Facebook – Final
August 25, 2014
This post is really late but will contain a couple of reflections on my time at Facebook.
#1 – Go work there. Seriously, it’s an amazing place to be full of people at the top of their field.
Facebook has perks in the top of the tech hierarchy and the salary is amazing. However, beyond that is the chance to really learn from others. As much as I struggled with some things there, I gained a huge amount from those around me.
#2 – Find out if you want to be a software engineer.
Facebook is a really great place to be a great engineer. It doesn’t seem quite as good if you come in wanting to be involved in research-y stuff, but it’s really available to do on the side. If you want to be a software engineer, Facebook is a good place to make sure of that. If you don’t end up liking it there, chances are you won’t like it anywhere. I found that I wasn’t ready quite yet to be doing software development full time. Lucky I’ve started my PhD.
#3 – Cultural fit is really important.
I found it somewhat hard coming in to my team with no prior internships and no prior work in a formal setting. My team was pretty good at helping me settle in but there were definitely teething problems. It took me more than a little time to find my feet and fit in, and this definitely had an effect on my motivation. I’m not sure if ‘cultural fit’ is something you either have or you don’t. I definitely found my place much later in my internship, and perhaps late enough that it had an impact on the hiring decision of my manager (I wasn’t going to be returning immediately).
#4 – Get involved.
What made the difference between my time at Facebook being miserable and my time being enjoyable on the whole was the level to which I took advantage of opportunities offered. In this case it was going to all the speakers on offer and most importantly, spending lunchtimes with the Vocal Network. Without making good friends, you’ll find it hard to achieve your goals work wise.
#5 – Accept failure and learn from it.
A workplace like Facebook is very intense. Getting an internship there in the first place is really difficult. Converting into a full-time or returning intern, even moreso. Be prepared for things not to work out as you would’ve liked. Sometime’s it’s for the better, sometimes you just lucked out. Maybe you and your manager just didn’t get along, or maybe you ran into too many difficulties with your project. Either way, use it as a learning experience on how you can improve yourself to overcome such hitches on the next run.
Overall my time at Facebook could best be described as worthwhile. Not always enjoyable. Sometimes hard enough to make me want to give up. However, the experiences, education and people I met there will stay with me for far longer than the three months I was there.
Facebook – Week 7
April 1, 2014
The rest of this week, Scott was going to be away, so it was up to me and Zejia to hold down the fort. I resolved to make big strides this week and to improve on all the suggestions that had been provided to me. While I was uncertain as to the level of extra projects I could complete on the side, I was confident that I could at least up my productivity and level of engagement with other engineers.
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent dealing with queries related to my project from a lot of other engineers, and helping them out with small tasks that I assigned to them as part of my project.
Thursday at 11AM was the start of the company hackathon, a twenty four hour period in which engineers were encouraged to create something other than what might help them in their normal work, and create something innovative. While I can’t provide you details of exactly what I worked on, needless to say it was something very different from the rest of my internship. The only breaks I took from hacking that day were for meals and of course, for acapella rehearsal. My hackathon team stayed late into the night, though one by one the other members disappeared till it was only me and one other left. At about four thirty I caught an ‘uber’ (unlicensed taxi) home to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep before heading back into work.
I would have seriously considered working from home on Friday but for the fact that the acapella group was to be leaving in the afternoon for Lake Tahoe for a weekend ski retreat with ‘Googapella’, the Google group.
The day was a little unproductive with my mind in no place to solve more complex problems effectively, I ended up taking a brief nap in the afternoon to settle my head and had a talk with Zejia, my coworker, about ideas we could use to improve my project.
Soon it was time to leave, and Gus, Caitlyn, her friend Erin and I clambered into Gus’ car and set out for Lake Tahoe, a popular ski resort, lake and town in a beautiful area of California. When we arrived Anna from Googapella, who had arranged the trip, met us. She was delightfully bouncy and vibrant, a dancer in her free time and a mother and wife too! She was a taking a little off-duty time for a day and a half to enjoy herself with the two acapella groups. The house was filled with snacks, fruit and mounds of food, more than I thought we’d be able to eat. There was a piano on one side and plenty of room for two busses full of singers.
Later that evening, the rest of the crew trickled in. I won’t go into depth and describe everyone but needless to say they were a group of highly varied people, from a significantly tall and rationally thinking Netherlander (R-J) to a wild poly couple (Liesl and Dave). We were divided up into two cabins, ‘the party cabin’ and ‘the sleeping cabin’, I was in the party cabin which had more beds, more people and the kitchen. Later that night it became evident why it was called the party cabin. To put it politely, the Googlers were full of energy. The house was noisy all the way through to about 4.30AM when some people finally crashed. A few others were still too energetic to submit to sleep, with one individual, Rico, not sleeping at all through the night.
The next day was somewhat calmer, with hangovers presiding over much of the proceedings. After a prolonged breakfast the group split between those going skiing and the others and I who were more interested in taking a walk around the area. Stepping outside we were met by gorgeous vistas across the lake, and resolved to find a way down to the beach. We walked for a time around the circumference of the lake till the path ended sharply. Before us there was a wooden gate with a sign indicating that the beach was private. However barely a minute passed before one of the residents of the area came and opened the gate for us, after eliciting a promise from us that we would behave and not litter. The view from the pier on the beach was stunning and we stayed for a while to gaze at the blue and green vision.
About an hour later we returned to the cabins, as the sun slowly started to droop in the sky. The next few hours were relatively chilled again, as Dana, the ‘mother’ of the acapella group, prepared dinner and a few tired skiers returned. I and a few others sat down to play ‘Avalon’, a fantastic tabletop card game that Amalia Hawkins had introduced me to the week prior. Tensions and tempers flared as we all tried to prove our ‘innocence’ in-game. Another activity that evening included a sing-a-long hosted by the ever-talented Karolina with me jumping in to play for a few songs. There was also a prolonged conversation on the benefits and detriments of having kids, with people split roughly fifty-fifty on their preferences to have or not to have them.
The remainder of the evening was spent on a game of psychologist, though a slightly more adult version than the one I was used to running on camps. The rule was simple enough that my fifteen year olds probably would’ve had it out in a number of minutes but the two individuals chosen took a little longer, perhaps due to their unfamiliarity with such games. It made me miss home a little to think of what the kids I take might be doing and how their camp was with me abroad.
The game finally ended at around five AM which resulted in a rather late wakeup the next day. People were fairly lazy around breakfast again, however we were soon up and about packing for the return journey. After a number of goodbyes and exchanges of contact information, the rest of Gus’ car and I hit the road again, arriving back just after eight PM.
Tired as I was, with my days in California fast coming to a close I contacted Jeff, a friend from Penn and we had a later dinner together, discussing his new life at Google, and both of our plans for the future.
Finally, after dinner and a walk, I made it into my own bed and collapsed pretty quickly, needing a good night’s sleep for what was certain to be an intense week.