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Meet three of our data scientists based in London. We asked Yu-Lan, Joe and Emily to uncover what a data scientist embedded within our product building teams do at Facebook; where they self reflect on their experiences and journey so far.
Yu-Lan
Tell me a little bit about your career journey at Facebook
When I joined Facebook, I initially spent 2 weeks doing bootcamp with fellow data scientists and engineers. During bootcamp, you attend classes ranging from the tech-stack we use to how we do experimentation, and you also get some small engineering-related tasks. Afterwards, the data scientists go to Menlo Park for a 2 week datacamp, where the classes were specific to our roles. Throughout this 4 week program, I was assigned a mentor who helped me a lot with my tasks, and introduced me to lots of people. Sometimes when I get stuck, I will still reach out to him for help.
Most of the data scientists do not have a pre-allocated team when joining Facebook, so bootcamp and datacamp are also the perfect opportunity to talk to the different teams that are looking for data scientists, so that at the end of the 4 weeks, you can chose to join a team that matches your skills and preferences. In my case, I had the option to join Protect & Care (PAC), Workplace or Ads and I ended up joining Ads after my 4 weeks of on-boarding.What was your path to joining Facebook?
After graduating in Applied Mathematics from UCL (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium), I wanted to put my skills to use while also discovering different industries, so I joined a management consulting firm in Brussels. After a year, my partner moved to London for a job opportunity, so I decided to follow him and started as an analyst in a customer-science company.
A few months later, I met some recruiters by chance and thought it would be a good opportunity to take my career to the next level. I interviewed for a couple of roles and one day they asked me if I'd be interested in Facebook and my first thought was “no way am I going to get in!”. My partner convinced me to try nevertheless, so I did. My first interview was a video conference with someone from the Menlo Park office. Afterwards, I got invited to the London office for an on-site interview. I remember I was quite stressed but the interviewers were good at making you feel at ease. One particular example of this was my product interpretation interview, which felt so much like a discussion that I kept asking myself when my interviewer was going to ask me a question! What has been the stand out moment for you while working at Facebook?
Since I joined, I have been amazed at how passionate everyone is at making Facebook better for people.
We not only drive decisions based on data but we actually go out there and talk to the people who use our products, which is exciting as we have over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook! To achieve that, data science works together with user experience (UX) research to find users for whom our product or idea might be particularly relevant. This helps us to get one-on-one feedback from our users which adds a qualitative view to the numbers. We invite the people who use our products to the office to try out new prototypes and ask them specific questions or we go to a region that has a very specific problem to try and understand the underlying drivers of it.Can you take us through a day in the life of a data scientist?
There is no typical day at Facebook, our work is so varied! Our role consists of a mix of short-term and long-term projects with a product team. So I usually spend a couple of days a week working with the engineers on ongoing experiments and I regularly look at our product metrics to understanding how our work is impacting them. On top of that, I help setting our medium and long term strategy by looking into our data to find out where our opportunities are and how we can improve our product.
Besides my product role, I also spend some time organising social events both for my product team and for our analytics team, which includes data scientists, data engineers and product quality analysts. I really love organising these kinds of events, they're always loads of fun!What made you choose data science?
I love analytics and strongly believe making well-informed data-driven decisions are very important to businesses. Being a data scientist at Facebook is the perfect role for me: I get to both use and improve my technical skills by doing lots of interesting analyses, while also communicating findings with broader teams and driving change based upon my recommendations. Another bonus for me is that I get to interact a lot with different teams across the globe.
Hear more from Yu-Lan in this video
Joe
What was your path to joining Facebook?
I did Economics at university which had a lot of statistics, since then I've worked across Product, Marketing and BI in a range of types and sizes of tech businesses, so I come to the data science role from a more product orientated background than pure stats/programming. Most recently I was at a startup called Dojo in London as the only data person. All of my tech knowledge , SQL & R is self taught or learned on the job.
Tell us a little about yourself and your role at Facebook?
I'm a data scientist on the Workplace team. Workplace is like having your own version of Facebook within your company, and can completely change how a business communicates and shares information. It's a relatively new product so there's a big variety of work to do and problems to solve. I'm responsible for making sure each of the product teams are building the right things and going in the correct direction using data.
