I have a feeling WhatsApp was not

exactly a standard startup.

>> So, we didn't have code reviews, but the

only time I got my code reviewed was the

first time I made a commit.

>> And you said that Jan said no a lot.

>> 99% of the time he would say no. All the

cool features were missing in my mind,

but that was by design because we really

wanted to prioritize again the quality

of a grandma in a remote town being able

to use our app at any given time.

>> Scrum agile with a capital A TDD. Did

you use any of these at WhatsApp?

>> I'm surprised to hear they thought they

were shipping faster because of it. We

didn't use any of it.

>> So, you were break even.

>> Yeah, that $1 was enough to pay for the

server cost, the salaries, and the SMS

code every year.

>> Gene Lee was number 19 at WhatsApp. She

joined when hardly anyone in the US had

heard of it, saw it grow to 450 million

users, and was sitting at her desk with

noise cancelling headphones on when news

broke that Facebook bought them for $19

billion. In today's conversation, we

discuss how WhatsApp built natively

eight different platforms with a team of

30 engineers. Why the founders said no

to almost every feature request for

years. How WhatsApp's team operated with

no code reviews, no stand-ups, no sprint

planning, and many more. If you want to

understand how a tiny team with almost

no process built one of the most

successful products in history and what

today's AI native startups can still

learn from them, this episode is for

you. This episode is presented by

Statsig, the unified platform for flags,

analytics, experiments, and more. Check

out the show notes to learn more about

them and our other season sponsors,

Sonar and Work OS. Gan, welcome to the

podcast. It is amazing to to meet you.

You have quite the story early engineer

at at WhatsApp. But before we get into

WhatsApp, how did you get into tech?

>> I've always been a small town girl. My

dad was an OG hipster. He was really

into brewing beer. So, he decided to get

a PhD in beer.

>> In beer?

>> Yeah. In brewing. In brewing. Yeah.

>> So, I moved to San Francisco in 1999 and

that's when I got really exposed to all

the different tech roles. Like, growing

up, I didn't really even think about

engineering as a job. Um, of course I

use computers and I thought it was

really cool to be able to use Yahoo and

search things online, but beyond that,

uh, my first exposure to Silicon Valley

and tech came from living here. I got to

meet a lot of people who work in tech. I

dabbled around with coding when I was a

teenager, but not too seriously. But I

did think it was really cool that you

can just write a few lines and it will

just do things for you over and over and

over. It was almost magical. I I love

the feeling of creating something that

that actually runs um and debugging

something and fixing it and it runs

again. That that was really joyous and I

didn't really get into like super into

coding until I went to college. But one

of the reasons why I decided I wanted to

go into coding was I talked to different

people. So I thought maybe I want to be

a designer, maybe I want to be an

architect, maybe I want to be an

engineer. And I talked to different

adults who work in the in the industry.

After talking to a lot of adults, I

realized people who are in tech were the

only ones who were really excited about

their jobs. So in Silicon Valley, when

you ask people like tell me about your

work, people are often very hopeful for

the future and very proud of what

they're building. Compared to many other

adults that I spoke with, they were not

so encouraging. They're like, "Oh, don't

become an architect. Don't become a

designer." So that that was one of the

influences um for me early on. I studied

computer science at USC. Um, one of my

first internships, actual like coding

internships was at a small company. It

was a threeperson startup started by one

of the new grads from USC. And you'll

probably uh understand it was a video

sharing website,

but it was not like YouTube, but there

were so many versions of YouTube back in

the days before what YouTube was

dominant, right? So you probably

remember dozens of these like video

sharing platforms everywhere and one of

the issues of having so many options is

that you have to be visiting 12

different sites to search for new

things. So we had a website where you

can aggregate all the different types of

videos from different sources which is

actually kind of funny because lately

I've been seeing a lot of AI platforms

where you can just switch between the

models very similar to that.

>> Yeah. How did you get into IBM? I really

loved working for a small um threeperson

startup because I got to work with

engineers um we had engineers overseas

in China so I got to work with them. I

got to also do a little bit of coding

myself, but I was coming up with the

design docs like the the features list

and I was calling a lot of the shots and

I could also directly see the impact of

my code immediately on the website and I

thought that type of ownership and speed

and the visibility was really exciting

that I get to see the the impact of my

work immediately.

But one thing I wish I had was a little

bit more mentorship because we were all

new grads and in college um I felt like

we were just shooting things to see

which sticks. Um and I thought maybe for

my first job out of school I would like

a little bit more mentorship and

training and I started looking at more

bigger companies more traditional

companies and that's how I ended up at

at the time it was literally the biggest

company in the US. At what point did you

decide that you wanted to leave or try

out something else or did you even

decide or something just came up?

>> One of the reasons why I wanted to go to

a more traditional company with more

structure was so that I could get more

mentorship and training and IBM was

excellent for that. There were so many

veterans. They had so much experience

and they were willing to share with me

because they were 20 30 years ahead of

me, right? But one thing I really missed

was the small team environment. It was

just so big. There was a lot of

meetings, a lot of process and I I

missed seeing the impact of my work. I

couldn't quite understand how my work

was contributing to the overall company.

