This will capture the different “Facebook”-isms I picked up over my 12.5 year stint. I think Facebook had one the best engineering cultures. If you hear me say, “At Facebook we…” please don’t take that as me tooting my own horn. It’s more of a callback to one of the best engineering cultures. These phrases were often first principal signals that would cut past all the BS and made it clear what was needed next.
”Ship and Iterate”
This is the anti-Perfectionism call. It’s ok to move fast as long as you are moving towards a goal. Sometimes putting it infront of a user will tell you what they actually want vs what they think they want.
”Don’t Mistake Motion for Progress”
Beware busy work. The red poster version of this was of a rocking horse.
”Code Win Arguments”
Someone coming to a meeting and saying, “no we shouldn’t do it that way” with no alternative was unacceptable. Those are just blockers. If you disagreed on approach, coming with a proof of concept written was able to prove that your position is based on merit.
Team said X. Who specifically?
”Security said X” is not an acceptable answer. Who in security? Because if a follow up was needed then the conversation continued. If a reason wasn’t sufficient then there would be enough actionable information to either escalate or reframe the problem. Sometimes Joe in security said no because he didn’t realize we implemented X to handle the Y issue. It also stopped people from hiding behind these vague replies that looked like they actually asked but never did.