What I learned at Facebook and implemented at Photomath in my 1st year

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It has been exactly one year since I left Facebook (Meta) and joined Photomath. Here are the top 10 things I learned at Facebook which I implemented directly in my work at Photomath:

1. Moving fast. Facebook is really moving fast. From engineering delivery to hiring and overall growth, the rate of growth for any parameter is stunning. Somehow, this caught up in me as well. The AI team at Photomath grew from 0 to almost 20 engineers in seven or eight months. At the same time, we delivered several things into production with one game changing technology that revamped Photomath’s math problem understanding capability. At moments it was scary, but we, as a team, pulled it off.
2. Lowest level of competence (also, ownership). You can read in books like Andy Grove’s that decisions have to be made at the lowest levels of competence. At Facebook I’ve seen how generalizing this to the concept of ownership is even more powerful. Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem.
3. Performance Management. Silicon Valley companies are probably the most advanced businesses when it comes to performance management. One of the most important things I learned there is how to define, set expectations, support people and eventually do fair, objective and non-biased performance assessment, as well as how to effectively help people grow and increase their performance.
4. Asynchronous and written communication. I was amazed how much Facebook engineers write. Not just code, but documents, plans, reviews and how much communication and feedback exchange is done asynchronously through these documents, comments and suggestions. Soon after joining Photomath, I realized that I am the one who is writing the most stuff in docs and nudging others to give feedback on them. Now, one year later, I am happy to see more and more people, especially engineers, doing that as well.
5. Concept od end-2-end teams. Engineering teams that are capable of conducting complex projects from the beginning to the end/production are called end-2-end teams. This means that these teams employ e.g. ML engineers, data engineers, backed engineers and DevOps engineers. Or some similar setup. Intuitively, we did something similar at Styria (with the AI team), but at Facebook I've realized how this concept scales and how huge the impact is. Not just for different engineering roles, but also for e.g. TPMs in engineering teams or product managers or data scientists borrowed from their respective Orgs.
6. Engineering Management is a thing. For the most of my career I did engineering management in a non structured way and it was more of an improvisation. At Facebook I really got the mental framework to think about it (and do it) more clearly and consistently. It is one thing to read about it in books, but it is a completely different level to see amazing people doing it. EMs at Facebook are not 'heading’, 'leading' or bossing around. They are supporting engineers. People management, product management, 1:1s done right, tech leading, blind spot detection, cross-functional collaboration, ownership — it was a whole new and really amazing world.
7. Embracing awkwardness. This translates to 1:1s, but also to other communication as well. Candid feedback is a powerful thing and embracing awkwardness can help in both delivering it and receiving
8. Product management. At Facebook I learned what product management is all about. And I learned that, to some extent, it is also part of the Engineering Manager’s responsibility. Engineering Managers are in this triangle of tech leadership, product management and people management. Depending on the situation, some of these are more or less important, but a good Engineering Manager should be able to fill gaps in any of these.
9. Onboarding done right. One of the first things that impressed me in Facebook was the onboarding process. Letter from my manager was a high quality, concise and thoughtfully written document made just for me. He invested a solid amount of time to give me important context and laid out expectations for me in a well structured way. Facebook’s Bootcamp is on another level — the fact that I managed to push a working code into production in my third week after not coding for many years was really impressive.
10. Feedback culture. At Facebook they say that feedback is a gift. At first that sounded like some typical corporate bs to me, but very soon I changed my mind. If implemented well, feedback culture really can be a game changer. Once people realize that all of us are stakeholders in this and that mutual growth is mutual gain, feedback can be embraced and catapult growth rapidly.