So then I decided to take some time off

and explore and have some fun.

>> Yeah. And around what time was this?

What year was this?

>> So I started working 2007 and I left by

2009 which was actually in retrospect I

was really brave because it was in the

midst of economic downturn. My thought

process at the time was I was only 22 or

three and I figure even if I take a year

off I can still catch up which I did.

>> And what what happened from there? How

did you eventually get to WhatsApp? That

was years later right?

>> Yeah. So I took some time off to try out

different like classes. I took a lot of

classes. I did a little bit of now

nowadays you call it the gig work but I

did all kinds of work. So whatever I

needed to you know make a living um

while taking all these classes and

exploring and really finding out what

like what kind of environment or what

kind of career do I envision for myself

and after I took those time off I

decided that I want to go back to

Silicon Valley but this time I do want

to work for a startup but maybe with

people who are a little bit more

experienced maybe not new grads and

maybe not a threeperson startup but a

little bit more stable startup where I

can possibly get both the the autonomy

and the the impact of the work but also

a little bit more mentoring because I

was still in my 20s.

>> Okay. So, how did you find this startup

which of course happened to be WhatsApp

>> in 2012? WhatsApp was still early. They

started in 2009 and they did still have

a lot of users but they're mostly in

Europe and in India. Um they were not

very known in America. Were you a

WhatsApp user back then?

>> I was not, but my my wife and her

friends were or or back then my you know

my my my girlfriend. But so some of my

friends were using it on and off. It was

kind of starting to be big in Europe. It

wasn't as massive just yet.

>> Exactly. Um I was lucky because I I

actually lived in New York for a little

bit before moving here and a lot of

people in New York were using it because

it's an international hub. So I I had

used the pro product in the past and I

saw the job posting on LinkedIn

>> and then you applied. What was the

interview like?

>> I don't think we did any leak code until

way way later until when we started

hiring interns and new grads. Most of

the interviews were talking about I I

guess you can call it system design

interviews. We would talk about how

would you design this, how would you

design that, like tell me about your

past experience building this product

and I recall talking to Yan about

different messaging apps and being

Korean, I told him a lot about Cacao

Talk and how it worked. Yeah, that was

my interview.

>> Just like that, you you got an offer. I

guess it's startup, right? Things move

fast like I assume it must have been

quick turnaround offer and then you had

to decide, right? How did you decide

that you're going to join this

relatively unknown startup that is

building some cool messaging that you

kind of thought was cool? But there

wasn't much information about that. In

fact, their glass door rating at the

time I remember had a one star. It had

one review, one star, someone saying,

"Oh, I don't like working here or who

knows if that was even a real employee,

but that was their glass door."

>> Oh, that's so interesting. I don't

remember looking up. I must have looked

up glass door, but like I was really

lucky because I actually had another

offer from a different company, but they

were a little bit sore.

>> One company was taking weeks to get Gene

an offer letter. Another founder closed

the deal in person the very next day.

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get back to Gan and how the other

company could not get her written offer

as quickly as WhatsApp did. It was not a

startup and they said, "Oh, hey, like

you have my verbal offer. I am going to

give you a written offer soon." But then

it took them a while and meanwhile

um Yan called me few days later after

the interview and he said come into the

office right like today or tomorrow.

>> Yeah.

>> And then he asked me what would it take

for you to take the offer right now.

>> Love it. What did you say? I mean I

wasn't looking for that much. I mean I

was in my 20s. So I just told them oh

like few things I would like to have

then sure I'll take the offer and I saw

signed the offer the following day. And

I did actually hear back from the other

company on the first day I started

WhatsApp. They called me and I was like

oh I just started a new company.

>> That's it with start of you move faster

otherwise don't be surprised. So you

were engineer or you were employee

number 19 at WhatsApp right? was

engineer number 19.

>> Engineer number 19 at at at WhatsApp.

And you told me something really

interesting that you were the youngest

person even though you were like by this

time at your mid mid20s or or so.

>> I thought about that. So I recall there

were about four of us under the age of

30. So I was not the young guest, but

there were two people who were new grads

and then myself and one other person who

were in our late 20s. But the other like

15 or so people above 30 at a startup

which is kind of unheard. Why do you

think this was? This is so interesting.

>> That is true. Is it still rare nowadays?

Like

>> good question. I I think these days it

might not be as rare by the way.

>> I think so because I think I read some

kind of statistics from investors that

actually when they look at the success

rates of startups they found that older

uh founders tend to do better. Yeah. And

and then WhatsApp I guess you know like

Jana and and Brian they they started

this at like mid30s or or so after they

spent like more than a decade working at

Yahoo and other places.

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah. So I guess they must have been

able to hire like their network whatnot.

