Jocelyn Goldfein: Deep Inside Facebook [Entire Talk]

TL;DR

Facebook's culture is engineered deliberately, from unfinished ceilings and open desks with no offices to slogans like 'move fast and break things' and 'this journey is 1% finished.' The environment keeps employees hungry and humble, never complacent. As Goldfein puts it, culture is simply the behaviors a company chooses to reward and punish.

Transcript

So, Jocelyn, welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Why don't you tell us - start out by telling us a little bit about your career path from a Stanford student to a Director of Engineering at Facebook. Well, I could probably spend the entire lecture just answering this question. When I was a student, I really had absolutely no idea what I wanted ... Read More

Key Insights

• Culture is the set of behaviors you reward and punish, according to a Stanford business professor Goldfein cites. People observe their surroundings, mimic behaviors they believe lead to success, and avoid those they think lead to failure.
• Physical space shapes culture on a gut level. Facebook's concrete floors, unfinished ceilings, and open desks bypass cynicism and signal 'we are not finished' straight to the hindbrain, reinforcing that the company has not yet won.
• Facebook has no private offices, not even for Mark Zuckerberg. The open layout with writing on the walls and posters reflects a deliberate design meant to prevent employees from feeling complacent or comfortable.
• Facebook was born out of disruption, trying things, failing, and trying harder. Goldfein says the company is not afraid of failure and keeps taking risks, though it does not set out to fail.
• Facebook is described as the most humble successful company Goldfein has known. It does not take success for granted, believing users choose to be there and could just as easily leave if the service fails to deliver.
• Managing engineers was the career fit that clicked for Goldfein. She found management to be social engineering, solving structural and systems problems of the human kind alongside technology problems, drawing on her Symbolic Systems and HCI background.
• Goldfein grew with VMware from 350 people in 2003 to over 10,000 when she left in 2010, joining as a manager and leaving as a Vice President. VMware doubled revenue and headcount every year for four to five years.
• Career growth came from focusing on impact rather than promotions. Goldfein says she never asked where her next promotion would come from; by trying to have the most impact on her team and users, her career took care of itself.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is Facebook's engineering culture like?

Facebook's culture centers on staying hungry and humble while never fearing failure. Goldfein describes unfinished ceilings, concrete floors, open desks with no offices, and writing on the walls alongside slogans like 'move fast and break things' and 'this journey is 1% finished.' The environment is designed to keep employees from feeling complacent, comfortable, or like they have already won, because a competitor could always come eat their lunch tomorrow.

Q: How does a company deliberately create its culture?

Goldfein says culture cannot simply be imagined and then created; it arises from many small things. Citing a Stanford business professor, she explains culture is the behaviors you reward and punish, because people mimic behaviors they think lead to success and avoid those tied to failure. Leaders must show which behaviors they want, and physical space is a powerful tool that communicates values on a gut level, bypassing cynicism to reach the hindbrain directly.

Q: Why does Facebook not have private offices?

Facebook has no offices for anyone, including Mark Zuckerberg, as part of a deliberate cultural design. The open space with desks everywhere, writing on the walls, unfinished ceilings, and concrete floors is meant to keep employees from feeling luxurious or complacent. Goldfein explains this environment sneaks past human defenses and tells people on a gut level that the work is not finished and success is not to be taken for granted.

Q: What was Jocelyn Goldfein's career path before Facebook?

After graduating from Stanford with a Computer Science major and a Symbolic Systems minor concentrated in HCI, Goldfein joined Trilogy in Austin, Texas. She then co-founded a startup with three friends, doing everything from coding and testing to hiring and stocking the fridge while working 120-hour weeks. She next joined VMware as a manager in 2003 and left as a Vice President in 2010 before moving to Facebook.

Q: Why did Jocelyn Goldfein decide to work at Facebook?

Goldfein wanted to jump from enterprise to consumer technology and saw Facebook as the place to learn the consumer space. Although she had never voluntarily joined a company that large, Facebook felt more like a startup than the small startups she was considering. Mark Zuckerberg struck her as by far the most impressive founder she met, and her gut told her Facebook was clearly what she wanted to do, so she went despite it not checking her original boxes.

Q: How did Jocelyn Goldfein discover that management was her right career path?

Goldfein realized management fit her when she started managing engineers at her startup and everything clicked. She had always been fascinated by people as well as technology, having minored in Symbolic Systems under advisor Terry Winograd with a concentration in HCI, taking psychology and linguistics classes. She found management was largely social engineering, understanding what made people and teams tick, solving difficult structural and systems problems of the human kind alongside technical ones.

Q: What was Jocelyn Goldfein's experience at VMware?

Goldfein joined VMware in 2003 when it had 350 people and left in 2010 when it exceeded 10,000, rising from manager to Vice President. VMware doubled revenue and headcount every year for four or five years in a row. She describes it as getting on a rocket, and found it exciting that customers were geeks who loved VMware because it let them solve problems they could not solve otherwise, which felt transformative and like science fiction.

