Meta Tech Podcast

Kevin has had an unusual career path that led him to an engineering role at Meta. He first joined the company in a sales role before he moved into a more product-focused position. Working closely with engineers, Kevin decides to pursue a career in software development himself. Instead of dropping out of his job to get formal education in the space, he takes online courses and within less than a year smashes the internal interview process. To learn what his thinking behind the change was and which resources were particularly helpful, tune in to episode 38!   Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.   Links: Coursera Datastructures and Algorithms classes: https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=data%20structures%20and%20algorithms Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/   Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Introduction Kevin 1:22 Learning to Code 3:38 Learning Resources 12:50 Deciding When to Stop 16:42 Interview Prep 21:57 The Big Day 24:45 Dealing With Imposter Syndrome 29:53 Interviewing is Broken 38:41 Outro 40:52

New year, new us! Inside Facebook Mobile is now the Meta Tech Podcast but Pascal will continue to bring you stories about mobile development and many other topics.  For this episode's interview, we're tackling one of the few remaining big apps we never had a guest from: Messenger. Amy worked on Messenger for 3 years before recently moving on to Reality Apps to work on AR.   Amy discusses with Pascal how Messenger for iOS was rewritten as part of Project Lightspeed to make it smaller and faster. They used a range of low-level hacks while providing high-level abstractions that product teams could safely and productively build on top of. Amy was also the first one to prototype with Catalyst and Meta and has some important tips for you on how not to accidentally wipe your Mac while doing so.  Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com. Links: Project LightSpeed: https://engineering.fb.com/2020/03/02/data-infrastructure/messenger/ Mac Catalyst: https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/ Buck: https://buck.build/ Remodel: https://github.com/facebook/remodel - Remodel is a tool that helps iOS and OS X developers avoid repetitive code by generating Objective-C models that support coding, value comparison, and immutability.   Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Introduction Amy 2:25 Messenger Culture 3:37 Building with Buck 5:38 Catalyst 6:27 Project Lightspeed 17:13 Remodel 23:55 Image Asset Optimisations 28:50 Theming 36:44 What's Next for Amy? 38:21 Outro 39:21 Bloopers 39:54

Keeping engineers effective is not a small task when you work at Meta’s scale. Many of the tools you take for granted simply break or become unbearably slow. Chandrika’s team looks after developer experience at Meta and takes a holistic approach that spans the editing experience (IDEs, editors), builds, continuous integration and even custom calendar tooling. Her team ensures that as new platforms, for instance AR/VR, and languages like Swift and Kotlin emerge, our infrastructure is ready. Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com. Links: The Diff Podcast: https://thediffpodcast.com/docs/episode-10/ Meta Connect Keynote: https://fb.watch/9YydoWHMEE/ Jest: https://jestjs.io/   Timestamps: Intro 0:06 News: The Diff is back 1:25 Chandrika before Meta 1:50 Meta vs other Megacorps 9:57 DevEx at Meta 12:05 Different Dev Infra Teams 23:18 Unexpected Challenges 26:45 Kotlin & Swift 30:34 Measuring Developer Experience 35:53 App Health & Perf 37:46 Cross-App Dev 40:12 Outro 42:17

Did you know that you can "rage shake" your phone to create a bug report in most Meta apps? If you did, have you ever wondered what happened after you hit submit? In this episode's interview, Pascal talks to Jon about App Health and how his team ensures that despite thousands of engineers shipping code every day, the apps remain reliable and fast. Got feedback? Send us an email to mobilepodcasts@fb.com, tweet us at @insidefbmobile (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), DM us on Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com. Links: Flipper Litho Error Boundaries Meet the Rustaceans: Digant Kasundra ELI5: Metro - JavaScript Bundler for React Native IFBM 7: Performance and lnstrumentation with Ariane gCPU Paper: A Real-time Framework for Detecting Efficiency Regressions in a Globally Distributed Codebase Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Jon Intro 1:30 App Health Mission 2:58 Rage Shake & Fly Trap 5:27 Life of a Regression 8:49 Experiments and App Health 13:47 Tracking Down Perf Regressions 16:13 Soft Errors 18:54 Favourite Tools 23:35 Backend Regressions 25:31 Rolling out a Fix 28:00 gCPU 29:45 Wrapping Up 32:12 Outro 33:20 Bloopers 34:04

