Michael Novati got promoted to Senior Staff (IC7) Eng at Facebook by the age of 27. He did it while the company was still called Facebook so he had a bunch of interesting pre-IPO stories. In our conversation, we discussed:
• Growth to Senior Staff (IC7) by 27
• Being the #1 code committer at Meta
• Volunteering to resign if his code broke prod
• Stories of working with Zuck pre-IPO
• What was common among IC7+ engineers
• How LLMs will affect the code machine archetype
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:46) Joining Facebook
(10:26) Facebook IPO experience
(16:30) His internal newsletter
(24:26) Working with Zuck
(29:50) Engs that impressed him
(36:20) Will LLMs kill coding machines?
(47:20) Operating as an IC7
(1:10:30) IC7+ only group
(1:12:55) Landing code faster
(1:18:29) Why he left Meta
(1:20:52) IC7+ talent
(1:24:28) Advice for younger self
(1:25:58) Outro
Where to find Michael:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/
Where to find Ryan:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
