We recently had the opportunity to invite the iOS engineer from Facebook’s advertising team (Base in London) to a chat with the team. Here are some of the key points
Engineering and technology
Flutter
He had not studied Flutter thoroughly, but he was personally optimistic. Although RN is still recommended internally, and is currently undergoing a complete restructuring, the RN team is confident that it can shake up the industry again.
Infra
Facebook has two types of engineers: Infra engineers, who are responsible for the overall infrastructure; One is product engineer, follow the business. Facebook has a highly professional Infra team that provides a variety of out-of-the-box capabilities to the top business team, and contributes a lot of great frameworks and tools to the open source community. I particularly recommend Flipper, a mobile syncretion tool whose core author was on the advertising team before moving to Infra.
Metrics
Facebook is a completely data-driven company. A product needs MVP verification from idea to formal project approval. At the same time, complete Metrics are required to prove the value of the product or demand itself. Therefore, the company attaches great importance to abnormal data and the project planning without complete data support cannot pass the review.
Engineering culture
Bootcamp
Facebook engineers often don’t know what they’re going to be working on. Instead, they attend a six-week Bootcamp, a kind of pre-employment Bootcamp. After the end of Bootcamp, it was time for each group to compete for new recruits. The high-e members in the group would show how cool and valuable their group was doing in various forms, and even use lobbyists to attract people to come.
My friend, who was a legitimate iOS engineer (very few, it takes six months to hire one), became highly sought-after and, of course, ended up in the most lucrative advertising department.
Impact
Facebook is an Impact company. Most projects are initiated from the bottom up by engineers, and Manger is usually responsible for setting big directions or goals, such as: “The next Q wants to increase revenue by 50%.” So how to do this, mainly by the engineers themselves, of course, most of the E7/E8 engineers lead
In order to improve Impact, engineers need to be extremely self-driven and find all the resources to help them achieve their goals. When the task is too big to be completed by one team, the engineer needs to persuade and cooperate with other engineers to do the task, so that we can share risks and achievements together.
When the engineer finds the landing scheme, he can directly communicate and discuss with the Manager. If the Manager thinks the scheme is feasible, he will give money and time to support your work without hesitation.
Scope
Facebook has high expectations for the Scope of engineers, which requires that every engineer should not only focus on their own land, but also encourage their multi-stack technical ability and product implementation ability. Programming languages or frameworks are just a means to solve problems, so few call themselves front-end engineers. Backend engineer or client engineer, but engineer,
Engineers need to think from the perspective of business, and I will use whatever product technology means are more appropriate to solve this problem or pain point. Then you may ask: What if I can’t? It’s simple: Learn.
For example: My friend is an iOS engineer himself, but currently spends most of his time writing React and PHP.
other
PSC
The term at Facebook is the Performance Summary Cycle, or PSC, which can be simply understood as Performance appraisal. Facebook itself is results-oriented, and performance reviews only look at results. It’s a great thing for very smart people to have an easy job, spend half their time paddling, and still get good results. Of course, for the average person, it takes N times as much effort, because the people who get into Facebook are usually one in a million, there’s a lot of smart people, there’s a lot of competition.
Reviews and promotions at Facebook also fit the pyramid, with fewer people and more difficult as you move up. For example, from E3 to E4, one year is required, and from E4 to E5, at most two years. If you fail to get promoted, you will be eliminated. Therefore, the average age of working in Facebook is only about two years, and the pressure is very heavy.
Transfer
Facebook is very tolerant of transfers, especially if engineers can’t improve more in one direction, and the company encourages you to find another group to try a new direction, if they can accept you.
Manager layer not only won’t get stuck, but also can wish you a better future. However, once you transfer out and feel bad, it will be difficult to transfer back.
Employees care
Here my friend told a story about his entry: he had been living in Helsinki before, so he wanted to rent a house in London in advance, but later found that there was no need, because the company had already rented the house for him. Not only that, but all the furniture and living facilities had been arranged, so he just carried his bag and moved in. On his first day on the job, he found that all the office equipment, all kinds of software were ready, and even the line of the test machine had been connected.
conclusion
Overall, Facebook is a highly liberal company that gives engineers a lot of room to play. Pay attention to data, infrastructure and employee care, so that people have no worries, to achieve their goals. At the same time, engineers also face great challenges and pressure, so they need to keep learning, break their own blind spots in knowledge, and drive themselves and their colleagues to get results, so as to survive.