>> Yeah. The first 10 or so engineers a lot

of them came from Yahoo. Um some came

from Europe. You mentioned the story

when Yan reached out to you. Um Yan used

to do that. you would just look up who

is the expert in this field and reach

out to people and we had a lot of

contractors in Europe and then we had

some like mostly from personal

connection like from Stanford because

Brian went to Stanford and then we had

some referrals from Sequoia because they

invested in WhatsApp. It is fascinating

because the way we connected actually is

is both of us know Yan. I mean you've

worked with him but I I had an inmail in

my inbox from him I think six months

before you joined WhatsApp where I got a

message from him and saying hey I I

built a Windows phone app at the time

together with my brother called Cocktail

Flow and it was a beautiful Windows

phone app and it was labeled career

opportunity. So what you're saying is

there's a alternative timeline where if

I said like yes I'm interested which in

hindsight if a founder reaches out you

probably should at least talk to them

don't make the mistake that I did which

is just saying like I'm sorry I'm busy

if I might have been a contractor from

Europe so like sounds like that that was

a strategy and that was a smart

strategy.

>> Yeah we had many contractors in Europe

and they were all very experienced

people they were basically managing

themselves. We had people all over the

world working with us. What was a tech

stack like at WhatsApp? Before Gene

walks us through one of the most unusual

tech stacks in startup history, we're

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era. And with this, let's get back to

Gene and all the different tech stacks

that WhatsApp had.

>> We were actually pretty unique. I I

don't think any startup ever really does

this, but we had seven different stacks.

We had I actually looked it up because

it's hard to count them all. We had, of

course, everybody has iPhone and

Android, but we also had Blackberry and

Windows Phone, which is also pretty

common, but we also had uh Nokia S40,

S60. We had a thing called Kyios for a

while, but not for a long time. And we

had the web client, so it's actually

eight. So, so you have of course you

know we know that iOS is Objective C,

Android was Java back in the day and

that all of these like the the

Blackberry the Nokia they all had I

think Nokia was Symbian C++ they all had

like their own different language and

then we've not talked about the back end

right

>> and the back end was Erlang

>> Erlang can you tell us about Erlang

because this that is one of the most

exotic tech sack I've heard Erlang in

telecommunications context at Ericson

again in Europe it is popular with the

telos, but startup wise I'm not sure I

heard anyone else use Erlang.

>> You might be right. They do have a

Erlang conference. I think it's called

Erling Factory. There's a really great

talk by one of our engineers, Rig Reed,

if you're interested in learning more

about it, but

>> we'll link it in the show notes below.

>> I'm I'm pretty sure it's still on

YouTube. I haven't looked up recently,

but uh he gave a really great talk about

why they started working with Erling and

it was the perfect choice. And he

describes it as um trying to maintain

the engine of an airplane while it's

flying 24/7

because if you imagine like WhatsApp is

so international, we can't take a break,

right? We have to continuously keep

running and it's always busy. Someone's

it's 8:00 a.m. somewhere in the world,

right? and Erling was a really robust um

language that was really good at

concurrencies and they stumbled upon it

because they were using this other tool

that happened to use Erling and decided

this is the perfect language

>> and I guess at the core of WhatsApp what

was the core engineering challenge was

it like so many messages being kind of

coming in needing to be seated out and

sent to different you know platforms

>> yeah that was one of the main challenges

like for example for New Year's or

Christmas because everyone's saying

happy new year at the exact same moment.

That was always our big uh biggest

challenges every year and we would

celebrate hey we didn't we didn't go

down after New Year's. So the the

interesting thing about the seven

different mobile platforms specifically

is the conventional wisdom wisdom before

and after has been like look if you want

to support all those platforms don't be

silly do crossplatform either build your

own layer that is crossplatform or use

you know there's all sorts of frameworks

why did WhatsApp not do this do you

remember the discussions of like why why

hire seven including some really hard to

hire people like for Nokia and Symbian

and you mentioned contractors in Europe

I mean sounds a bit of a nightmare Why?

>> So, Yan used to always say, "I want a

grandma in a remote countryside to be

able to use our app." So, what does that

mean? They may not have the newest

iPhone, the shiniest phone with the

biggest memory, right? In the

countryside where a grandma is using it,

you need the app to be lightweight. You

need it to work on any kind of device,

and you need the app to be simple. So

those were our um goals and priorities

and uh that's the thought process that

went into our decision to build seven

different platforms

>> and then inside WhatsApp how did you get

things done? Do you remember like how a

project got done or what was the concept

of projects and kind of what engineering

processes people might have followed

especially you know later you worked at

at meta compared to like how you know

like more kind of you know standard

startups work because I have a feeling

WhatsApp was not exactly a standard

startup was it?

>> Not really. Um, even meta compared to

other big tag, especially when I was at

Meta, was pretty scrappy, like not so

much on writing documents, for example,

the the move fast and break things motto

kind of allowed them to be a little bit

more lean in terms of their process. Um,

at least while I was there, but was like

the ultimate lean company. By the time

we were acquired, we only had 20some

engineers, so under 30 people serving

450 million monthly active users. So, we

didn't have code reviews. The only time

I got my code reviewed was the first

time I made a commit. Brian asked to

take a look at it before I committed it.

And he asked me a bunch of questions

which I had to think through a lot like

a kind of like a coding interview, but

that that was it. After the first time,

we didn't really have a formal code

review. But I mean, people read the git

commits because there's only 30

engineers. You can read other people's

code and they would discuss it on the

WhatsApp groups.

