Their abstraction for job scheduling (Tupperware) is about 5 years behind - something like Borg or EC2/EMR. Something like that is a fundamental reason why fb can’t do cloud as it is right now.
Plus, the infra teams do operate like product - impact at all costs. Which to most management translates to short-term impact over technical quality.
It would be a true 180 in terms of eng culture if they could pull off a cloud platform. An example is how they bought Parse and killed it, while firebase at google is doing extremely well.
Having said all that, I think focusing on impact over technical quality is probably the right business decision for what they were trying to do at the time - drive engagement and revenue.
Their abstraction for job scheduling (Tupperware) is about 5 years behind - something like Borg or EC2/EMR. Something like that is a fundamental reason why fb can’t do cloud as it is right now.
Plus, the infra teams do operate like product - impact at all costs. Which to most management translates to short-term impact over technical quality.
It would be a true 180 in terms of eng culture if they could pull off a cloud platform. An example is how they bought Parse and killed it, while firebase at google is doing extremely well.
Having said all that, I think focusing on impact over technical quality is probably the right business decision for what they were trying to do at the time - drive engagement and revenue.