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Meet Gemma, an Engineering Manager in our London office. We interviewed her to learn about her experience working at Facebook, what she enjoys most about work and her favourite things about Facebook London.
What do you do at Facebook?
I'm an engineering manager in our Infrastructure team. Our team builds infrastructure which is used by teams across Facebook to detect abuse - including spam, porn, etc. The work we do has a distinct infrastructure flavour (and some excitingly large scale problems!) whilst also having a tangible impact on people and their experience using our products. I'm really motivated by the fact that our work actively helps keep people safe as they use our products.
Describe a typical day at work
One of my favourite things about Facebook is that there isn't a typical day. The only constant at Facebook is change - that means I can be looking at a production incident one day, thinking about the team roadmap the next day and whipping up a prototype in Haskell at a hackathon the day after that.
What do you enjoy most about the work that you do?
I really, REALLY enjoy working on problems of scale and Facebook provides some unique opportunities to scale systems. I'm really happy to be in a space where I can work on problems of scale alongside doing work that has an impact on people, too. Often, working in infrastructure can mean being very detached from the users of your product, but that's not the case for my team.
I love the way that working at Facebook presents opportunities to try new things. When I first joined, I worked in product development, which I'd never done before. I learned a lot. Then I moved into my current team, and needed to learn Haskell and functional programming, which I'd never done before either. The sheer breadth of opportunity available internally is astounding.
Tell us about a memorable project that you felt made lots of impact?
We recently worked on a project to add real-time capabilities into a statistical counter system we use for abuse detection. It was a very exciting project for many reasons, firstly because it helped our integrity teams internally to detect attacks much more quickly, and secondly because it had a lot of interesting concurrency challenges which were fun to work through.
How has Facebook developed you personally and professionally?
I joined Facebook as a manager. I've been an engineering manager for six years or so at this stage, and so when I joined I thought it'd be similar to joining other companies as an engineering manager. I was so wrong. Learning about how engineering management works at Facebook proved to be a big challenge, simply because the standards Facebook has for engineering management are so different to what I've experienced elsewhere. For example, Facebook management is almost entirely supportive - you don't get anything done here by trying to tell people what to do. You get stuff done by talking to people. I've seen this at other companies but at Facebook that need for collaboration is pervasive throughout the entire company at all levels.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was the power of vulnerability. My previous experiences taught me to show no weakness and get everything done under my own steam. As I acclimated to the Facebook culture I learned that here, asking for help, being open about your own weaknesses and blind spots, and sharing your uncertainty helps you to get the feedback you need to do a really great job. That was a hard pattern to break, but I think I'm a lot more effective now that I've broken it.
How would you describe the London office?
I've worked at Facebook London for almost three years now, and I've been excited to see the site grow from a small core of engineers starting up the site to Facebook's biggest engineering base outside the US. This growth has brought interesting projects to London, and with those projects a whole lot of talented engineers and engineering managers. We've grown into a first-class engineering office delivering on a wide range of impactful projects. It's been inspiring and gratifying to be a part of that growth.
What are your favourite things about Facebook London?
- The way that everyone you see walking around has a smile on their face and a friendly word for you - it's a genuinely friendly office.
- The close-knit community of engineering managers that we have here - there's always someone around for feedback or advice when I need it.
What do you like to do to wind down?
I spend a lot of my time gaming when I'm not working. I got my Nintendo Switch on launch day and found myself totally glued to Breath of the Wild. It's great working at a company where my out-of-work passions can be shared with my colleagues. We have a Mario Kart league in the London office, for example. I've never won the cup (some of my colleagues are insanely good) but one day I will!
We're Hiring into Facebook London
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