>> So, everyone was trusted, all engineers

that they just pushed their code to they

merged it into production, pushed it to

production without a manager review. And

it was trusted that, you know, they

would ask if they were unsure or

something like that.

>> Exactly.

>> Okay. And it worked.

>> It worked. What about the release

process? Like if if if you tell me 450

million people, the first thing I'm

going to say is like, okay, did you do

canarying? Did you do feature flagging?

Did you do experiments? Did you do you

know what kind of safety nets did you

have? Right.

>> We didn't do much of that, but we were

really big on dog fooding. So, every

time we were about to do a release, we

would all internally use it ourselves.

Yan, I think he might still say it on

his LinkedIn. If you look up Yan, he

said just quality engineer.

>> His title when he messaged me cuz I

didn't know who he was see it said chief

QA officer.

>> QA officer.

>> And I didn't know what that meant. I

thought it was some sort of weird joke

uh from the outside. So now it makes

sense. So he he he was going around. He

was making sure that it it worked. He

would try to break things as much as he

can and then if he finds a bug he will

like really try to break it and then

he'll come to it and say hey like I

found this bug

>> and you also said that Jan said no a

lot. He did say no almost as I recall

99% of the time he would say no which I

thought as a again as a young engineer I

was very confused because when you look

at all these other apps there were like

dozen different messaging apps at the

time like WeChat is notorious for having

everything right they have so many

features and I was so confused like why

don't we build all these features these

are the newest coolest things that we

should have because at the time when I

joined we didn't have groups We launched

groups shortly after I joined. We didn't

have voice calls, video calls. We didn't

have any of the no stories. You know,

all the cool features were missing in my

mind, but that was by design because we

really wanted to prioritize again the

quality of a grandma in a remote town

being able to use our app at any given

time.

>> WhatsApp how features for years until

they were absolutely sure about quality.

They worked on video calling long before

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With this, let's get back to how Gan and

the WhatsApp team ship quality code with

close to zero formal processes. So, it

it sounds like WhatsApp had very very

little process. This was very very

interesting because when I worked at

Skype at the same time as you joined

WhatsApp and and I also joined in 2013 I

joined Skype and you joined WhatsApp in

2012. Skype was very proud that they

sent everyone to scrum training. I was a

scrum master other people scrum master.

So here we were with all the scrum, all

the consultants, all the everything and

WhatsApp out competed us with like a lot

smaller team and and no no scrum, no

TDD, no agile,

>> Skype,

>> 10,000 engineers.

>> Wow, that's a lot of people.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, when you have a thousand people,

you kind of need these.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And and in all fairness,

like for example, one thing that this

whole scrum thing solved for a little

bit is we had more more than 100 teams

and everyone was working on different

things and because of all this

organization, we we had a prioritized

list of which teams are the most

important and those got all the support.

So I I guess one lesson might be that

when you're just big, it's just so much

harder to move fast and a small team can

out compete you.

>> Yeah. It just takes a long time even

just to communicate with everyone. Being

inside of WhatsApp, how did it feel to

see this massive growth? Not in your

team size, but but in the product usage,

the you know the people, the media, the

feedback.

>> We didn't have much media like nobody

knew about WhatsApp.

>> One interesting thing you told me about

the office is you had countdown

displays. Can you tell me about them?

What were these? What did it display?

Yeah. So, you you asked me a lot about

metrics and I think the really the only

metrics we track like we didn't really

pay too much attention to media or

Skype's usage numbers or other messaging

apps usage numbers, but the one metric

we counted down was number of days like

X number of days since the last outage.

>> Wow. No pressure.

>> Well, the numbers started to go up over

time. Maybe that helped to have it

visibly there. And when an outage

happened, do you remember what happened

after? Because these days in the tech

industry, it's all about blameless

pulsemortems. If an outage happens, you

know, we first mitigate it, then we get

together, then we write a document where

we try really hard to not say who push

caused this, but we come up with why the

system is like this and so on. How did

you go about like dealing with outages

and also following up and ensuring that

they don't they won't happen again? So

they I know they did these discussions

in the server group chats, but I wasn't

in the server group chats, so I can't

really say for sure. I mean, for sure,

we did not have documentations.

>> It sounds like a lot of things were

pretty simple. You talk with people, if

you have a problem, you try to fix it.

Don't overdo things for no reason. And

it seems to just work. and and then have

the key thing like if I guess if you put

out days since since outage people will

know like okay I should do what I can to

not have an outage

>> and everybody knew exactly who was

working on what so we didn't have to

blame anyone everyone just knew

>> WhatsApp was a massive massive massive

success what do you think made it so

successful in the early years and in the

es especially for for for the product

itself you know you've seen cacao you

were you were aware of some of the

competing messaging app what did

WhatsApp do that others did

There is a little bit of the networking

effect if you it's like the thing about

messaging app is that if you use it you

need your friends to use it and if your

friends use it you need to use it and

WhatsApp was the first to be on the

market that certainly helped but there

was a lot of competition but again I

think um a lot of other apps and

messaging apps were chasing features

thinking about adding the the shiniest

newest features whereas WhatsApp was

very intentional. They actually worked

on video calling for a very long time.

