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Facebook Information Session at Umich

October 04, 2007 | 2 Minute Read

So tonight there was a Facebook info session up at North Campus in the exact same room as the Yahoo one was, exactly one week ago to this very day!

In stark contrast to the Yahoo one, there were actually engineers, and they actually told us what they did, and why they liked it. Bob Trahannypoo (was that really his name?) and Jon Warman did the talking.

The info session was very geared towards engineers, and I found it interesting that a lot of the stuff they talked about seemed like shared knowledge among the room. Like they’d reference f8 and just assumed we knew what that was. I got all the references, but I’m not sure about other people.

Before the session, I was pretty convinced that Facebook was a solid company and seemed fun to work for. Now, I’m even more convinced. When your engineers answer questions like PR people, you know you’ve built a pretty good company culture.

Also, for anyone who hates the “is” in the status updates, I asked them if they could remove it when they asked for questions. The answer I got was “no, but maybe when we internationalize the ‘is’ will go away.” So good news on that front.

As far as schwag goes (it’s always a factor), I got some neat Facebook branded gum and M&Ms. If I ever decide not to be lazy, maybe I’ll take pictures. On the downside, no pens, notebooks, post-its, or shirts! Come on, guys! All the Silicon Valley companies are doing it!

The only thing that really sorta annoyed me was that I had tried and tried to get an interview with them. Because I’m not in the Engineering school of Michigan, I couldn’t log into their super special system. I still tried contacting the Facebook HR people but they never replied. I physically handed them my resume, so hopefully they’ll have a slot open tomorrow. I felt a bit of Engineering snobbery going on (as in, you’re nothing if you’re not an engineer), which is funny since I still consider myself an engineer (B.S. in Comp Sci == Engineer, right?). But I guess that’s the price I pay for entering the School of Information…

I’m still convinced that SI is a good choice, and also that Facebook rocks. Let’s see if something good happens.

EDIT: I got an interview, so it looks like I’ll be reading a bit of the algorithms book tonight.