By Meta Careers
Editor’s note: Unprecedented times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged us to find new ways to stay connected and build community across our teams. While we're adjusting to recent changes, we're also reflecting on some of the special experiences that make the culture at each Meta office unique. The following post features quotes from Henry B., a software engineer based in Singapore, about how he has created a career path centered on his passions, curiosity, and a desire to bring people closer together. Learn more about our engineering opportunities here.
Many people dream about having a career that’s centered on their passions and hobbies. Henry B., a software engineer at Meta, has been fascinated by computers for as long as he can remember. Years before he graduated from university, where software engineering was a popular career path, Henry was editing configuration files to increase the amount of available RAM so his video games were able to run.
“I’ve loved computers and programming since I was young,” he reminisces. “I love creating things, building them, deep diving into different aspects of infrastructure, and finding out how things work. I truly enjoy programming, particularly software engineering, where it’s not just an exact science but an art to a certain extent.”
Now, he gets to apply his curiosity each day as a member of the Business Integrity Software Engineering team. The team ensures trustworthy connections between people, businesses and Meta. They discover, assess and manage risks related to Ads, Audience Network and Commerce to keep misleading ads off of the Facebook platform.
“We have various policies and tools for advertisements on Facebook, which are set by the Business Integrity team to help govern political ads, scams, e-commerce, and other categories,” Henry explains. “When we combine our intelligent machine learning models and our human review teams, we’re able to identify whether an ad is good or bad based on these policies.”
In addition to his curiosity and passion for solving problems, Henry has embraced his knack for uncovering innovative solutions in his role. This skill is critical for his work, as his team must think creatively to anticipate threats and manage them. “We can take down an ad account, but the bad actors will create new ones,” he notes. “We have to constantly keep up with trends, preempt upcoming new threats, and improve the tools we have to manage the potential threats. My colleagues are always watching for threats from other social platforms to see how they might affect Facebook.”
Meet a few members of Meta’s Asia Pacific Business Integrity Software Engineering team in Singapore.
The team’s strong focus on their customers, businesses using Facebook, inspired them to move from Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park to Singapore. “It’s an advantage to be closer to consumers in Asia, support the operations team here, and better manage the technical side of things. Singapore is a new engineering office and we’re growing our presence here,” Henry says. “There’s still a lot to do.”
Based in Singapore since earlier last year, Henry is involved each step of the way, helping plan the roadmap, setting objectives and outlining plans to achieve them, identifying challenges, and liaising between groups to solve problems together. “There are different ways of coding an application to make it more reusable, to make it more manageable and scalable. That’s what I love to do, and Meta has given me the opportunity to do it on a large scale where the problems are more complex.”
The freedom to be yourself at Meta
For Henry, doing meaningful work means more than excelling in his role as a software engineer. It’s also about connecting with his team members and building community at work.
The Pride@ Meta Resource Group holds a special place in his heart. “This community is for employees who self-identify as queer, gender-nonconforming, trans, bisexual, gay, or lesbian, as well as employees who consider themselves allies to the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m thankful and proud to have the opportunity to make a difference.”
Henry calls out his involvement in company-wide events during Pride month as a time when he was especially proud to contribute. The events he helped organize drew interest from Meta team members and their families, as well as strong engagement by LGBTQIA+ staff and the ally community. They also provided a space for LGBTQIA+ employees and allies to celebrate Pride month and connect with each other.
“Being yourself is important because that’s when you can do your best work. Meta’s policies encourage us to express ourselves without fear, and to be happy to speak up. This provides us with diverse perspectives. We have a bottom-up culture, there’s a lot of autonomy, and generally, you’re empowered to do what you feel is best,” Henry shares.
Getting hired: Honing hard and soft skills
Henry has advice for aspiring software engineers who hope to follow in his footsteps and land a role at Meta. First, he suggests developing strong programming skills and problem-solving abilities. From there, he says, it’s all about passion. “When you’re passionate about something, you want to keep learning. Passion will keep you going, as it has for me.”
The ability to communicate and collaborate are paramount too, and Henry stresses the importance of soft skills. “At a small company, being able to program well really matters because most of what you do is coding. But at a large company like Meta, you need to collaborate with different teams, make sure your goals are aligned, and communicate clearly.”
Last, but certainly not least, Henry encourages anyone who is interested in software engineering at Meta to simply apply. “Don’t be afraid to apply to Meta for a position,” he offers. “In the past, I doubted I could be hired because it’s such a big company. I asked myself, ‘Why would they want me?’ But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”
Engineering careers in Singapore
We are growing our engineering teams in Singapore, which will serve as Meta’s engineering hub for the Asia Pacific region. Learn more about our engineering opportunities.
This post, originally published on April 17, 2020, was updated on July 8, 2022, to reflect our shift to Meta and new details about team members, roles and responsibilities.
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