they break I wake up and prepare myself
for the day ahead I get myself cleaned
I'm an ex-googler at Lee and the staff
software engineer at Facebook I've been
working there for one and a half years
and the job has consumed me I have given
it everything my personal life my
weekends my evenings but I know that it
will all be worth it because I believe
in the company mission to give people
the power to build community and bring
the world closer together I reflect on
that I had left a good job at Google and
moved my family halfway across town just
to be here to learn about the
technologies to see how I could change
the world what impacts I could make I
remember on my first day being so
excited here and the excitement still
lasts - today it's an open office
workspace so I find my desk and get to
work
the tooling isn't the best but it does
the job it's time for a change of pace
so I go outside to do some code reviews
and check my email wait what's this HR
sent me something 11 a.m. I go to sit
down with HR hi my name is HR are you
the tech lead I've been watching some of
your YouTube show and you know what I
personally don't like it why don't we
talk a little bit about respect I want
to be respected I want everybody to
respect me all the time gonna hit your
face and you know what personally I
disagree with your opinions you know I
can jealous of you my whole life you're
the one who knew engineering math
science and I've always been out earned
by you but I know one thing I can do is
fire you so you know what as of today
you're fired and you know what I think
it's such a big promotion for this
because you're the tech lead and this is
the big break that I've been waiting for
I'm going to put this all over my
performance review this is the one
highlight of my career I'll be taking
this
have a good one just between you and me
I don't even have a Facebook account I
believe that two years ago I get up and
walk back to my car
sorry guys looks like this is just half
a day in the life of a software engineer
at Facebook
[Music]
hey chocolatier welcome back to coffee
time I hope you enjoy that Facebook no
not so much what maybe should've thought
about that before firing me quick pause
Facebook sounds amazing doesn't it want
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link in the description below I thought
that today we will talk about my
experience working on Facebook and what
it's really like inside that company you
know I think that one thing that people
don't actually realize about working at
Facebook is that you actually have to
work on Facebook there which very few
people really want to do probably for a
lot of people modern people they don't
even really use Facebook all that much
anymore it's something that was popular
a long time ago and the products you
know it's just like do you really want
to be the person working on the newsfeed
or groups events marketplace optimizing
how fast page loads you know you have
profiles groups and pages and then
trying to figure out like what's the
difference between these what are the
nuances how privacy works with these a
lot of these things may involve you
becoming an expert on user data privacy
detecting harassment anti-bullying
detecting fake news and flagging that
may be adding a bunch of badges and
stickers all over the place fine tuning
a few little UI things and then a be
testing that may be adding additional
links to groups and pages you know it's
a lot of these like small little BS
features on the product that may not
excite you it dawned on me very quickly
after I joined that I personally was not
interested in many teams at Facebook I
joined the video team and I thought well
maybe I could work on that because I
have worked on YouTube prior to that but
beyond that there just wasn't all that
much that I was interested in doing of
course if you use Facebook a lot or one
of their other products like Instagram
what's that messenger then that may be
the place to go for you now the other
thing when I reflect on that was that I
also feel that at Facebook felt a little
bit like a shouting match like a
popularity contest primarily because of
the way that they use workplace were
just facebook for work everybody is
always posting you
the status updates about themselves what
they're doing what they're up to what
their team's done what their
accomplishments have been none of it is
really actionable they're just random
status updates and there's a lot of
noise to filter through so imagine
receiving multiple notifications every
day where people are just telling you
what they've accomplished how great they
are
mimimi and none of it is really
actionable and you just read through
tons of this stuff every day and in
order for you to keep up you also have
to start shouting about how great you
are - even though none of that really
pushes an actual project fort and it's
kind of this game for people to get as
many likes and comments as they can on
their post if you're into popularity
contests like that
if you thrive in that type of
environment then you will probably do
pretty well there
sometimes it feels like nobody's really
listening and everybody's shouting and
then the more senior engineers who have
a lot of influence they have a lot of
followers actually so when they post
anything then everybody likes their post
and then you essentially evaluate the
soundness of an argument by how many
likes that they get it's not really
based on logic it's based on that
popularity one thing that actually
annoyed me quite a bit about working
there and this applies to any tech
company by the way is the way
performance is evaluated so this is
based on very short timelines like three
to six months Sprint's right
so usually projects are very short
visioned for example a project manager
may run a brainstorm session and then
claim that on their performance review
however there may be no actual follow up
on that right like there's no actionable
event it was just a brainstorming
session and that was it it just
disappeared after that because the main
purpose of that was just to get a point
for the performance review there's no
actual goal there's no long-term vision
beyond that and beyond that there's such
an aggressive focus on shipping
something anything and your Facebook is
a very mature product these days so it's
pretty tough to figure out something new
to add to it so people are just
scrambling around trying to figure
something that they can do and what
happens is you actually have a lot of
teams working on the same stuff multiple
times I found myself on the project and
weeks later I will find another team
also working on the exact same thing
either that or people may be working on
projects that just suddenly get canceled
because people later on realized that
they didn't even want to build this
thing there was no real reason to do
that I think another thing to realize
about large tech companies and
especially ones that don't have very
strong engineering culture is that their
codebase could be a complete mess
right like especially if you look at
Facebook the technologies you'll be
working with are like component kit for
iOS Leatha for Android you could be
using react native you could be using
PHP hack so a lot of these may be
non-standard technologies things that
nobody else is really using except maybe
this one company and what happens is
that it drives you down into this dead
end of a career one more interesting
things that I think that Facebook and
large tech companies are very political
this is kind of a topic that people
don't like to mention too much but when
you walk around the Facebook campus you
will see political posters and art
everywhere nearly every single piece of
art is political in nature it is about
say LGBT pride it may be about
immigration equality gender free
politics all of this diversity stuff
which I'm all for you know I think it's
great I just think it's a little bit too
heavy-handed there and personally I
should mention you know I think one of
the problems is that for me I think
every diversity group is selfish right
you got the LGBT community arguing for
LGBT rights you have the women's
community arguing for their rights you
have the black community arguing for
their rights what everybody should do is
maybe just band together and argue for
diversity in general right because I
think that there are in reality millions
of groups that need more representation
Asian male in tech I think that's also
an underrepresented group especially for
more senior management positions in tech
is just hard to get support for that and
it's a little bit strange uncomfortable
for me to walk around in the campus
which is really for Facebook especially
it is very big on the LGBT community the
company is pretty much overrun by them
you have like a rainbow flag for the
LGBT community in the middle of the
campus it just feels a little bit
over-represented okay so maybe you don't
want to work at Facebook after all well
you can always go to
entrepreneursforachange.com
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without that though I think that
Facebook has been one of the best
offices that I have worked in the campus
is beautiful it's amazing it's large
very open space the open office
environment may not be to everybody's
taste is kind of like working in the
warehouse but other than that the food
is good they've got decent coffee and I
would still recommend that you honestly
give them a try I mean there's still one
of the top tech companies so give it a
go I'll do for me give the video a like
and subscribe and I'll see you next time
Thanks