The approach we take to building the Facebook app is based around three adjectives: trustworthy, people-centric and unified. In this episode, Pascal talks with Maria who is a director of engineering for product architecture and product excellence. They discuss what it means for a culture that is known for being driven by metrics to become more people-centric. What are examples of metrics that are aligned with people goals and when do they fail to capture them? Tune in to hear the answers to these questions and much more.

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:

• Rachel Nabors on The Diff: https://thediffpodcast.com/docs/episode-12
• Meet the Developers: Mobile Edition (Pritesh Nandgaonkar): https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/05/23/meet-the-developers-pritesh-nandgaonkar/
• Meta Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource
• Meta Tech Podcast Episode 29: Design Systems with Sriram: https://pca.st/u8r4u6h6
• Meta Tech Podcast Episode 9: Android Bytecode Optimisation with Emma https://pca.st/J3cn

Timestamps:

• Intro 0:06
• The Diff: Episode 12 1:23
• Meet The Developer: Prish 1:38
• Meta Open Source on YouTube 2:01
• Intro 2:26
• Intro Maria 2:36
• Craft in FB App 5:15
• Metrics vs People? 6:40
• Unquantifiable Quality Goals 10:14
• Dropping Facial Recognition 11:38
• Dynamic Goals in a Dynamic World 13:21
• Driving Cultural Change 15:49
• Average vs Power Users 18:53
• Metrics for Quality 22:33
• Dev Tools' Role for Quality 29:12
• Supporting People at Meta 33:38
• Most Exciting Upcoming Change 39:25
• Outro 40:43
• Bloopers 42:00

For our second special for Earth Week, we are talking to Bilge who works as a research scientist at Meta AI. Her open-source project Carbon Explorer evaluates solutions to make data centres operate on 24/7 renewable energy. Why this is easier said than done and how engineers can help within their day-to-day work to reduce their carbon footprint are among the many things Pascal and Bilge discuss in this episode.

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:

• Carbon Explorer: https://github.com/facebookresearch/CarbonExplorer
• Holistic Approach for Designing Carbon Aware Datacenters: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10036
• Open Catalyst: https://opencatalystproject.org/
• Open Catalyst SchrepTech Interview: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/how-ai-is-helping-address-the-climate-crisis/

Timestamps:

• Intro 0:05
• Intro Bilge 2:18
• Optimising for the Environment 4:01
• Carbon Explorer 5:02
• Mitigations for Renewable Intermittency 7:17
• Operational and Embodied Footprints 10:57
• Motivations for Carbon Explorer 13:06
• Battery Storage 14:36
• Renewable Curtailment 15:52
• Empowering Engineers 18:20
• Carbon Intensity APIs 19:22
• AI Carbon Intensity Forecasts 22:07
• Carbon Metrics 23:17
• Where to Learn More 25:38
• Outro 27:32
• Bloopers 29:45

The most recent IPCC report has reiterated that the climate crisis is an all hands on deck situation. We all need to think about the impact our actions have on the planet that provides our life support system. Ramya is a TPM on the Meta AI team and analyses the impact AI has, as it grows superlinearly, on energy use and carbon emissions. Her recent work on Green AI identifies ways for reducing that footprint without limiting the options engineers have for building great products for connecting people. 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/. Acronyms:

• LCA: Life Cycle Assessment
• PUE: Power Usage Efficiency

Links:

• Sustainable AI: Environmental Implications, Challenges and Opportunities: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00364
• Make an Impact for Earth Day: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/04/make-an-impact-for-earth-day/
• Green AI SchrepTech: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/how-ai-is-helping-address-the-climate-crisis/

Timestamps:

• Intro 0:05
• Intro Ramya 2:13
• The Cost of AI 3:05
• Measuring AI's Carbon Footprint 11:00
• Trade Offs 13:28
• Calculating the Carbon Intensity 16:01
• Mitigation Options 18:36
• Cultural Changes 25:35
• Societal Value 26:13
• Running AI on Edge Devices 29:02
• What's Next? 32:33
• Outro 34:55

When Amy joined the Workplace team nearly seven years ago (back then still under the name Facebook for Work), it became clear that it would require a messaging service. While there were already a few options available, none of them was designed to be plugged into a new app. That's when Amy and her team decided to take on white labeling Messenger for iOS to turn it into what would become Workplace Chat. Amy and Pascal discuss the challenges of taking a huge app that is under constant development and adding your own functionality on top.

After many years on Workplace, Amy recently switched teams and now works on Lexical, "an extensible text editor library that does things differently". To find out why you should get excited about the upcoming open source release of the library, tune in!

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:

• Lexical: https://lexical.dev/
• Workplace: https://www.workplace.com/

Timestamps:

• Intro 0:06
• Introducing Amy 1:54
• Joining Workplace 3:54
• Early Days at Facebook for Work iOS 6:38
• Whitelabeling Messenger 8:10
• Project Workspeed 10:23
• msys 14:39
• End-to-End Encryption 17:50
• Workplace Chat for Desktop 19:33
• Unified Editor 24:27
• Lexical 28:01
• Text Rendering Models 34:16
• Outro 37:02

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 [email protected], 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