We were probably working on it by the

time you joined Skype when your founder

said we have video. Um we were working

on it but we just didn't launch it until

much later when we were actually like

100% sure about the quality of the the

feature. So we often held on to features

until we felt really sure before

launching them.

>> Interesting. because that is a little

bit of a different than the conventional

advice which is if you're a startup

launch early, get feedback, improve it,

and iterate it. It sounds like you did

the opposite. It's it's like polish it

and then do when you have full

conviction.

>> Yeah, we did use it internally.

Internally, we used the voice and the

video calling features with our

families. So, we had like a list. Okay,

like I have family members. These are

all my my parents and my brother and

sister's numbers. Let's enable it for

this beta group. and we used it for a

very long time before we launched it

with the public.

>> Two years into working at WhatsApp in

2014, Facebook announces their biggest

ever acquisition, WhatsApp, for $19

billion. What do you remember of this

time? How unexpected was it? And you

know what what what kind of feelings

what kind of emotions went through you

and the team around you?

>> I actually journaled soon after the

acquisition. So I looked up my journal

around this time 2014. So it's been over

10 years. But I looked at my journal and

I remember I was coding. I had this

Spotify playlist with noise cancelling

headphones. I had this playlist called

Let Me Think. This the one I I listen to

when I want to focus. And again like we

were in a pretty small office where I

can see everything. I was sitting in

pretty central location. So I I could

see people bustling and hustling which

was a little bit weird, but I tried to

tune it out so I can code.

But then from the side I saw um Nirage

who was the head of business at the

time. He was just like waving his arms.

He's he was a pretty tall guy so I could

see it. He's like like stop whatever

you're working on right now. Come into

the um we had one meeting room.

>> Come into the meeting room. And I was

like what is happening? Like we never

have meetings. Like we we

>> So you didn't have meetings? I mean, we

we have scheduled meetings every now and

then, but we rarely have like we we have

never had unscheduled meetings and we

rarely have meetings at all. So, I was

confused and I I dropped whatever I was

working on and I went into the

conference room and then they asked

like, "Turn off your phones."

>> WhatsApp, turn off your phone. That

that's kind of weird, right?

>> And I thought, "Oh my gosh, what's

happening?" Like, "Did we go out of

business?"

That was one thought. I thought are we

getting another raise of fun like round

of funding like a new investor coming on

board. It can't be that we sold the

company because Yan used to say he will

never sell the company. He used to

actually say uh selling your company is

like selling your baby.

And I remember we were waiting for quite

a while because there was one person

missing.

>> Oh.

>> And it turns out she was getting her

eyebrows done

>> with her phone tucked away. Yeah, she

came she came uh after the announcement,

but the news was about to hit the public

and they wanted to tell us before the

news hit and I I noticed that Yan and

Brian were making this face and I

couldn't tell what it was and then they

made the announcement WhatsApp has been

acquired by Facebook for $19 billion and

I I realized oh that was them trying to

hide their excitement.

That was a face.

>> Kind of smiley but not smiley.

>> And that was a really exciting moment.

And I I kind of zoned out for a little

bit because I was trying to remember,

hey, like how many shares did I get?

Like again, it was my first startup

ever. I didn't even negotiate my equity.

And honestly, I couldn't remember how

much equity I had. And I was trying to

think how much is a billion dollars?

That seems like a lot of money. And how

much is like 1% of 19 billion? I

couldn't do the math. And I I remember

sitting there thinking like trying to do

the math and then I thought, you know,

no matter how the math works, I think

one thing is clear. I'm gonna be rich.

>> And then Zuckerberg walked in.

>> Zuckerberg walked in to the meeting.

>> Yeah.

>> Wow. And then you had like a Q&A or

something.

>> We did. We did. Yeah.

>> What What kind of questions can you ask

at at this point or what kind of

questions did people ask?

>> There was a mix of excitement and

nervousness, right? um are we going to

have to change everything? Like because

I think a lot of the engineers were more

uh experienced and they talked about how

when Yahoo acquired companies, they

changed 100% and lost the what is it the

essence of the business. So there there

were a lot of questions around that and

Mark is actually very charismatic in

person and I thought he had great

answers at the time. uh he made sure

everyone feels assured that uh nothing's

going to change and he will try to

maintain it as much as possible. At

least that was the messaging at the

time.

>> Clearly this this was an amazing exit

and to this date it's not really been

repeated. May maybe a few companies

might have come close but definitely not

with with much such a small team. How

did you and and and your colleagues deal

with the fact that wow you've just got

an amazing financial exit but I guess

the company kind of continues inside of

Meta like it seems seems like you know

two things at the same time like okay I

have this like amazing financial exit

but there's also work how do I balance

how did you balance how do you decide

what next

>> that's twofold

so the the finance side in terms of that

aspect we actually got a lot of support

our uh business person organized many

meetings with like the accountants or

even a financial advisor. We invited a a

professor who was the founder of

Wealthfront and he gave us an hour of uh

finance advice and he recommended books.

