Next Destination…
Today I turned in my last assignment for my Master’s Course at Carnegie Mellon University, Silicon Valley. This marks the end of an era for me. An end to the 19.5 years of my life I’ve spent in education.
The next phase of my life is going to be doing something I love, at a scale I admire, in an environment I enjoy, all packaged as a technical challenge… A job at a technology firm!
I’ve been preparing for this phase since Jan 2019 where I interviewed with Google, Yotascale, Facebook, GoPro, Pivotal, Oracle. Each of these organizations are amazing in their own special way!
I received offers from quite a few and had to make some really hard decisions but that’s all done and the verdict is…
….[Dramatic Pause]….
Whoa! Right? I’m super excited too! I will be starting my first full-time job immediately after graduating this month as a Production Engineer at the Facebook Headquarters at Menlo Park, CA.
What exactly is a Production Engineer? Facebook’s Answer Still don’t get it? Blog post coming soon..Stay tuned!
What got me excited about Facebook? The scale and outreach of Facebook.com… Don’t believe me? Type an ‘F’ in your browser’s address bar, you’ll understand.
How did I pick one? Important factors in my thought process:-
- Growth Potential– What can happen within a few years?
- Teams and Responsibility – How will I fit in the actual role? Before joining there is no way for me to get to know the team at this point but I can get enough context about the work ethics and collaboration styles at the org.
- Compensation- How does the company value my potential to contribute?
- Respect for Work/Life Balance– I have an entire website to deal with the random stuff I keep doing, I really want my workplace to respect my personal time.
- Learning Opportunity– Do I get an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone or is the institution just trying to make the most of what I am already good at?
Why only PE@Facebook? Few things that struck me as awesome in the entire process of interviewing with Facebook for the role:
- They didn’t bug me too much with Leetcode-style questions. They asked me simple questions with a focus on scalability and clarity of thought process. I hate the fact that many companies basically ignore the knowledge that university graduates have gained over the years as a part of their education. They ask for programming questions basically to judge whether the candidate can be trained to do something specific rather than the value he/she brings with them on day one.
- The Production Engineering role has a specialization component as compared to a typical Software Engineering role. Hence, even though I’m fresh out of the University oven I had a system design interview that gave me a great chance to show off my skillset as a system designer because that is something I ABSOLUTELY LOVE to do.
- FB had a behavioral interview too which focussed on soft skills I’ve developed as a project lead, research assistant or a teaching assistant and so on.
- When I returned home after the interview, I felt like FB had a clear enough picture of who I am? rather than only how do I code?
- I talked to a Production Engineering Manager at FB and was super impressed by the work culture and collaboration techniques. They had some really cool stuff thought about … like not disclosing the real seniority levels among colleagues.
- The FB HQ is fun! Bit of a Disney Land for geeks I might say. And that reminds me of how I made a friend during the lunch session of my interview. The person joining me for lunch had the same interests like me such as MEGA SERVERS, MAP REDUCE, and all other fun stuff… INSTANT BESTIES FOR LIFE!
Well, these are the things that come to mind. I can go on forever… But the point is I’m at a checkpoint and the next phase is PE@FB and I’m all set! Looking forward to DAY 1…
I’ll keep you posted…well…literally!
All the views expressed here are my own and do not represent any of the mentioned organizations.