Facebook, Dropbox & Modern Engineering Teams 📈 — with Aditya Agarwal
May 24, 2024
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Former Facebook employee #10 and Dropbox CTO, Aditya Agarwal, discusses early stage Facebook, differences with Dropbox, challenges of hyper growth, future of engineering management, and the value of being a generalist. Talks about finding company culture, technical CTO role, and the innovative environment at South Park Commons.
Emphasizing first principles thinking at Facebook and precision at Dropbox highlights the importance of adaptability in engineering cultures.
Staying technically engaged in leadership roles helps navigate evolving technologies and challenges in hypergrowth environments.
Deep dives
Aditya Agarwal's Journey at Facebook and Dropbox
Aditya Agarwal, former employee number 10 at Facebook and later CTO at Dropbox, shared insights on his experience at both companies. He discussed the early stages of Facebook, emphasizing the culture of first principles thinking and the focus on speed and iteration over strict testing. At Dropbox, he highlighted the shift towards a more precise and rigorous engineering culture due to the nature of the product.
Managing Hypergrowth in Engineering Teams
Aditya discussed the challenges of hypergrowth in engineering organizations, emphasizing the need to embrace rapid change and avoid feeling bad about evolving roles and solutions. He highlighted the importance of adaptability and continuous learning in navigating hypergrowth, acknowledging the shift in problem statements and the need for leadership to steer teams through change.
Maintaining Technical Relevance as an Engineering Leader
Aditya stressed the significance of engineering leaders staying technical in the face of growing teams and evolving technologies. He suggested strategies such as taking on non-critical projects, building internal tools, and engaging in learning experiences like building models from scratch to stay connected with technical aspects and contribute meaningfully.
South Park Commons: Fostering Innovation and Collaboration
Aditya discussed the vision behind South Park Commons, focusing on providing a space for engineers and technologists to explore problems worth solving. He highlighted the value of allowing individuals time to ideate and innovate before diving into their next venture. Additionally, he emphasized the collaborative environment at SPC, where talented individuals challenge and inspire each other to create innovative solutions.
Aditya is a legend: he joined Facebook as employee #10 and, years later, joined Dropbox as CTO when there were ~20 engineers. Today, he is partner at South Park Commons, through which he invested in more than 300 companies.
Today we talked about early stage Facebook, differences and similarities with Dropbox, engineering teams in hyper growth and the future of engineering management.
Here is what we talked about:
(02:17) Introduction
(03:10) Facebook Employee n 10
(09:57) The value of being a "generalist"
(12:46) Moving fast and breaking things
(19:24) From Cove to Dropbox
(22:10) Dropbox vs Facebook
(25:56) Finding company's culture
(29:23) The challenges of hyper growth
(34:42) The hyper growth in the next era
(39:35) Engineering managers are more technical
(42:42) Being a technical CTO
(45:33) South Park Commons
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