Q: How does Jocelyn Goldfein approach managing her own career?

Goldfein says she never consciously managed her career or walked into a boss's office asking where her next promotion would come from. Instead she focused on having the most impact she could on the company, her team, and their users. She believes that by simply trying to have impact, her career took care of itself, which is how she rose from manager to Vice President at VMware without deliberately chasing titles.

Summary

Jocelyn Goldfein, the former Director of Engineering at Facebook, shares her career journey and insights about the culture at Facebook in this video. She discusses the importance of being open, taking risks, and embracing failure. She also talks about the on-boarding process at Facebook and the qualities they look for in hiring software engineers. Additionally, she shares her perspective on women in tech and balancing a career and family.

Questions & Answers

Q: Can you tell us about your career path from a Stanford student to a Director of Engineering at Facebook?

Jocelyn shares her career path, starting with her major in Computer Science in college. She talks about her first job at Trilogy, co-founding a startup, and eventually joining VMware. She highlights her growth within VMware and her decision to join Facebook.

Q: How would you describe the culture at Facebook?

Jocelyn describes the culture at Facebook as open, fast-paced, and humble. She talks about the physical space, the slogans on the walls, and the emphasis on being open and not taking success for granted. She emphasizes that everyone is expected to be informed, connected, and empowered to make good decisions.

Q: How important is the space to the culture at Facebook?

Jocelyn explains that the space at Facebook is deliberately designed to reflect and reinforce the culture. The open space layout encourages communication and collaboration, although they also provide private spaces for focused work. She highlights the importance of openness and information sharing in their culture.

Q: What is the on-boarding process like at Facebook?

Jocelyn explains that the on-boarding process at Facebook is called "bootcamp." It is a six-week program where new hires work on fixing bugs and implementing small features across the site. They attend lectures and have a mentor to guide them. The goal is to give them exposure to different parts of the company before they join a specific team.

Q: What qualities do you look for when hiring software engineers?

Jocelyn emphasizes the importance of technical skills and the ability to write code. They look for analytical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and the potential to think about hard systems issues. They also value enthusiasm, passion, and being a nice person to work with. Additionally, they have started interviewing for creativity and intuition in order to identify potential innovators.

Q: Is the culture at Facebook supportive of women?

Jocelyn believes that the culture at Facebook is supportive of women. She mentions the open conversations about gender diversity and the efforts to create connections and support networks for technical women. She highlights the importance of having the conversation and acknowledges that women have different perspectives and desires, but the overall environment is supportive and empowering.

Q: How do you balance a professional career and having a family?

Jocelyn shares her personal experience of having a supportive husband who became a stay-at-home dad. She emphasizes the importance of marrying someone who supports your career, and the willingness to outsource household tasks. She also advises focusing on things you are passionate about and ruthlessly eliminating time spent on things that don't matter.

Q: What happens when someone at Facebook really breaks something?

Jocelyn shares her own experience of accidentally causing a disruption in the bug database and email system. She explains how the teams came together to fix the problem and support her. She highlights the willingness to take risks and face the consequences of failure as part of the culture at Facebook.

Q: Where do you draw the line between encouraging failure and when it becomes too much?

Jocelyn explains that there are certain bright lines, such as ethical violations, that will not be tolerated. In terms of failure related to innovation and taking risks, they focus on helping people solve the problem and learn from their mistakes. Repetitive mistakes and failures without learning or growth would be a concern, but overall, they encourage failing fast and iterating quickly.

Q: What advice do you wish someone had given you when you were a student at Stanford?

Jocelyn wishes she had been advised to be brave and not worry too much about finding her passion. She would have encouraged herself to embrace coding and not be afraid of it, as it is a valuable skill and foundation for many careers in technology. She also advises living in the present and not wasting time on things that don't matter.

Takeaways

Jocelyn highlights the importance of being open, taking risks, and embracing failure in the culture at Facebook. By encouraging innovation and accepting the consequences of failure, Facebook enables its employees to try new things and make bold decisions. They value technical skills, creativity, and enthusiasm in their hiring process. Jocelyn also discusses the supportiveness of the Facebook culture for women and the importance of finding a balance between professional and personal life. Overall, she emphasizes the need to be brave, embrace coding, and focus on what truly matters.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Jocelyn Goldfein describes her path from a Stanford CS major with a Symbolic Systems minor to Director of Engineering at Facebook. She started at Trilogy in Austin, co-founded a startup working 120-hour weeks, then joined VMware, discovering that managing engineers was her true calling.

• At VMware, Goldfein joined in 2003 when it had 350 people and left in 2010 when it exceeded 10,000, rising from manager to Vice President. The company doubled revenue and headcount yearly, and its geek customers loved a product that felt like science fiction to them.

• Goldfein left VMware to jump from enterprise to consumer, joining Facebook at nearly 2,000 people because it had a startup's culture and Mark Zuckerberg impressed her as the strongest founder she met. She frames Facebook's deliberately unfinished space as a tool for keeping the company hungry and humble.