Software Engineering Daily

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees recently that the company’s long-term goal is to “bring the metaverse to life” — helping to create an interconnected world of physical, virtual and augmented reality spaces that will reshape the way we work, interact with each other, create new things, and generally experience life.

So how exactly will Facebook approach such an audacious plan?

A new book called “Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software” doesn’t delve into the metaverse, specifically. But in looking at Facebook’s engineering practices — the way the company makes stuff — the book examines the digital DNA of the social network, sheds new light on its most infamous motto, and explains the inner workings of a company that wants to reshape the human experience, again.

Facebook influences the engineering culture and economy not just in its hometown of Menlo Park, Calif., but also in its development offices in the Seattle area, where it employs 7,000 people. And of course, ultimately, Facebook’s internal practices end up influencing people around the world who use its products.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk with the author of the book, Jeff Meyerson, the longtime host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast, about the ways Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google make things, and what those different approaches tell us about where they’re taking us.

Listen above, or subscribe to GeekWire in any podcast app.

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Direct-to-Consumer companies sell their products without going through a traditional middleman like an outlet store or wholesaler. By posting content on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, companies can reach millions of users.TikTok, for example, has an estimated 1 billion monthly active users (wallaroomedia).

The company Kindred Studios helps direct-to-consumer companies create consistent, beautiful content that holds viewers’ attention and generates sales. They showcase your products’ fine details and selling points with product videos, mood photography, stop motion videos, texture photography, and many other content categories.

In this episode, we talk to Daniel Snow, Co-Founder of Kindred Studios, as well as The Snow Agency. He specializes in the eCommerce space and joins us to discuss social media and content creation.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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In this episode we discuss venture capital and more with Preface Ventures Founder and General Partner Farooq Abbasi.

This interview was also recorded as a video podcast. Check out the video on the Software Daily YouTube channel.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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If you’ve ever googled a CS or programming question, you likely found an answer (or many) on Stack Overflow. Founded in 2008 and named after a common computing error, Stack Overflow empowers the world to develop technology through collective knowledge. More than 100 million people visit Stack Overflow every month making it one of the 50 most-visited websites in the world. Stack Overflow’s products include its market-leading knowledge sharing and collaboration platform, Stack Overflow for Teams, in addition to Stack Overflow Reach & Relevance, which is focused on advertising.

Stack Overflow for Teams is a knowledge sharing and collaboration solution that developers and managers already know and trust. It’s for companies who need to increase productivity, decrease cycle times, accelerate time to market, and protect institutional knowledge. In this episode we talk with Tom Limoncelli, a manager at Stack Overflow, author, and tech advocate.

Full disclosure: Stack Overflow is a sponsor of Software Engineering Daily. 

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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Ashmeet Sidana is the founder of Engineering Capital.

The post How to Convince Ashmeet Sidana to Invest in Your Business appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

In this episode we discuss the new Move Fast book, as well as many aspects of the current state of software engineering. Daliana Liu interviews Jeff Meyerson, host of Software Daily and author of Move Fast.

This interview was also recorded as a video podcast. Check out the video on the Software Daily YouTube channel.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

The post Move Fast with Jeff Meyerson appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

We talk to a lot of exciting startups from all over the world about their tech products. Recently we’ve heard from people innovating in the blockchain space, cloud infrastructure, databases, and automation tools. However, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how these tech startups get investments to build their great products in the first place. When do teams begin seeking investments? How do they show the promise of their products?

Today we’re talking with Sarah Guo, a Venture Capitalist and General Partner at Greylock. Greylock invests in market defining founders, like the teams at Airbnb, AppDynamics, Cloudera, Docker, Okta, and Dropbox. Sarah brings a lot of valuable experience in identifying companies with potential and we’re very excited to welcome her to today’s episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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In this episode we discuss coding bootcamps, fear, fitness, and more with Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma.

This interview was also recorded as a video podcast. Check out the video on the Software Daily YouTube channel.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

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When I worked as an engineer at Amazon, I would arrive at the office every day before 6:30am.

Amazon’s enormous campus is in downtown Seattle. The company expands across the city like a massive, growing organism composed of towering buildings and ecospheres. The constant wet mist of Seattle always seems lighter within Amazon campus, perhaps thinned by the optimism that Amazon inspires in its workforce.

Yes, Amazon is truly inspiring.

For all the cynical headlines, the longevity of the workforce speaks for itself. Brilliant people stay employed at Amazon longer than they stay with religion. The culture is more rewarding and the tenets are more modern.

I stayed at Amazon for 8 months. I think of my time there as a kind of cultural immersion, like a study abroad in a foreign land. 8 months is longer than a good affair and shorter than a bad marriage. 8 months was long enough for Amazon to become a part of me.

You can take the entrepreneur out of Amazon, but you can’t take Amazon out of the entrepreneur.

At 6:30am, there is no traffic as you drive across the bridge from Bellevue to Seattle. Podcasts sound better at 6:30am. At 6:30am, even the Amazon workforce is still rubbing the sleep out of its eyes before beginning their march into the office.

Parking at Amazon cost me $25 per day, a daily reminder of Amazon’s prideful frugality. My blue badge gave me access to most of the buildings across the sweeping campus. It was like having a ticket to huge theme park. And at 6:30am, I had all of the rides to myself.

Walk into a random building in the Amazon campus, and study a microcosmal neuron of Jeff Bezos’s brain.

Peruse a gallery of movie posters from Amazon Prime Video. Study the whiteboard diagrams of a team working on a distributed database problem. Engorge yourself in esoteric policies listed within a vacant customer support engineering colony.

Every Amazon building is like that of a well-heeled college campus.

Amazon’s perks are chosen with extreme subtlety. Yes, the offices are nice, because nice offices are a fixed cost. No, there is not free food, because ecommerce doesn’t have the margins for that (unless you are an elite engineer working on a secret project at high risk of leaving the company).

Amazon offices have glorious elevators for rising to the top of the Seattle skyline, and glorious chairs for reading in the middle of the barren warrens.

If you read a business book on a Kindle in an Amazon office, the contents of the book take on new meaning. Amazon embodies business, and through the lens of a business book, the finer details of Amazon’s physical grandeur take on new life.

The empty cubicles come alive with determinism. Your coffee seems to ripple in your paper cup, livened by the impending resonance of today’s economic value creation.

As the sun rose over Seattle, I studied how to escape the life of a commodity engineer.

I read Netflixed, Hatching Twitter, and Founders at Work. I read books about chakras and music composition. I reread The Everything Store, and then read interviews from Hedge Fund Market Wizards. Contrasting the books while walking through Amazon, I felt like I was inside the mind of Jeff Bezos, in both a physical and empathetic sense.

I read The 48 Laws of Power, and considered my current state of subjugate, Java-based servility.

When I left Amazon, it was not out of resentment or dissatisfaction. It was out of education. At Amazon, one can learn how to build Amazon. Amazon was not built through master planning, but through incremental, adjacent expansion.

Once you see how to expand from a book store to the backbone of the Internet, you see how to expand from anything to everything. And so I started a podcast.

We are hiring for Software Daily and for a new company, Supercompute. If you are interested in working with us, send me an email: [email protected]

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