Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

I despise posts like these. I hate being so negative about it, but it doesn't <i>say</i> anything. "Facebook has smart employees. Facebook wants you to learn new things. Facebook has impact." None of it is novel or interesting.<p>I wish there were more of a culture of insider writing while the events were going on. When Facebook pushed Questions and then retracted it, I'd love to see a blog post about "Yeah, we pushed Questions because it rocked but once we shipped it everything exploded and shit went crazy. Here are the details and what we learned from it. [...]" That's far more interesting to me, and really compelling to someone looking to become a Facebook engineer.<p>Unfortunately, once you grow to a certain level, those things are no longer kosher. Plain talk is discouraged in an era of Corporate Speak. It's unfortunate.<p>But cheers on this guy's three years though.

Interesting, but hard to consider a "look back" posted on an official Facebook blog as anything but necessarily whitewashed. (Not knocking.)

The "break things" part of "move fast and break things" is something Google could learn a bit from. (Speaking as a Googler.)<p>We're great at adding 9s of reliability, not as great at sacrificing reliability for progress. You can only move so fast when everything <i>must work.</i><p>This is the liability I guess of having a huge launch audience for even minor products.

Wow, Facebook's site says Facebook is a good place to work?

One question I would have is, "how are things different now?"<p>A lot could look similar on the face of it, but the company has grown so much - in users, mission, employees - that that same experience may not apply at present, even if highly recognizable components remain.

I just passed the 3 year mark not too long ago, I wish I felt like that about my time where I am. What an experience that must be to come in at that time in Facebook and come from an amazing place such as Google too.

awesome post, until he calls the folks he manages "rockstars." can we please all just move past that ridiculous cliche??

For me this was the first (real/substantial?) blog post i've read on Facebook. Just throwing that out there.