Um I read the random walk down Wall

Street which is a great book. I

recommend people read it if you're

interested in financial management. And

I read several other books to really

educate myself to be able to manage this

new wealth that I I came across as a

young 29year-old.

>> Yeah. What changed to the day-to-day

once you officially became part of

Facebook? Did you have to move offices?

Did you know did you get a new title

added to like the the meta or chart?

That kind of stuff.

>> The changes were very slow in the

beginning. We didn't even move into the

meta or at the time it was called

Facebook headquarters uh Menlo Park

until at least a couple years after the

acquisition. So in the beginning

everything was same as usual. We still

had our old office. Well, we did

actually move to a little bit nicer

office, a slightly bigger office, but

other than that it was business as

usual. was Yan and Brian and we were

hiring but not you know at our similar

like so steady pace.

Um and I think not until when we

actually moved into the Facebook office,

we started seeing a little bit more um

cultural influence and merging like we

started using their like HR services or

recruiting services and things like

that. But it was a very gradual change

over time.

>> And then when WhatsApp became part of

Facebook, as I understand it, it it

still is even to this date its own

organization. like inside of Facebook, I

understand there's organizations like

Messenger or like there's the Facebook

uh group etc. So like did WhatsApp

remain its own kind of organization a

little bit shielded from the rest of

Facebook?

>> We had our own area.

>> Yeah. Or

>> WhatsApp and in the beginning we even

had like our own chairs and our own

whatever like walls and decorations that

we were using we brought them all over.

But over time, you know, there was more

and more mixing.

>> After the acquisition,

how did you started to hire more people?

How did the projects change? Did things

become more ambitious? Did you start to

add more features? Cuz clearly like you

were about 30 of you and then few in a

few years there was hundreds of people

working on WhatsApp. These days it must

be thousands of people like with those

people like what new work came up

because again originally WhatsApp was so

minimalist, right? And kind of so

scrappy.

>> I guess we were choosing to be small.

Not that there was not enough work for

us to do, right? So, one of the reasons

why we also tried to remain small was

actually Brian and Yan did not want to

raise too much money and it actually

cost a lot of money to serve so many

users. You have to pay for the servers.

You have to pay for the SMS registration

codes. Every year, Yan and Brian would

do uh all hands meetings. So, we did

have meetings

>> once a year. Uh and Brian was very

transparent. He will walk through our

earnings and expenses.

>> Interesting. Yeah, I had a lot of

information around this. So the three

main buckets of our spending was server

cost was about a third and then about a

third on salaries for the engineers

mostly and then a third uh the rest was

for the SMS fee. the when you try to

register you get that code and we have

to pay that 10 cents or whatever how

much it costs to send international

messaging

those numbers I mean they add up when

you have millions of people using your

app so they actually didn't want to grow

too fast because it gets very expensive

was free for the first year and then

after that WhatsApp was charging $1 for

every year but they were only using it

in certain countries trees really to

suppress growth because they don't want

to grow too fast.

>> Fascinating. Cuz I I remember in in in

Europe and in the US, there was this $1

cost which I think people were like,

"Yeah, well, whatever." I don't think we

realize that that this was a growth

discretion tactic. Fascinating. And then

when Facebook acquired, I guess they got

rid of it.

>> Yeah. Facebook said, "We don't need the

dollar. We can grow as much as we can

because they had the funding for it."

>> And then growth just did it. Did it

speed up? Do you remember?

>> It did. Yeah. incredible detail use

using payment to slow down growth.

>> The lesser known detail about the $1 is

that uh that $1 was enough to pay for

all of these the server cost, the

salaries and the SMS code

>> per year. So you were roughly break

even.

>> Break even. We did have funding from

Sequoia, but we never touched that

money.

>> Incredible. Yeah, Brian explained it as

how his dad was a business owner and

they would wake up in the middle of the

night worried what if I cannot pay the

the salaries for the employees tomorrow

and he he explained that he took the

funding from Sequoa as like a backup

>> and I think it was $8 million of funding

if I recall if I looked I looked at that

backup.

>> Yeah. So we never touched that money.

The $1 paid for everything

>> and it slowed down growth enough to be

manageable. Yeah.

>> When you joined Facebook, what what

title did you get? And how did your

career change?

>> So, the thing about Facebook is that

everyone's actually software engineer.

I'm pretty sure they still don't have

titles.

>> They don't have titles, but they have

levels. What What level did you come in

at?

>> So, being one of the five youngest

people, I got I got leveled as a junior

engineer.

>> No, you did not. L3 or L4?

>> L3. L3. Yeah. No,

>> I had to like climb climb all over

again.

>> Oh my gosh, that must have been a bit

awkward.

>> I was not too happy about it. But what's

the alternative? Do I want to give up

besting the rest of the shares?

And eventually I got promoted.

>> But it was with within WhatsApp. So you

got promoted pretty quickly. How many

times did you get promoted there?

>> A few times. I mean I eventually became

an engineering manager.

>> And then as you became an engineering

manager, uh at some point you decided to

help and start a new office in London.

How did that decision come and how did

you go about it?

