By Meta Careers
Meet Shachar, a data engineering manager working on our ads team. We asked him to take us through a day in the life of a data engineer, how leading teams is different at Facebook, and why someone would want to join the team.
Take us through a day in the life of a data engineer
The best way to be a productive data engineer is to always ask yourself “are we building the right products for people?”. There are so many ways to answer that question. If we could speak directly with all the people who use our products and learn from their experiences it would be ideal, but with over 2 billion monthly active people using Facebook, it's just not realistic and we have to find other ways.
Anonymized data helps us build empathy with people at a large scale, and allows us to research and understand how they are using our products, what works for them, and where can we improve. Understanding data at our scale requires a lot of engineering work. We work in cross functional teams (data scientists, product managers, software engineers, designers etc) and together we think of new ways to tackle and approach challenges.
For me, the most exciting thing is the fact that most of the problems we are trying to solve don't have a reference implementation, we are essentially the first ones attempting to solve these problems at Facebook scale. Because of that, we have to remain creative and always think of new ways to approach problems, both methodologically and technically.
Over the years, Facebook has built an amazing suite of tools for data engineering. We share these to open-source and contribute to the community when we believe other other people and companies can benefit from them.
Tell us more about open-source in Facebook
Internally, everything is open-source. Everyone has access to all source code. In most other companies I have seen, different teams literally own different parts of the code-base, and you cannot get any changes done, unless somebody does the labour for you. That can cause lots of friction and slows things down.
At Facebook, one of the most important principals that guide us is the need to move fast and that's why the notion of code ownership has been completely eliminated.
On your first day you get access to the entire code-base and from that moment if you see something you don't like or you need to make changes to be able to make progress in your project, you are empowered to change it.
What makes leading teams at Facebook different to other places you have worked?
People at Facebook are extremely autonomous and empowered to figure out what they need to work on at any given moment. Because of that, and because we organise ourselves in cross functional teams, each member of my team works in a cross functional team that develops products. Meanwhile, as a manager I get to spend more time on coaching and growing people, plan for the longer term and improve the way data engineering is done.
Facebook's mission is to bring the world closer together, what role does your team have in this?
Bringing the world closer together has lots of aspects, and a lot of that is about growing communities. Over the years we have seen amazing stories where communities that started on Facebook turned into amazing real-life relationships, in ways we could have never predicted. There are some amazing examples in Mark's communities event, which you can see here.
From my perspective, the ads organisation has been aligned with this mission very well. Our mission is to make meaningful connections between people and businesses and I believe that when businesses thrive, communities thrive. A great example is a coffee shop owner I met in London, who spends just £600 a month on advertising, all on Facebook. When I asked him whether that works for him, he said that that every time he sees a new customer, he asks them how they heard about his place and many of them immediately respond “I saw it on Facebook!”. He says that it's the only way he could grow his business and it allowed him to open additional branches and expand.
When his business is successful, he can employ additional people, and his coffee shops become a central point where people in the local communities can meet.
What is something that most people don't know about your team
How diverse it is - we are a team of ten people now, each person is a different nationality. Every day I learn a new things from my team, from Liverpool slang and Polish proverbs, to how the same hand-gestures differ between cultures (I love that one!). Diversity is core to our business here at Facebook, including diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and ideas. It enables us to build better products and make better decisions.
What's your favorite part of being a data engineering manager?
I feel like we are at the leading edge of data having impact in business and on decision making.
Data engineers are required to:
- have great product sense and ability to “reconstruct” the full business view that we are losing by the new nature of our architecture
- build solutions that distribute and scale indefinitely
- be involved in the software design, develop tools and frameworks etc.
I personally feel like we are just seeing the tip of it and it's an amazing position to be in.
You relocated, tell us about your experience and how you settled in to London
For me, personally, the relocation has been an amazing experience. London is such a cosmopolitan city and I got the opportunity to work with people who couldn't be more different than me and challenged me in ways I have never been challenged before. Right now, my team consists of ten people, from ten different countries!
Other than that, from a city that once consisted mostly of traditional financial institutions (banks, insurance companies, hedge funds etc.), London is turning into an amazing tech hub with a great tech community. Taking part in the revolution at such an early stage, and engaging with the local community, has created loads of opportunities for me. These are very exciting times to be here.
Why would someone want to join your team and Facebook?
I can speak for myself and the reasons why I joined Facebook:
- I'm very passionate about the mission of Facebook as a company and was a user of many of the products myself prior to joining
- We're a small, close knit team, and still a fairly small company, yet we're helping billions of people make meaningful connections across countries and cultures, I feel very lucky to have been given an opportunity to contribute to this mission.
What advice do you have for people to prepare for a data engineering interview in Facebook?
My only advice is to prepare. I have seen so many people who come to the interviews unprepared and it shows.
The interview process is fair, people want you to be successful, your recruiter is your best friend and sends you a lot of preparation materials, both reading materials and others that will help you understand the process and what to expect in each and every interview.
Don't take it lightly, brush up on things you may have forgotten, learn more about Facebook as a company and try one or two of our products you haven't tried before.
We're growing! Check out some opportunities here
Stay Connected!
- Learn about life at Facebook on Instagram via @facebooklife.
- Join our Facebook Careers Talent Community Page for the latest updates.
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