Cami is a developer advocate for Open Source and Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), our AR/VR organisation. In this episode's interview Cami and our host Pascal discuss how developer advocacy is approached at Facebook, how to build developer empathy, and tackle the eternal question of why it's worth investing in Open Source. If you've ever wanted to dip your toes into VR development, stick around for the end when Cami shares some of her favourite resources. Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com. Links: Hand Tracking Pirates Demo: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/new-oculus-open-source-library-and-pirates-demo-app-qa-with-developer-luca-mefisto-on-hand-tracking-innovation/ Hand Physics Lab: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/app/3392175350802835/ Build Your First VR App with Unity: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-tutorial/ Unity VR: https://learn.unity.com/course/oculus-vr Cami on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwillycs?s=09 ValemVR on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ValemVR Oculus on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/oculusvr Facebook Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource Traveling While Black: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/go/1994117610669719/   Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Cami Intro 1:21 What is developer advocacy? 4:08 Developer empathy 9:45 Why invest in Open Source? 14:23 End of life for OSS projects 19:57 AR/VR abstractions 22:42 Becoming an expert learner 32:21 VR dev learning resources 37:56 Most underrated FB OSS project 43:06 Outro 46:25

Facebook has a unique recruitment model. Instead of being assigned to one team, you first end up in Bootcamp, where you learn how the company functions and our tools and frameworks work. Then you get to look for teams, work with them and decide which one to join. Because the team selection is decoupled from hiring, switching teams is easy. In this episode, we’re talking to Sash who has been taking advantage of internal mobility by switching teams every year almost on the dot. Over the course of his career at Facebook, he has worked on iOS animations, Android hardware and most recently the Wrist-based human-computer interaction interface that is being developed by FRL Labs.   Links: Inside Facebook Reality Labs: Wrist-based interaction for the next computing platform: https://tech.fb.com/inside-facebook-reality-labs-wrist-based-interaction-for-the-next-computing-platform/ Boz To The Future: https://www.facebook.com/boztothefuturepod Keyframes Animation Library: https://github.com/facebookarchive/Keyframes IFBM 30: Linting for Design Quality with Elle: https://pca.st/episode/1e22130d-88a5-4ea9-a968-692cac232a78 IFBM 31: Intentional Architecture with Yuan and Dustin: https://pca.st/episode/2199bc68-2287-41b7-aa45-ab52595e1c62 Richie's Plank Experience: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/1642239225880682/ Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Joining FB 1:52 News Feed Delight 4:20 Switch to Hardware 13:25 Hackamonth 19:27 AOSP Engineering 22:07 Hardware Prototyping at FRL 24:50 Developing for VR and Favourite Experiences 30:35 Outro 36:52 Bloopers 37:44

