First impression

Our first impression of the campus was its huge size. As we were going to be able to see during our visit, the buildings conceal an inner courtyard replicating the original street of Facebook. The huge parking includes bicycles available to move from one entrance to another and a taxi service in the same function.

We were first welcomed by François Richard and three of his colleagues: Jean-Christophe Raso, Manas Gupta, and Sotirios Delimanolis.

Progress of the visit

Our tour started with the visit of the center of the different buildings that make up the campus. Designed to resemble the Palo Alto Street where Facebook’s creation originally took place. However, several changes have been made. These changes are contributions made by employees, whether to commemorate a valued personality, or an addition to help new employees find each other, or finally a room to gather employees around a passion. common.

Hackathon

It has been explained to us that most of these campus modifications were designed during the hackathon that takes place every three months. In this case, the term hacking is unique to Facebook’s culture and is used to describe the innovation and optimization of a computer or other system. This hackathon is an activity where everyone can start a project outside their area of ​​expertise, and aiming to contribute to improving the lives of everyone at Facebook.

Bootcamp

We also learned that every new employee (about 100 per week worldwide) must participate in the Facebook bootcamp, where he will be introduced to the technical basics of his field and others. This has the effect of putting all employees on an equal footing while creating strong links between them.

Facebook culture

We then gathered in a conference room to discuss the progress and work of our guests. In addition, François shared the philosophy and corporate culture at Facebook, which consists of four aspects.

The first, « focus on impact ». Because even if a project is interesting, if it has no impact, the time it gives is lost.

The second, « Move fast ». The idea is to get ideas and concepts out quickly, then if they are well received, work to improve them, or if they are not, to quickly move on.

The third, « Be open ». This drives open-mindedness. Everyone is encouraged to question the impact of others, and everyone should be open to this idea.

The last, « Be bold ». Taking risks (calculated) has allowed Facebook to evolve to its current size. By making the decision to design the vast majority of its tools internally, Facebook has taken a very big risk because they are complex. But by equipping experts like the ones we met this afternoon, this decision allowed Facebook to take the rapid expansion we know.