Facebook: the inside story
Steven Levy
A birthday present. I watched ‘The Social Network’ as preparation to see how good the screenwriters are at dramatising events. It runs from Zuck’s early life to the present and covers lots of ground on the product decisions and corporate policies that have shaped it. Levy is quick to point out causal links between some of these actions and the present crisis that I think aren’t as clear cut. Interesting stuff on how Sandberg is highly protective of her image, perhaps to the detriment of her decision making. The bits on Chamath Palihapitiya are good - he’s described as uniquely talented at marshalling energy, resources and ideas but let down by seeming a bully.
Competition
I was struck by how much competition there was at the time (Friendster, MySpace, other college facebooks), and how Facebook outperformed to become the giant it is today. Also significant from this early time is how close they came to selling to Yahoo.
Engineering first
Levy highlights how Facebook was an engineering-centric business. New developers were expected to make pull requests on their first day in the job. If they brought the site down, that was considered good, since they must be moving fast. This relates to Facebook’s most famous slogan “move fast and break things”, although I prefer “done is better than perfect”. I wonder how many testers they had?
The small decisions
There’s a little history of the ‘like’ button and how it became a significant data gathering tool. Interesting how something so innocuous can be so useful to a business.
Splinter groups
The bits on Palihapitiya focus on his role in creating the growth team (he referred to it as the growth circle) and particularly how he managed to make it feel unique and exciting by separating out the workers and clearly articulating its mission etc.
Conclusion Overall a very enjoyable read, but I was less interested in the political jiu-jitsu that takes up the last fifth or so of the book.