Facebook – Monday – Day 13
January 10, 2014
From Monday, everything changed. First day of full-time work ever. I woke up just before my 7AM alarm, brushed my teeth, took my pills and madly rushed about getting ready. What did I need? Where was my shuttle leaving from? After a minor amount of confusion I walked along the street outside to where a group of young people were clustered, presumably some other interns. The shuttle arrived about ten minutes later and the friendly driver welcomed us aboard.
A short ride later and we passed the sign “Facebook, 1 Hacker Way”, and all of us oogled the campus that we were now entering. We pulled up outside a number of plain looking buildings, exited the shuttle and then entered ‘Building 15’. Inside was as chaotic as the airport terminal from the other day. Over a hundred new employees waiting to receive badges and enter the protected courtyard. I said hi to a few people in line, trying to make friends. I met so many people, remembering names soon became an issue. The only one that really stuck out was ‘Sarah’, an Iranian girl reading Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s book “The Black Swan” (highly recommended). After we all were checked in, we had a short tour and then breakfast at “Café Epic”, one of Facebook’s delicious eateries. I enjoyed a fruit smoothie and some fruit salad in the company of Sarah and a few other n00bs (the Facebook term for new employees).
The rest of the day was filled with speakers on topics ranging from legal compliance to Facebook’s company values. Some of the speakers were decently inspiring, though it was hard not to feel that some of them were more enthused than would be normal regarding a workplace or business. I couldn’t tell whether they actually felt that way or were just trying to get us revved up.
After lunch we received our ‘gear’: company laptops and phones. I had chosen and received a Lenovo Carbon X1 and an HTC One. We then had to set it all up, login and get our systems up and running to actually start working.
During the breaks I walked around campus a little, taking the odd snack from the micro kitchens and generally enjoying the ambience. Facebook campus is covered in art and this makes it a much more enjoyable place to work. Additionally there are posters up all over the place, this is one of my favorites:
The buildings themselves are well designed and spacious, open plan with offices that can be requisitioned along the sides.
After a few final talks, I headed home and collapsed almost immediately. There was way too much to take in. I managed a couple of hours checking out the tools I’d been using and reading new hire information until sleep overcame me. This was going to be intense
PennApps – Friday/Shabbat/Sunday/Monday Day 171/172/173/174
January 25, 2013
One of my most amazing experiences at Penn thus far was marked by these four days. In case some of you were wondering why I was engaged so frequently recently, this post should help clarify it a little. As I mentioned in the previous post, PennApps is the largest student hackathon in the world, and the next two days, and the two following, marked the lead up and competition itself.
Friday I went to my usual TA training and meetings, however, additionally, I also made it to a number of ‘tech-talks’, lectures given by software engineers at various companies. I planned a little with my team and met up over the next day with many of the hackers that were visiting.
Once the hacking started the next evening, it started with a bang. The entire four building engineering quadrangle was filled with over five hundred students, with tables lining the corridors and people in every classroom. Instantly Rigel, Nikki and I were on our keyboards typing away viciously. Though we were at first a little unsure of how it would work or even what exactly we were making we pounded away nonetheless. Joining us at the table was Saajid Moyen who, unfortunately fell sick after the first ten hours. In between mad rushes for food we found the spark of an idea. And so ‘proposal.’ began to take form. Our app was designed to be used on an unguarded computer on which someone had left their facebook/twitter logged in. Our app provided an easy interface to create a fake engagement. From sending out notifications on facebook, to creating a wedding event and uploading photos, our app did it all. However, our greatest feature was the ability to what the face of the victim as they returned to their computer, through some clever use of the webcam.
Midnight came and still I coded away. Around 3AM Rigel and Nikki decided to catch some sleep, but I decide to code on. At 5AM I decided to get a little shut eye and so lay down my head on my keyboard and caught thirty minutes before bouncing back up and getting on to more code!
The next day was full of more code, and this time, visitors to our booth! People ranging from the developer evangelists (Song of TokBox and Swift of Sendgrid) to company representatives and venture capitalists. Everyone liked our idea, in particular a group of Israeli’s working for a Sear’s owned company. With renewed support we redoubled our efforts and improved our product even further, working to polish it as much as possible.
The next time and the coding was still not over, and by now we were starting to run out of time. We faced issues ranging from getting stuck with the facebook developer tools (API) to issues with our code management platform (git). It was at this point that we really relied on the support of the mentors, all the company representatives doubling as assistants who we turned to for advice in our more desperate hour of coding.
That night I caught another twenty minutes, this time in a quieter room away from the action. However, soon I was up again, working with the other two to finish off our product. At around this time a facebook rep mentioned to me that he couldn’t allow me to continue making the app publicly available as it violated facebook’s terms of service and so I forced to make it somewhat private.
We finished roughly ten minutes before the deadline for the first round of judging (for the sponsor prizes) and we even managed to style our page decently. See the finished product at http://proposal-pennapps.rhcloud.com.
The judges from the various companies and startups loved our demo but unfortunately we were informed by all of them that we were ineligible to receive their prizes due to a lack of a ‘use case’ for our product. Ie; though it was fun and awesome, it wasn’t very practical. Despite this, the attention we received boosted our egos, our reputations and opened up a number of connections to us. In particular, I was offered a potential internship at a local firm. Most exciting.
Next up was the opportunity to demo in front of a larger crowd including official judges. Our app received wide acclaim and the loudest applause from those within our group but again, we didn’t meet the usefulness criterion in order to be passed into the next round. Regardless we left feeling content.
During the awards ceremony I feel asleep numerous times and, finally when it was over, I trudged back half dead to my room and slept a long and wonderful sleep.
Password
November 26, 2012
The password for future posts I need to protect will be on facebook on my wall posts of the blog posts!