First blog post on this community. Yipee!

Intelligence at Meta

On the bus to work, I and spoke with a senior about intelligence. She said, “Only like 1% of the general population are actually really smart. At Meta, it’s maybe more like 5%”. I somewhat disagree.

The top people on my team are good, but I must admit the “top person” simply worked on a feature that gets referenced any time we discuss our product; everyone is constantly reminded what they did, and that pays dividends to their reputation. This is proof your project is more important than your daily contributions.

The bottom people however are more surprising. Usually bad engineers leave you scratching your head (for various reasons), which is still true at Meta, but the bad engineers here are still brilliant. While pair programming with one, I was simply floored by how fast they analyzed and debugged code, and how many diffs (PRs) they were pushing each day. People here are good.

It’s not just engineers either. Everybody here has enthusiasm, communication ability, and is well rounded. Even the service staff are excellent. I wonder how much that has to do with “Meta picking the best” vs “Meta pays so much that people give it their all”. Which leads me to my second point…

Perks & Compensation

Levels.fyi is fairly accurate. People get paid a lot. Granted, everyone making less than US$150k/year is padding the pockets to an oblivious billionaire, but at US$300k/year, I’m not complaining. Remember the senior engineer I referenced earlier? I’m not 100% sure on their level, but at 8 YOE, they’re making between US$1.4M and US$2M a year (and they still complain about daycare costs while riding the bus).

The nice thing besides the salary is how Meta doesn’t cheap out on things. Before the “Year of Efficiency” it was apparently better, but we still get:

  • On-campus haircuts, dental, vision, and healthcare (all nearly free)
  • Free breakfast/lunch/dinner
  • Free Meta busses to work, and free shared Uber-like service if we’re within 10 miles
  • Lots of financial perks (too many to list, but things like discounted lifestyle/activities/travel/etc)

Overall, studying 1-2 hours every day for 3 years to reach this lifestyle isn’t too bad.

Leetcode & System Design

So many people hate Leetcode. So why is it used?

  • It doesn’t matter if good coders can’t Leetcode. The important part is most bad coders can’t Leetcode.
  • Leetcode reduces the complexity of an individual person into a number: How fast did you solve problem X?
  • You might be a pro at React; I might be a pro at databases; but the unofficial industry standard was arbitrarily chosen to be data structures and algorithms, so if we both learn it, I can judge your coding ability in an interview.
  • Your interviewer studied Leetcode for months to get their job. They have an incentive to keep Leetcode as the standard.

What about other interview methods like MR review, coding assignments, or judging someone’s open source contributions? None of these things address even 2/4 bulletpoints above. Sorry everyone, Leetcode is here to stay.

What about System Design?

First, Apple doesn’t ask System Design questions, and it shows. Anyone who’s dealt with Apple’s APIs know they’re slow as crap, awkward to use, and have fundamental limitations in the same way Amazon/Google/Meta don’t have.

Second, system design tests your communication skills, big picture skills, and gives an interviewer ample ammunition to deep dive and test your knowledge. SD is crucial in the age of cloud computing, and much easier to study than Leetcode. I highly recommend Donne Martin’s System Design Primer if you’re ever feeling unsure.

Only 24 Hours a Day: Giving Things Up

Here’s a rough timeline of hobbies I gave up over the last 5 years:

  • 2016: Reddit, Gaming, Drinking, Studying, Sleep
  • 2018: Reddit, Studying, Rock Climbing, Open Source, Sleep
  • 2020: Reddit, Rock Climbing, Open Source x2, Sleep
  • 2021: Reddit, Rock Climbing, Leetcode, Open Source, Korean, Sleep
  • 2023: Rock Climbing, Leetcode, Open Source, Korean, Sleep
  • 2024: Rock Climbing, Leetcode, Sleep

Thank god Reddit went to garbage, that was a hard addiction to break. I want to get back into Korean and Open Source, but I’m getting paid too much to screw this up. While my job is surprisingly chill - most people on my team work less than 40 hours a week - if I can get a single promotion, that’s an extra US$150,000 a year. 3 promotions and I’ll make US$1,400,000. I’m addicted to the money. Why would I not grind?

I envy the times I played Minecraft without a care for the world. I miss my old hobbies. It’s not that I can’t get it back, it’s only that getting here over the last 8 years shifted my mentality. The hiscores are now my bank account. I don’t regret anything, and I will come back and touch grass - But I easily see how many people don’t.