>> That was actually uh an ask from

Facebook headquarters. So they said,

"Hey, like we're actually running out of

space in Menlo Park and also WhatsApp is

so big in Europe, so why not have a

presence there? It'll be much easier to

hire engineers because everybody

actually uses WhatsApp. So let's let's

start a new office there." And we didn't

have that many engineering managers,

right? I was very lucky because I got

asked to go along with couple other

engineering managers and all three of us

actually became managers around the same

time. We actually even trained together.

We were relatively new managers when we

got asked to go there. But I think we

were the only ones who could go because

you know people have children and they

have think about school and they they

couldn't go. I remember one the director

that I was working with he couldn't go

because his wife says she doesn't want

to move with the children. It it makes

perfect sense. You arrived in London,

you landed with these two or three other

engineering managers. How did you start

to grow the office from a practical

perspective? What can I imagine like you

know like how did you start hiring or

leasing space or what are the other

things that you had to do that you know

like were maybe a little bit unexpected

for you?

>> A lot of the logistical part was taken

care of for us because Facebook already

had an office there. So we kind of moved

in. We got our own section and it it

wasn't big because at the time again we

had a lot of contractors in Europe. So

we had one contractor already in

England. So we turned we uh converted

them full-time and then we had one in

Scotland. We also converted him

full-time so he would commute from

Scotland every now and then. So we had

two engineers plus three managers and we

started hiring there. I think the hiring

part was something that took longer to

set up. We worked very closely with the

Facebook hiring team, which was really

great that we already had people who are

familiar with the the local um

recruiting logistics there. So, one

thing we focused on a lot was really

letting engineers know, hey, WhatsApp is

hiring in Europe now. Come apply.

Because we were hiring from all over

Europe and also a lot from India. Do you

feel it was easier to hire for WhatsApp

in Europe just because people knew about

it? Do you get more excitement, more

applicants?

>> 100%.

You wouldn't believe like I used to do a

lot of university recruiting and when I

used to go to Stanford maybe 2013

like anytime before the acquisition I

would say hey like people will come up

to the booth and I would say hey do you

want to give me your resume and they

would be like tell me about your company

first.

because they they have never heard of

WhatsApp. What is this company? I'm not

even going to give you my resume.

>> My resume. I have only 20 of these.

>> Exactly.

>> Uh versus in Europe, people were

actually excited to talk to us.

>> What were the good and bad things of

working in what basically is a remote

office like yes, London was a big

office, but HH HQ was in California,

Menlo Park. That's 8 hours of time zone

difference. A lot less overlap. There's

probably some good things about this and

some downsides. It helped because the

three of us were from Menel Park and we

actually had great relationships with

other teams and other engineers and

other managers and we also traveled back

to Menel Park every quarter and then we

had the leadership from Menlo Park also

travel to London almost every quarter.

So there was a lot of back and forth um

to really strengthen the relationship in

the beginning. your your growth went to

like being I guess the one of the most

junior people in WhatsApp which is crazy

to say because you were experienced as

well but then you were also L3 and

Facebook which I still cannot believe

but you you you went and became a

manager. What pushed you to actually say

I actually want to try to manage people.

>> I actually never asked for it myself.

Someone on my team begged my manager,

hey can I please report to Jean? And

that's how I became a manager. Wow.

>> Okay. What do you think this this person

saw in you that they wanted to report

you when you were not a manager?

>> I was the tech lead. So I was already

managing the project. So it was sort of

a natural transition for me.

>> And when you became a manager, what

parts of the job came naturally to you

and what parts were hard that you had to

learn or get mentorship for?

>> You know, I started reading books. I

love reading books. Whenever there's a

new challenge, I like to read, learn,

and research. There actually at the time

weren't a lot of courses on how to

become a manager and not a lot of books.

Like I still don't think there are too

many books about how to become a

manager.

>> There's a little bit more now. There

there's like three or four good ones,

but but they all came out after like

2015 or 2016. Yeah, the the resources

were pretty limited, but I I did what I

can to read as much as I can about

leadership and I think I read read

actually a lot about communication and

psychology. There's several books like I

love the book surrounded by idiots. Have

you read that one? It talks about the

the disk personality, the different

types of personalities and I try to

really understand like what motivates

people, how do you communicate with

people in a in a way that makes sense to

the other person and also I reflected

personally like what were some good

managers and bad manager in my

experience because you hear the saying

that people don't leave companies they

lead managers right your manager can

really break or make your career and

they can make your life miserable if

you're, you know, matched with someone

you don't vibe with.

>> What are the traits that you found as

you recalled? What were things you said

like, I think this makes a good manager.

I want to do more of that and I think

these were terrible managers or bad

managers and I want to avoid doing that.

Do you remember some things that stuck

out?

>> Yeah, I tried to really understand each

individual person. So, for example, like

one person that I had on my team really

loves going deep into problems or

debugging and finding out how to improve

things, right? Whereas another person

really loves building new features and

you cannot ask this person who loves to

build new features to go debug 10 bugs

and that person will go nuts, right? And

then like one person who was really good

at uh building new features was not so

great at mentoring new colleagues. So I

try to really look for their strengths

and of course you also want to set them

up for challenges so they can learn as

well. But you want to balance them out.

