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Today we share Android Engineering Manager, Alan M’s, perspective about working on mobile at Facebook. This is the second feature in a three part series to highlight mobile engineers.
What do you do at Facebook?
I'm an Engineering Manager within Facebook's Engagement organization. I support several teams that build features in our mobile app which people use to share content (e.g. status updates, photos, videos, interesting articles, etc.) with the people they care about. Before this I worked on developer tooling for our third-party developer platform.
Can you tell us about a mobile project you’ve worked on at Facebook that’s really challenged you and pushed you to be a better engineer?
I'd say “Composer” is a really interesting project. Composer is the tool that people use to post to Facebook. It's a core component of the Facebook experience and even the slightest change will have a huge effect on how our global community shares content. People want to be able to share content quickly and without friction, so we are tasked with creating a high performance product that loads quickly on every conceivable device, and that is powerful enough that people can express themselves any way they like.
What has been the highlight of your career at Facebook so far?
Our Platform team tracks the happiness of our developer community over time. The highlight of my career was seeing a multi-year effort to improve stability and fix defects in our platform which push developer happiness to an all-time high. Our developers count on our platform to support their businesses, or to help their nascent apps reach the right audience, so it means a lot to feel like you're helping them achieve success. I actually got choked up sharing the results of years of work with the team, knowing how hard we had worked and how many people we had helped.
“"The highlight of my career was leading a multi-year effort...which pushed developer happiness to an all-time high." ”
How is mobile engineering at Facebook evolving and impacting the mobile world?
On the product side, we constantly rethink how the common interactions between people will evolve as more people are connected via smartphones and mobile devices. We also try to be thoughtful about the wide range of device types and levels of connectivity around the world, and so we design products to work for all people, everywhere. On the engineering side, we are always trying to make our deployment process as fast and as efficient as possible so we can continuously improve our product. When we were primarily a desktop web product, updating the product only required a web server restart and a browser refresh. In a mobile world, an update means pushing bits to over a billion devices.
Which of Facebook's core values (Move Fast, Focus on Impact, Build Social Value, Be Open, Be Bold) resonates most with your team?
“Focus on Impact” and “Build Social Value” resonate the most. It can be easy to forget the daily impact that we have on peoples lives. I meet with my teams weekly to ensure the work and effort in place impacts not only us, but the world that we live in, and that we have the ability to help over a billion people in the world.
Alan most identifies with the Facebook value of "focusing on impact".
When you hear the word “Diversity” what does it mean to you and how does it apply to what you do at Facebook?
When I hear the word “Diversity,” I look at it from an impact perspective; this is something that is top of mind for me. In every product we build I always question, “are we building something that is going to solve our issue, or solve for the greater good of the people in the world?” I diligently remind and ask my team, “are we focused on problems in the world or just within our industry?” We need our engineers to look into the emotional feeling and utility of what we build, having empathy for broad issues. I believe that more diverse teams have more empathy for our user base and possess the intuition to anticipate user response. A non-diverse team is very limiting to the ability to scale. Again, its all about impact.
How do you think mobile at Facebook stands out from other companies?
It’s our scale. Our products and services reach over 1.5 billion people. We intersect in brand and design philosophy, with tons of energy put into our work with Android and iOS projects. We are true to what we express and feel, encompassing native app development.
What’s the top app that you use on your phone?
I love Messenger. The team has done a great job building a high performing app, being able to balance many services and creating a feature rich product.
If we were to build a new conference room at Facebook and you get to name it, what would the name be?
We have a tradition of creating crazy themes for our conferences rooms, and naming blocks of rooms to fit a specific theme. You can usually tell which part of the building you're in by the theme of the rooms. For example, the room named “The Wicker Man” is in the Nicolas Cage Movies block and “Jon Snow Knows of Something” is in the “Fake Movie Spoilers” block. If it were up to me we'd have an Oakland Raiders themed block and a room named “The Black Hole”. (Raider Fan) :)
We're looking for iOS and Android Engineers to join our team. Learn more about Mobile Engineering at Facebook, relocation and opportunities in our U.S. offices.
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