Inside Facebook's Engineering Culture: Part 2
A broad and deep dive in how Facebook / Meta works, from the perspective of SWEs and EMs.
This issue is part 2 of “Inside Facebook’s engineering culture.” Check out last week’s article for Part 1 and for the updated vocabulary section.
This two-part series is about “things software engineers and engineering managers should know about Facebook’s engineering culture.” While the information is especially useful for anyone planning to join the company, the utility of these details goes well beyond that workplace. Facebook has grown blazingly fast to achieve global dominance, meaning many of its unconventional methods might serve other tech companies hoping to grow with similar speed, too.
As a reminder, I am referring to Meta as “Facebook” throughout.
This two-part series contains more information about Facebook’s engineering culture than any publication has revealed before. In writing this series, I talked with more than a dozen current and former Facebook software engineers, engineering managers, and engineering directors in verifying the details that follow. The majority of people I talked with had several years’ tenure at Facebook.
Still, it’s not possible to capture every single detail about an organization with tens of thousands of software engineers. Facebook gives high autonomy to both individuals and teams to decide how they work and I can’t cover all that variety, but I do try to provide a useful and comprehensive overview.
In this issue, we continue from Part 1, and go into:
1. Overview - covered in Part 1
Vocabulary
Core values
Standout differences between Facebook and other Big Tech companies
On the engineering-centric culture
On the individualistic culture
2. Hiring - covered in Part 1
Hiring processes
Hiring support
Software engineer hiring
Engineering manager hiring
Compensation: structure and examples
Internal mobility
Perks
Alumni and boomerangs
3. Career
Engineering and product roles
Career ladders
Competencies (axes)
Engineering management
Performance reviews, bonuses and equity refreshers
With numbers on cash bonus targets, equity refresher dollar values for the US, personal performance multipliers and example compensation outcomes.
COVID and the adjusted expectations program
The calibration process
Promotions
Archetypes
4. Engineering processes
Bootcamp & onboarding
Hackathons
How teams and projects operate
Documentation
Testing
The tech stack
Notable internal systems and tools
Open source
Company divisions
Company-wide processes
Changes at the company over time
5. Advice
Advice to succeed as an engineer
Advice to succeed as an engineering manager
Advice when leaving the company
Advice and inspiration for founders and managers to take from Facebook
Let’s dive in: