machine or a cold-brew keg system in the office near the cereal bar and snack pantry. End-of-year parties included gifts from the company. There was usually some kind of cold-weather-appropriate gift, like a beanie, blanket, or sweatshirt. But one year we were also given a limited-edition cat print by artist Cory Arcangel.
It was great to get gifts, and conversations abounded about how we were more than just a team—we were a “family.” But unfortunately, this did not always equate to fair monetary compensation year-round. Over time, many workers, researchers, and managers alike came to view the perks that many startups offered in the 2010s as an insufficient replacement for strong wages, fair working hours, and robust health benefits.
For instance, in 2011 Wharton researchers observed the trend of Silicon Valley-style startups offering perks like the ones we received at BuzzFeed, such as free meals, artwork, and bring-a-pet-to-work days. “The idea was often two-fold: (a) make the company an attractive place to work, and (b) make it easy for employees to work long hours,” reads a Wharton report on the subject. “If the idea is to encourage employees to work harder, then are free meals really perks?”
And in 2020 Fast Company labeled “cool” office perks one of the worst workplace trends of the past 25 years. “There’s an insidious side to all of these offerings. Labor historians call such perks ‘welfare capitalism,’” wrote Fast Company staff. “If a free dinner makes you more likely to stay at your desk for another hour, or three, well, it’s a pretty good investment for your employer.”
Business buzzkill
Amid the high-energy creativity (and cold-brew concentrate) that drove the BuzzFeed engine, it slowly appeared that some of the organization’s disruptive startup culture involved disrupting basic business practices.
Fresh out of college, I was initially hired as an intern for $10 per hour (slightly above New York’s minimum wage of $8 per hour) on a temporary basis of three months. But for my first six weeks as an intern, I did not get paid. To my memory, it was a paperwork issue. I sheepishly told a colleague I was not getting paid and she helped me address the issue relatively quickly. However, it was still a long time to go without payment.
I was kept on staff after those initial three months, but this was never a guarantee for interns. I was one of the lucky ones. That promotion came with a small pay increase. My work as an administrative assistant was divided among three different managers within the Buzz side of the business. Between keeping their schedules and meetings updated, I was also tasked with taking notes during editorial meetings. These weren’t my only tasks. I was still an active writer for BuzzFeed’s animals section and other verticals when appropriate. However, I was still often perceived as a secretary. Many times employees verbally addressed me as such. Let me be clear: There isn’t anything wrong with being a secretary, but it felt like I was being pushed into the role. I wanted to continue working at my dream job, and it felt like this was the cost of doing so.
By 2014, I was making a little bit more than $10 per hour. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed was valued at $850 million, thanks to an additional $50 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm. “We think of BuzzFeed as more of a technology company. They embrace internet culture. Everything is first optimized for mobile and social channels,” Chris Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told CNBC at the time.
A large part of this investment went toward introducing new content sections, creating an in-house incubator for new technology and potential acquisitions, and putting more resources toward BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, its Los Angeles-based video arm. “As we grow, how can we maintain a culture that can still be entrepreneurial?” Peretti mused. “What if a Hollywood studio or a news organization was run like a startup?”
However, the next couple of years proved rocky for the golden child of digital publishing. The site missed revenue projections in 2015 and 2016. CNN labeled it the “BuzzFeed buzzkill,” detailing how the site’s $170 million in revenue in 2015 was well short of the projected $250 million. And the Financial Times later reported the company’s initial 2016 projection of $500 million had been scaled down to $250 million.
These severe fluctuations in traffic, and consequently valuation, could be seen across the digital media industry during this time—including at businesses like Vice, Mashable, and Business Insider.
If your business model is based on creating branded content because your website gets hundreds of millions of unique views each month, what happens if the views dry up? What if readers simply view your content on social media platforms instead of going back to your site? Or what if readers weren’t actually looking too closely at your content to begin with? These were questions that BuzzFeed, the rest of the digital media sector, and many internet-era startups were forced to face during this time.
Facebook frenzy
In keeping with its startup roots, BuzzFeed continued to experiment with format across all platforms. This led to a robust development of interactive quizzes, reaction buttons, curated newsletters, breaking news beats, and so much more. Video was a big part of BuzzFeed’s overall expansion, as it was with many digital publishers. There was a transition away from directly uploading and embedding videos to a website’s own video player and instead uploading videos to social media platforms and embedding those videos into a post. The hope was that this would organically increase views by reaching viewers at multiple platforms at once and provide the BuzzFeed team with a means for using one piece of content in multiple ways. The dream was that Facebook would help websites like BuzzFeed rake in cash.
“As advertising budgets shunted toward video to tap the apparent Facebook viewership goldmine, publishers’ editorial budgets followed,” wrote Will Oremus in Slate in 2018. “Publications such as Mic, Vice, Mashable, and many others laid off writers and editors and cut back on text stories to focus on producing short, snappy videos for people to watch in their Facebook feeds.”
In order to continue being the crafter of viral content, not only the curator, BuzzFeed intended to expand its video offerings into full series. Recipe videos, ghost-hunting shows, guys trying things, classic YouTube-reacts videos, content filmed by and for social media platforms—this was the way forward, according to BuzzFeed’s leaders. The pivot to video had well and truly begun, especially when NBCUniversal invested $400 million into BuzzFeed’s video projects in late 2016.
BuzzFeed had hired writers by the dozens. Then, with no warning, laid them off in waves in order to grow its video production teams. But by September 2016, it was discovered that Facebook had artificially inflated video views in its reports to advertisers and publishers for at least two years.
By chasing an illusive ever-changing stream of views, startups like BuzzFeed can lose sight of their organization’s strengths. And during the BuzzFeed boom, it becames plain how deeply publishers relied on social platforms to drive their content decisions.
Looming layoffs
I was laid off in 2016 without warning. The main reason given for the decision was that I wasn’t driving enough views. I was one of approximately seven people let go from the New York office. By the time I got back to my desk, I was locked out of my laptop and left to go cry in the park with my friends. They’d later help me get access to my stuff to box it up and bring it home. I was worried my weeping sobs would disturb productivity.
In 2019, BuzzFeed laid off around 220 employees, 15% of its total staff. Many of those affected by this round were people of color and/or members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Many of these staffers were also content creators for the BuzzFeed video team. While I never worked on the video team, former colleagues of mine described an unhealthy work-life balance and strict production requirements.
BuzzFeed has since had multiple more rounds of layoffs. For instance, in 2023 it shut down its BuzzFeed News team. And in 2024, the company let go of another 16% of its remaining staff.
These kinds of layoffs have become more common in the media industry since the pivot-to-video era that so defined the BuzzFeed boom. And this kind of instability can create undesirable workplace cultures for media organizations. Reporters at many media institutions no longer felt safe in their jobs, knowing they could be eliminated at any moment in order to prioritize other projects.
And while BuzzFeed of course cannot be held responsible for the creation of the new media landscape, it can offer insight into what this new landscape includes. Perks, snacks, and parties can sometimes overshadow fundamental issues like pay and benefits. Impossible expectations can be disguised as “scrappy and resourceful” teams who succeed with shoestring budgets. When you consider your coworkers to be your family, perhaps you’re less likely to complain about unfair working conditions. And when you’re pressured to grow quickly, sometimes workers are the ones who pay the price.