For the third and final episode focusing on UI quality, Pascal is joined by Sara, Patrik and Aaron to discuss how design reviews happen at Facebook. Instead of looking at static screenshots alongside the code, reviews now include a dynamic representation of the view hierarchy that not only allows for inspection of properties but also directly highlights violations of Facebook's design standards for accessibility and usability. Learn how all of this grew out of a tool suite originally built for the web and much more in episode 32 of Inside Facebook Mobile.   Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out http://fb.com/careers.   Links: Podcast: Boz to the Future - https://tech.fb.com/introducing-boz-to-the-future-a-new-podcast-series-from-facebook-reality-labs/ Facebook Open Source on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQY962PmHabTjaHv2wJzfQ IFBM 29: Design Systems with Sriram - https://pca.st/u8r4u6h6 IFBM 30: Linting for Design Quality with Elle - https://pca.st/q336vyxe Sapienz: https://engineering.fb.com/2018/05/02/developer-tools/sapienz-intelligent-automated-software-testing-at-scale/ Jest - https://jestjs.io/ Timestamps: Intro 0:05 News: Boz To The Future 0:43 News: FBOSS ELI5 on YouTube 1:26 Interview Teaser 1:50 Interview Greeting 2:48 Sara Intro 3:10 Aaron Intro 4:15 Patrik Intro 4:43 UI Quality Team Mission 5:39 Shift Left Initiative 6:40 History of Quality Linting 8:08 Linting on Mobile 9:29 UIQR 15:17 Designer Diff Review 18:17 E2E Testing with Jest 25:55 Sapienz 27:12 UI Quality Scoring 29:17 Outro 41:16 Blooper 41:57

“What’s Facebook’s mobile architecture?” is a question we hear often. Instead of top-down MVC, MVW or MVVM, Facebook delegates the responsibility of choosing the right architectural patterns down to the engineers working on products. This episode's guests Yuan and Dustin pick up where Fabio left us in episode 28 and explain how the Product Foundation org builds abstractions that give engineers autonomy when they want and constraints for features to work cross-app when they need it. Links: IFBM 14 - Facebook iOS UI Infrastructure with Adam: https://pca.st/0qu2 IFBM 28: Modularising iOS Apps with Fabio: https://pca.st/episode/be165e38-74f3-449f-889a-eab14316c6ed Codemod: https://github.com/facebookarchive/codemod Fastmod: https://github.com/facebookincubator/fastmod ComponentKit: https://componentkit.org/ Litho: https://fblitho.com/ React Native: https://reactnative.dev/ Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Guest introductions 2:19 App Architecture 6:49 Codemodding 31:18 Shared Architectural Concepts 33:06 Building for Newsfeed 34:59 Scrolling Lists 41:41 Outro 55:43 Bloopers 56:36

We are continuing our focus on UI Quality from last episode and are diving deep into design linters. Elle and her team work on Facebook-internal Figma plugins that provide guidance on aspects like colours and usability of user interfaces. In the interview, Elle and Pascal discuss how the plugin leverages Facebook's web architecture to roll out changes quickly and how a shared REST API allows for rules to be used in multiple contexts. Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out http://fb.com/careers. Links Docusaurus 2.0 Beta - https://docusaurus.io/blog/2021/05/12/announcing-docusaurus-two-beta F8 - https://developers.facebook.com/f8/ Rapid release at massive scale - https://engineering.fb.com/2017/08/31/web/rapid-release-at-massive-scale/ Figma API - https://www.figma.com/developers/api GraphQL - https://graphql.org/ Relay - https://relay.dev/ Timestamps Intro 0:06 News: Docusaurus 2 News: F8 1:59 Elle introduction 2:13 Shift Left Initiative 3:32 UI Layout Linters 6:03 Figma Plugins 14:20 Outro 27:26 Bloopers 28:23

To improve consistency across our family of apps, engineers have built a large number of reusable components. But how do designers communicate to engineers which component to use? How do you keep the look consistent across our various frameworks? How do you make sure that documentation stays up-to-date? The way we always do: by building tools. Sriram from the Design Systems Engineering team talks about how their org solves the design-engineering handoff problems and improves the overall UI quality of Facebook apps. They work on a suite of tools that spans from providing access to our components directly in design tools like Figma to metrics that tell developers about potential quality issues in their surfaces. Tune in to learn directly from Sriram how we attempt to solve design at scale. Links: F8 Refresh: https://www.f8.com/ Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/ Facebook Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource Storybook: https://storybook.js.org/ InVision Design System Manager: https://www.invisionapp.com/design-system-manager Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Timestamps: Intro 0:06 Interview 2:39 Outro 30:17