And here are the 10 things I learned at Photomath in this first year:

1. Cargo cult is real. Yes It is real as is the urge to fall victim to it myself. Coming from Facebook and seeing all these opportunities for improvement and scaling sparked so many ideas on how to do things here. There was this urge — oh, I saw that working well at Facebook, we should do it the same way! But, of course, it just does not translate directly and Photomath is not Facebook. There are so many nuances one needs to respect when implementing some process, going from size, scale, engineering complexity to culture. This leads me to the second one — the importance of culture.
2. Importance of culture. In small companies, like Photomath, any friction or misalignment is just much more visible and impactful. We are a fast growing and fast changing environment in which it is important to get your hands dirty, take the initiative, tolerate ambiguity and in general — take ownership. We aim for diversity in hiring, but culture fit is equally important for success.
3. Quality beats quantity. Photomath’s engineering organization is obviously way smaller than Facebook’s. But this does not mean that we can’t tackle problems on a similar level of complexity. Obviously the scale is nowhere near close, but complexity is not falling behind. And being in such a smaller environment means even more impact that one engineer or a team can make.
4. Company’s mission and image is more powerful than I thought. When I worked at Facebook, people outside of work would, upon learning that I work there, have different reactions. Some were delighted, but most were indifferent or even cynical. But when I say that I work at Photomath, it is completely different. Those who know what Photomath is are always delighted and those who didn’t know are amazed that such an app even exists. This also translates to morale and enthusiasm of our engineers. There is this feeling of doing something very important and impactful for the world and there is zero internal marketing or branding needed — it is just organic.
5. Magic happens when you leave your ego at home. I was amazed by how open and trustworthy people are at Photomath. Once the person demonstrates some knowledge or initiative to drive things, it is not uncommon to see that they will be approached by others who will happily give them some or even all of their own responsibilities. There is no ego and keeping work, title or position in the hierarchy. If we now have someone who can do it better, let’s do it that way and move on to other challenges.
6. Leadership in the trenches. There is a whole new level of enthusiasm and delight among engineers when you have your CEO or other co-founders engaged deeply in engineering or product development, asking good questions and proposing solutions. It is similar to sending general to battle in some strategy video game. Huge morale and impact boost for surrounding troops.
7. Importance of patience. Scaling an engineering organization from 50 to 100 people requires a lot of changes and implementation of many new processes on many levels. For me, arriving from a well structured place like Facebook, it provoked an urge to do so many things immediately at the same time. Obviously this can’t be done and it took me some time to come with peace with that fact. I learned that I need to be patient and backed off from some ideas or postponed them.
8. Flexibility is a superpower. People and especially team leads and managers who are flexible will perform much better at smaller systems. Every engineering team at Photomath has their unique story, ways of work and maturity level (in terms of processes, size, time in existence etc). Ability to be flexible is equally important for engineers and managers in order to succeed and work together.
9. Smaller organization, faster personal growth. At Facebook, growth of engineers is mandatory up to a certain level. Also, there is a decent time that is needed for engineers to perform at the n+1 level in order to get promoted. When I look back at some cases from there and compare with the situation here at Photomath, it just seems too slow. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive how Facebook can be too slow, but to me it seems so. In such a smaller environment with so many challenges and opportunities, engineers can have much faster growth trajectory in smaller companies, if they are managed and challenged well.
10. Humane touch. This is not something that I learned at Photomath, but something that I reminded myself of — typical for Eastern Europe I would say. More relaxed, humane approach to work, people and humour was a refresh for me and a culture that I can relate to myself much more.

There were other topics I could include, but I focused on these points with a brief description. Actually, almost all of these 20 could be separate blog posts (and maybe I’ll do that).

Overall, both working at Facebook and at Photomath are amazing experiences and I am grateful for those opportunities. I learned so much in those short two years at Facebook, worked with some of the smartest people I know and I can only recommend it to everyone. Experience that you get in Big Tech companies is awesome and goes well beyond the role that one plays there. Just seeing these big and fast growing companies in action is amazing.

At Photomath, we have just started a new phase of scaling, technical challenges and management of our teams and even though the company is so much smaller, the work is equally compelling if not even more so.