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“This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

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Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#11

Post by orangethirty »

hkmurakami wrote: post #3
kailuowang wrote: post #2

It seems that it's more of a product oriented (solve problems) culture than an engineer oriented (create something cool) one. Not necessarily a bad or good thing but it's consistent with the impression I got from Facebook in the last couple of years.

I had the impression that Google was engineer oriented but I wonder if this is still the case with their recent refocus into a small number of key products. With that in light, how would we (to the best of our knowledge) characterize some of the big/promitent software players? (FB, GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, NFLX, RAX, DBOX, etc.)

Yes, Google is still very engineering oriented. No questions about that. It is also one of their issues. They struggle to market products. Facebook on the other hand, is good at marketing products, and is also good at engineering (not as good as Google though). Though Im not saying Google engineers are better than Facebook's. It is the focus of management towards engineering thats different.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#12

Post by chopsueyar »

pavs wrote: post #8
jaredsohn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It appears my suspicion were correct. The text in your post doesn't support this conclusion (which tradeoffs are causing the behavior?). Just because something isn't working right doesn't necessarily mean it is because of tradeoffs; it could just be a bug (Edit: that they aren't aware of). Also, it seems strange that you are experiencing that problem since many pages have more likes (for example Barack Obama's page…

I have experienced the same problem. It happens randomly to random pages and not all of them are high profile pages. I would chalk it up to it being a bug.

Who is your ISP? What type of connection (DSL/cable/fiber/radio)?

I have a flaky* DSL connection of 2.6Mbps and I notice the AJAX calls to facebook crap out.

* During wind or rain, cuts out for a minute about 4 to 6 times per hour.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#14

Post by pavs »

chopsueyar wrote: post #12
pavs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced the same problem. It happens randomly to random pages and not all of them are high profile pages. I would chalk it up to it being a bug.

Who is your ISP? What type of connection (DSL/cable/fiber/radio)? I have a flaky* DSL connection of 2.6Mbps and I notice the AJAX calls to facebook crap out. * During wind or rain, cuts out for a minute about 4 to 6 times per hour.

I am in SE Asia, its a WiMax connection. The rest of the internet works as it supposed to.

The problem I am referring to (not loading completely and sometimes loading completely but not showing all the entries of a page) doesn't happen all the time, but happens often enough to notice.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#15

Post by encoderer »

GuidMor wrote: post #4

time to quit and do something real.

Say what you want, but I left my entire, close-knit family behind in Ohio when I moved to San Francisco for better opportunities on better engineering teams. Nothing in my life keeps me connected with them the way Facebook does. Nothing else draws together an audience as broad. From my teenage age cousins who use FB their way, to my Baby Boomer parents, to my Greatest Generation grandparents. They're all there in one place.

Also, they've faced enormous engineering challenges. Yes, Facebook style problems have great fanout results. You can almost accuse it of being easy in that way. But at their size and with their growth rate, nothing is easy.

I'm not a big facebook user. I didn't touch it until i moved away and my family over time started using it. But your slur here is absurd. Facebook has given a lot of great engineering back to the community. Thrift. Cassandra. Open Source networking hardware, etc.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#16

Post by sliverstorm »

jaredsohn wrote: post #7
JacobJans wrote: post #6

"Understand the trade-offs being made and the factors that led to them." As a user of Facebook, this quote explains a lot. I run a Facebook page with 90k+ likes, and have grown to expect it to simply not load completely without refreshing it multiple times. I've long suspected we were the victim of some type of 'trade-off.' It appears my suspicion were correct. We also spend five to seven thousand dollars a month on…

>It appears my suspicion were correct. The text in your post doesn't support this conclusion (which tradeoffs are causing the behavior?). Just because something isn't working right doesn't necessarily mean it is because of tradeoffs; it could just be a bug (Edit: that they aren't aware of). Also, it seems strange that you are experiencing that problem since many pages have more likes (for example Barack Obama's page…

I think JacobJans was attempting to be angry/sarcastic.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#17

Post by CGamesPlay »

kailuowang wrote: post #2

It seems that it's more of a product oriented (solve problems) culture than an engineer oriented (create something cool) one. Not necessarily a bad or good thing but it's consistent with the impression I got from Facebook in the last couple of years.

I think that's a false dichotomy. Every employed programmer is building software to solve problems. The "product" of that labor doesn't have to be something that a non-programmer uses. For example, our memcached engineers at Facebook are building a product in the sense that other engineers will consume the service that they maintain. The word "product" simply helps to frame the fact that the goal of their work is to build, maintain, and optimize this service. If the work they are doing isn't towards that, then they aren't doing their job.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#18

Post by LukeWalsh »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #9

Thanks for posting, patangay! I wrote the post if anyone has any questions :)

Thanks for the post! I understand from my interview process with Facebook that every engineer screens candidates. What are some things that have impressed you the most of anyone you have recommended for a position?

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#19

Post by shmerl »

I didn't really see what's so specific in this post about Facebook? The same could be said like "it's my X year on social network Y". I expected something specific in the context of Facebook in the post, but I didn't find it there. I'm not a Facebook user though, so may be I didn't understand some implicit assumptions of the OP.

Re: “This week marks the beginning of my 4th year at Facebook”

#20

Post by CGamesPlay »

LukeWalsh wrote: post #18
CGamesPlay wrote: post #9

Thanks for posting, patangay! I wrote the post if anyone has any questions :)

Thanks for the post! I understand from my interview process with Facebook that every engineer screens candidates. What are some things that have impressed you the most of anyone you have recommended for a position?

I think the most impressive candidates have a mix of 3 qualities: raw ability to program, ability to map real problems into programming problems, and ability to work effectively with other people. I don't expect the ideal candidate to be an ICPC winner or red-rank TopCoder, but they should be able to manipulate code effectively and reason about their programs well. Knowing what non-technical requirements mean in technical terms (i.e. how to build what the customer wants) and what technical restrictions mean in non-technical terms (i.e. what alternatives you can propose when presented with restrictions) is core to being able to build software that solves problems. And since we're talking about hiring people to join a team of other people, obviously I need to be confident they'll succeed in that environment.
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