5 ms·

Well, let's see. Today I worked 8:30 to 5:30 or so. I spent some time cleaning out emails. I did two interviews (which is unusual). I reviewed several changes t

by lbrandy 10y ago

Well, let's see. Today I worked 8:30 to 5:30 or so. I spent some time cleaning out emails. I did two interviews (which is unusual). I reviewed several changes to central C++ libraries in the codebase. I spent awhile with some people debating how to improve our ability to turn on new compiler warnings (or other diagnostics) on a huge codebase and get them all fixed so we can eventually add them to -Werror. I looked at some crash monitoring and debugged a core dump. I committed one small fix of a crash. I read reddit for no more than 15 minutes. I had a free burrito for lunch. Not a great day, all things considered, but.. free burrito. I suspect some of the answers to your questions will vary depending on the org you are interested in (ie infra vs product). And also there's lots of FB engineers who frequent HN so I suspect you'd get answers if you had specific questions.

evincarofautumn 10y ago
Yup, sounds like a regular Wednesday in infra. Background: this guy was my manager when I was at FB. My day was similar, something in the realm of 10:30 to 6:30—hours are flexible, but there’s some accountability for meetings, and you generally want to overlap as much as possible with your coworkers. Typically I would deal with emails, do code review (you can review pretty much anybody’s code if you want), write new code, do the weekly or bi-weekly release if it was my turn to be on call, sometimes pair-program, and of course enjoy the free food and facilities (arcade, gym). The software development flow (task management, tooling, reviews, testing, deployment, monitoring, etc.) is all very well polished, and I miss it at Microsoft.
- patmcguire 10y ago
  What does it for code to be approved at FB? Who can approve?
  - lbrandy 10y ago
    All code needs to be reviewed and approved. The official technical rule is something along the lines of anyone can approve anyone else's change (to anything) so long as they both aren't interns. Socially, it ends up being more like "someone who maintains and cares about this code should approve it" almost all of the time.
    - evgen 10y ago
      Not sure how it is on the prod side, but certain chunks of infra may also have designated "owners" and you needed to have someone on that list approve the diff to land it (e.g. rando engineer can't get his buddy to approve a diff that changes the push process...unless that buddy is chuckr or someone more heavily armed than chuckr)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- dandr01d 10y ago
  > The software development flow (task management, tooling, reviews, testing, deployment, monitoring, etc.) is all very well polished, and I miss it at Microsoft. Confused by this. The flow is good at FB, but better and missed at MSFT? Or vice versa. Or they're both good?
  - tru3n0rth 10y ago
    He/she is saying that the flow is better at Facebook than Microsoft.
dllthomas 10y ago
My free meal today tried for a southern theme. The shrimp & grits was really good. The vegan dirty quinoa was perplexing. Not FB, mind you.
zerr 10y ago
So never needed to "invert a binary tree" on the actual job? :) Btw, your day sounds like a day in a typical software company. During your interviews did you ask relevant (to the job) questions or usual "Google like" CS riddles?

by lbrandy 10y ago

evincarofautumn 10y ago

Yup, sounds like a regular Wednesday in infra. Background: this guy was my manager when I was at FB. My day was similar, something in the realm of 10:30 to 6:30—hours are flexible, but there’s some accountability for meetings, and you generally want to overlap as much as possible with your coworkers. Typically I would deal with emails, do code review (you can review pretty much anybody’s code if you want), write new code, do the weekly or bi-weekly release if it was my turn to be on call, sometimes pair-program, and of course enjoy the free food and facilities (arcade, gym). The software development flow (task management, tooling, reviews, testing, deployment, monitoring, etc.) is all very well polished, and I miss it at Microsoft.

patmcguire 10y ago
What does it for code to be approved at FB? Who can approve?
- lbrandy 10y ago
  All code needs to be reviewed and approved. The official technical rule is something along the lines of anyone can approve anyone else's change (to anything) so long as they both aren't interns. Socially, it ends up being more like "someone who maintains and cares about this code should approve it" almost all of the time.
  - evgen 10y ago
    Not sure how it is on the prod side, but certain chunks of infra may also have designated "owners" and you needed to have someone on that list approve the diff to land it (e.g. rando engineer can't get his buddy to approve a diff that changes the push process...unless that buddy is chuckr or someone more heavily armed than chuckr)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dandr01d 10y ago
> The software development flow (task management, tooling, reviews, testing, deployment, monitoring, etc.) is all very well polished, and I miss it at Microsoft. Confused by this. The flow is good at FB, but better and missed at MSFT? Or vice versa. Or they're both good?
- tru3n0rth 10y ago
  He/she is saying that the flow is better at Facebook than Microsoft.

dllthomas 10y ago

My free meal today tried for a southern theme. The shrimp & grits was really good. The vegan dirty quinoa was perplexing. Not FB, mind you.

zerr 10y ago

So never needed to "invert a binary tree" on the actual job? :) Btw, your day sounds like a day in a typical software company. During your interviews did you ask relevant (to the job) questions or usual "Google like" CS riddles?