Before you read this article, go to part 1 of “Codemotion Tech Leadership Training boot camp – An attendee’s reportage”
Day 2 – Sunday, June 23th
● 9:00 am: Check-in
● 9:30 am: Opening by Facebook
● 10:00 am: Talk by Facebook – Facebook values and how we hire, Emer O’Leary & Ashley Jameson
● 11:15-11:30 am: Small Break
● 11:30 am: Talk by Facebook – How to set your own values / Health of teams, Emer O’Leary & Ashley Jameson
● 1:00-2:00 am: Lunch break
● 2:00 pm: Talk by Facebook – Product Management inside Facebook, Rags Vadali
● 3:00-3:15 pm: Small Break
● 3:15 – 4:30 pm: Talk by Facebook – Product Management workshop, Rags Vadali
Opening
The second day of Codemotion Tech Leadership Training boot camp was all about Facebook: the first to talk was, again, Willie Elamien, who asked us to compile a Facebook survey to rate the various aspects of the boot camp (as well as the whole Tech Leadership Training course) during the course of the day.
It was then the turn of the Developer Circles Rome Facebook group, who asked the attendees to help their growing community: they were so eager to do that that they even came out with a funny “selfie lottery”, which was actually pulled off by the end of the day (see below).
Facebook values and how we hire
The first actual talk of the day was hosted by Emer O’Leary and Ashley Jameson from Facebook Careers: they talked about the Facebook EMEA Recruiting Program, a carefully planned set of recruiting processes led by a number of skilled Program Managers, Recruiters, Coordinators and Sources working together for a common goal: bringing the world’s best talents to Facebook and put them together to build great teams.
They explained how – from Facebook’s perspective – the best way to do that is to consider not only the company business requirements, yet also the candidate expectations and personal goals, and blend them together to reach a sustainable balance of mutual satisfaction: such an approach is the foundation of the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) index, which is defined as the balance of rewards and benefits received by employees for their working performance.
They also talked about Facebook Careers, Facebook’s hiring platform, and about the importance of candidate values – sought by the company during a standard job interview – and company values – those that candidates seek when they’re looking for a job. This constant perspective change between the company and the candidate was, at least in my opinion, the real added value to the whole talk: Emer and Ashley were able to constantly switch to either side of the river to emphasize the need for a constant synergy between the two parts, which eventually led to the idea of bringing them both into a single platform.
Product Management inside Facebook
Right after lunch, we were greeted by , former Google Product Manager and now Product Manager at Facebook. He expertly led us through the Product Building fundamentals, a set of topics that are rather unknown to both developers and aspiring CTOs.
In the first hour of his talk, Rags did a great job enumerating the common pitfalls that could lead to bad or unsatisfying product design and explaining how to avoid them. He stressed out the importance of three main phases of product building: Understand, Identify, Execute; he then moved on with the understanding phase, since it’s arguably the most delicate one, explaining a set of good practices that can be used to properly define the required statements to pass on to the subsequent identification and execution process.
The whole point of Rads’ talk was about finding a good way to understand – and thus define – the proper questions, as these would help us identify the right answers, which will hopefully make us able to execute (or produce) something relevant. It definitely sounds like a solid plan, especially if we can count on a Product Manager competent enough to make it work.
Conclusions
I must say that I really enjoyed this boot camp, and I feel that all the speakers did their very best to address a rather complex topic – identifying and explaining the required mindset shifts for an aspiring Developer to become a CTO – with a fresh, innovative approach: see you to the Codemotion Milan 2019 Tech Conference… and to the next boot camp!