What is one thing that most people don't know about being a data scientist at Facebook?
The autonomy and trust in me to manage my own time and decide what I should be working on is something I wasn't expecting. Nothing is prescribed and I'm expected to look at all the areas I work on and decide where I can add the most value. It means I'm always working on what I think is most important for the team and never frustrated by the work I'm doing.
What is something that most people don't know about your team?
Most people are aware of how Facebook brings the world closer together in people's social lives, but I work for the Workplace team who are trying to do this in people's professional lives. The Workplace team is a great example of a flagship London born product with truly global reach and impact. The vast majority of the team is in London, we all sit together and it's got a fast moving start up atmosphere with the benefit of some of the best tech infrastructure in the world.
How did you find the interview process and what advice would you give people interviewing at Facebook?
I found the interview process much more relaxed and conversational than I expected. Working through problems with different data scientists from around the business and brainstorming solutions, with time to go into each question in detail. It was interesting to find out how Facebook were thinking about different products and I felt like the interviewers were there to help me through rather than catch me out. I'd advise anyone applying to think about why Facebook makes decisions, what it's trying to achieve and what data would go into deciding on what to build and measuring whether it was a success.
Emily
Tell us a little bit about your career journey at Facebook.
I've been at Facebook for almost 3 years. For the first 2.5 years, I worked from headquarters in Menlo Park and transferred to the London office 6 months ago, mainly because I thought it would be fun to live in London. In that time I have worked on two different product teams, the first focusing on women's safety in India and the second focusing on small advertisers in emerging markets. My favourite part about working here is how I constantly feel challenged and am continually growing. After 3 years, I still don't see this growth slowing down anytime in the foreseeable future.
What has been the stand out moment for you while working Facebook?
The people at Facebook really, really care. They care about the product, they care about doing the right thing for people, and they care about each other. I vividly recall a time a couple years ago when I was struggling with a new direction our team was taking. The director of product management on our team (one of the most senior people in our organisation) pulled me aside one day and just said “I can tell you're not as excited about your work, and it seems like something's going on, do you want to talk about it?”. I really felt cared for in that moment and this is representative of a lot of the people I've worked with in my time here.
What impact have you had since joining?
The most impactful project I have worked on is the profile picture guard, a product that protects profile photos from being downloaded and misused, which is a widespread concern for many women in India and other parts of the world. This product was the result of many research trips to India and several data analyses to uncover what kind of photo misuse women in India were facing. Sheryl Sandberg shared a video promoting our product when it launched!
What's one thing that most people don't know about being a data scientist at Facebook?
I think one thing that is very different about data science is Facebook is the amount of autonomy and influence we have. Facebook is not a place where you come in and write queries for other people every day. It's entirely up to us to decide what is the most important thing to work on. We are very valued by the product team for our input and have a strong voice in influencing the direction of the product with data. Product managers, engineers, marketing managers and designers all look to data scientists to help them make decisions every day.
What's your favourite part of being a data scientist?
I enjoy the leadership and influence in my role. The data is my tool to understand the product and make recommendations on what we should do next, and my team relies on me to provide them with trustworthy guidance. I enjoy having the opportunity to be a leader on the product and help push the team to success.
What are your three favourite things about Facebook's London office?
1. The people in the office are very social here, there are a lot of fun people and we frequently have lunch together or do things outside of work. This really makes work fun.
2. I enjoy that the office is smaller and more intimate than Menlo Park headquarters. It's nice to recognise people around even if you don't work with them, and it leads to a friendly and relaxed environment.
3. I also have found it's empowering to be part of a smaller team of data scientists. Being part of a smaller organisation means I feel more empowered to take on more responsibility, mentor others, and help grow our organisation.
Outside of Facebook, tell us a little about how you’ve settled into London and what have been the highlights so far.
I really enjoy living in London. My husband and I found a great apartment in Highgate, and we love living in an area that's a bit quieter and more green than central London. We have already traveled to Paris, Budapest, Berlin and Dublin in our time here, and have trips planned to Wales, Scotland and Portugal before the end of the year! Coming from the US, I love being able to access Europe so easily. There is also tons to enjoy in London, and I love having people visit us so we can show them our favourite things here.
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