Sep 19 2017
A Data Engineer Shares 5 Reasons Why Facebook is the Place to Grow Your Tech Career
By Meta Careers
Data engineer Supraja's love for tech began in high school when she was inspired by her computer science teacher. “She was so passionate about what she was teaching that she pushed everyone in class to do their best. I discovered that I really enjoyed computer science, especially the problem solving process. I loved breaking down bigger problems into smaller ones so that they could be solved in a structured way. Thanks to her, I chose to pursue computer science and that's how my career in tech started.” Supraja recalls.
At Facebook, Supraja and her team work on big data technologies to help turn data into valuable and actionable insights for better decision making and game changing strategies. “My team works on diverse projects like building internal web products, reporting solutions that provide business insights, and developing scalable databases and frameworks to build web applications faster.”
In this issue of #BeTheNerd, we asked Supraja what has helped her to grow professionally, and she shares five reasons why Facebook is the place to develop your career in tech.
(1) Move Fast
When I joined Facebook, what surprised me most was how fast things move. Many engineers start publishing code right after they go through orientation. I've never imagined that I could push code to the Facebook newsfeed only after a simple review process in my first week of working here!
There is very little room for anyone to be complacent. Just when you think you have gotten comfortable with what you're doing, you find yourself entrusted with bigger projects that need you to pick up new technologies and hit the ground running quickly. Working here has been an amazing trajectory where there's almost always a new problem to solve. Sure, I'll never be fully comfortable in my role, but I relish the challenge of solving problems and the learning process - it's an amazing experience!
(2) Builder Culture
Facebook holds frequent hackathons where people go and hack on their ideas. It's amazing how many teams have originated from a hackathon idea. I have seen quite a few instances where hackathon projects have quickly evolved to become full fledged products with around five or six engineers working on it. The Facebook 'like' button was one such idea that became a core product of Facebook. An internal visualization tool and a data quality framework are some of the more recent hackathon ideas that have been transformed into full fledged products. If you have an amazing idea and the passion for building it, all it takes is a proof of concept to mobilize support within the company. This encapsulates Facebook's builder culture.
(3) Challenges of Scale
I joined Facebook fresh from university and had only dealt with class room size datasets in school previously. Naturally, I was mind blown when I experienced the various ways that Facebook scales its products. I work on full stack development, which involves writing pipelines that turn and transform complex data, evaluating multiple databases and picking the one that best fits a use case and building an interactive web UI. The scale of data is massive - we're working on petabytes of data every single day, and it's super interesting to think about how you can take that data, transform it and provide actionable feedback to end users - all with sub-second performance!
(4) Impact and Autonomy
All projects at Facebook are measured and prioritized in terms of their impact. This ensures that we spend our time solving the most important problems. It's an amazing feeling to see the impact of your work through either having moved a metric or changed a product or behavior. Engineers are given autonomy to drive their projects as they deem fit. This sense of responsibility and accountability inspires people to put their best foot forward and produce great quality work.
What also helps to drive impact and autonomy is the open culture at Facebook. We can easily navigate Facebook's code repository, look at various projects and draw inspiration from them. The weekly Q&A sessions with Mark Zuckerberg and the leadership team is a testament to how open Facebook is. These sessions provide a glimpse into what has been occupying the leadership's time and also provides a podium for employees to ask tough questions.
Another aspect of our open culture at Facebook is our internal groups on Workplace (https://www.facebook.com/workplace). Whenever you have questions or need help with almost any issue, you can easily put up a post about it and fellow Facebookers across the world will always come forward to help. This makes me feel like I'm a part of a bigger and inclusive global team.
(5) Amazing People, Amazing Team
I absolutely love my team and they are the reason I'm excited about coming to work everyday. Everyone is helpful, smart and passionate about what they do. There is lot of scope to learn and explore in data engineering. I've also found many mentors - both men and women - at Facebook. They are the people I go to for career advice and because of them, I've learned to trust in my abilities, and not be afraid of taking on bigger and bolder projects. Facebook encourages people to be bold, try new things, and not be afraid of failing. In fact, we're encouraged to learn from past mistakes and share what we've learnt with others. It is this level of trust and support along with a safe environment to fail fast and learn that I attribute most of my growth to.
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