We met with Rainer, a production engineering manager from Brazil who is based in Dublin and moving to our London site, to find out more about production engineering in Facebook, leading a team and what his day to day looks like.

When I started reading about production engineering I was impressed by the approach taken by Facebook to engage software engineers (usually focused on customer and back-end features) with production engineers (focused on service stability and performance).

Facebook operates at a massive scale with a variety of services, so it created an interesting model to assess how well those two teams are working together and implemented clear metrics to improve this engagement over time. The end goal is to have a service that overcomes most (if not all) issues related to performance, capacity and automation. Looking at similar companies in the industry, production engineers at Facebook offer the most flexibility and skills to reach a new level of excellence.

I currently support a production engineering team in Dublin responsible for server provisioning and OS installation. The team owns this process end-to-end, from the moment a server boots from the network, to hardware validation, storage partitioning, package installation, image restoration and firmware upgrades.

As the number of Facebook data centers around the world keeps growing and new OpenCompute server types are introduced, the team is constantly improving the existing tools to make this process more reliable, scalable and faster. It's a challenging and interesting area which gives product teams the ability to add more capacity to their services in a timely manner to keep up with user growth.

From the moment you first join Facebook, leading a team is different from any other past experience in my career. Managers attend a technical training during the first few weeks, which gives a good perspective into how the internal stack works, which tools are available and what are the most pressing technical challenges.

Once you start supporting the team, you realize that providing direction, helping set priorities and removing roadblocks are some of the most important behaviors a manager should possess. People management skills are important because managers are also expected to help engineers grow and develop their careers. This is a very different mindset compared to other companies where a manager usually just tells engineers what they should or shouldn't work on.

Finally, the company culture is by far the best one I've experienced. It provides a positive and inclusive environment that helps managers and engineers perform at their best.

A typical day would start with a few 1:1's with team members to provide them with feedback, discuss any issues they might be facing and set expectations for an ongoing project.

From there, I attend a meeting with a partner team to discuss a major roadmap item, which requires support from my team to move forward, and reach an agreement in terms of priority. This is followed by a discussion with other Production Engineering managers and the recruiting team to brainstorm ideas regarding our hiring efforts and follow-up efforts related to candidate interviews. We also discuss our active participation in numerous global technical conferences.

At the end of the day, I typically hold a meeting with new hires interested in joining the team to explain our main challenges and team goals.

Managers at Facebook have many opportunities to increase their contribution to the team as well as to the production engineering organization, and grow as a result.

This includes finding new high-impact areas to work on, investing on long term goals, mentoring senior engineers or even other managers, engaging with multiple cross-functional teams to improve engineering efficiency and product quality, leading large scale efforts to grow the organization, and so on.

I started using Linux as a hobby in the mid 90's, and began my professional career as a SysAdmin in early 2000s. During this time, I closely followed the growth of the open source movement and was able to improve my skills by contributing to multiple projects.

I was lucky enough to work for some of the biggest internet companies in Brazil and helped them deal with the explosive growth of internet users in the country – first as an engineer developing large scale systems and later as a manager supporting those teams.

After this experience, I started considering living abroad. When Facebook contacted me, I knew it was the right moment to make a leap.

Most people know about the great benefits such as free meals, ample time for vacation, and lots of support for new parents, but few people know about the relocation assistance offered to employees coming from other countries. This becomes even more important for those coming from outside the EU, which was my case.

Facebook helped me every step of the way with securing the Irish employment permit. The company also provided assistance with finding an apartment, securing the appropriate legal documents, and so on. Removing this stress and supporting me throughout my journey made my relocation process super easy.

Facebook is also very supportive and encourages engineers and managers to attend and speak at conferences around the world. For example, I will be attending a conference in Brazil later this year to help with our recruitment efforts during the event.

The messaging services (WhatsApp and Messenger) are probably my favorite ones because of their importance in my home country. Mobile data plans used to be very expensive in Brazil and this created the right incentive for them to grow there. Everyone in Brazil uses them for keeping in touch with loved ones and also for seeking help in countless support groups.

The fact that my work at Facebook directly contributes to improving these services played a major role in my decision to join the company.