So I I try to really understand by

asking them a lot of questions to

understand like how do they want to be

challenged? When do they feel excited

about their work or what are the things

that they're really good at? what are

the things they want to improve on? So,

I spent a lot of time really talking to

them.

>> As a manager, you were part of

calibration meetings, right? Now that

you're not at not at WhatsApp, not at

Meta, can we talk honestly about what

are those meetings like? Uh, you know,

what are maybe the the good things about

them? How how can you prepare and what's

the kind of reality? Cuz I feel outside

of a small group of managers who are in

there, it's not many people know like

how how these things go. So people

number one biggest mistake people make

is they think your manager is the one

giving you a promotion or a salary boost

like as a manager middle manager right

like I have no authority to give you a

promotion

>> you have no budget typically directors

have a discretionary budget sometimes to

be able to give a reward but not even a

promotions they even even they cannot

give right

>> right and um the bonuses are tied to

your performance review right So at Meta

for every level there's exact

percentages lined up by the comp team.

Like I have no control over it. The only

control I have is I think of myself as

the lawyer representing my clients.

>> Wow. Yeah.

>> I'm making a case for them.

>> Yeah.

>> Why they deserve to get a certain

performance review rating or a

promotion. And obviously like I want my

clients to do well. I want my team to

get you know the recognition that they

deserve because I know they worked hard

but it's not up to me. All the other

managers also have to agree that is the

the nature of performance reviews

>> and being specific on a performance

review like who were the people that you

saw the engineers who got these high

performance reviews from this committee?

What kind of tactics did you see? Were

there things where like well some

managers kind of like you know politics

were they kind of like they're calling

in favors for each other and pushing

someone up or or was it mostly

meritocracy meaning uh this engineer was

actually doing great work that a lot of

managers saw and they just naturally

agreed that you know this person who's

on on Jean's team is actually they

should be above my great person and I

kind of agree with that cuz because

there's bucketing right let's be clear

is bucketing you're going to have

buckets and you you need to put like I

don't know x people in the top bucket,

middle bucket, bottom bucket and so on.

>> Yeah. When I was coaching engineers, uh

I learned that different companies have

different ways of self-promotion.

So like for example, I heard some

companies use emails like they send mass

emails every time they do a new release

or launch or like at WhatsApp we use

WhatsApp groups for everything but at

Facebook they used Facebook workplace

which is like Facebook groups where you

have a group for team or your org and

your like everything has a different

group and I noticed as I'm representing

my clients during performance reviews

The people who post the most often, who

have the most visibility,

usually get the easiest consensus

because it's just like all very natural.

Like if I have no clue what you worked

on and your manager tells me you're

great, maybe, but how would I know? I

don't I don't know anything about you.

So, it I'm less likely to be inclined to

agree with your manager. Maybe your

manager is right, but I don't know.

Whereas if you have been actively

posting and telling me indirectly or

directly what type of work you have done

and what type of impact that has made

and what are the lessons that you

learned and what type of people you work

with then I already know oh okay like

when your manager tells me you're ready

then I I saw saying

>> and then internal wolf this was actually

like it's it's more than just groups it

was like this Facebook feed where you

know like it's a bit like LinkedIn right

just to make it so so you see these

posts come across the And sometimes you

will hit hit like and what you're saying

is like if you've seen this post from

this engineer on some other team saying

oh we've launched this feature here's an

interesting thing we've learned that

we're using for Facebook and I hit like

uh I now remember it and then when

performance review comes like oh I

remember that person they wrote that

>> exactly and I might even have some

questions right maybe like if your

manager tells me I might be like but

what about this what about that but if

you make a post I can just ask you

directly through the comments right

there's a lot of engagement happening

ing in the comments. So, I might ask,

"Have you thought about this other

thing? Have you thought about this

thing?" And you might give me answers

and I think, "Oh, okay. Yeah, he's

thought about it. He's really good."

>> It's amusing because it sounds like

simplifying a little bit. But to be

successful at Facebook, you need to also

be good inside of the Facebook app and

and do interesting work and and not hide

it, actually make it visible.

>> Mhm.

>> That's interesting. Now, stepping up a

step back and you were a manager at

Facebook. You saw a lot of engineers

outside of the performance review and

people posting about it. What traits did

the the best engineers that you remember

share? Like what made them so good?

>> I I struggle with this question a little

bit because there's a difference between

like how do you measure skill? How do

you measure what a good engineer is? Is

a good engineer someone who can bang out

new features? Is a good engineer someone

who can design a complicated system? Is

a good engineer someone who can

communicate all of this and explain it

to nontechnical people? I struggle a

little bit with the definition of a good

engineer because I can have a definition

of a good engineer, but it may be

different for every culture. Different

company might have different

definitions.

>> A good one at at Facebook. What was a

definition? I remember that a lot of it

went down to just a very simple

characteristic impact. Right.

>> Definitely and I think the way like

there are many ways to measure impact

and definitely at Facebook their way of

measuring impact was through these

posts. If I know about your work and you

tell me you have impact and I agree

that's impact. So going back to when you

were in London office and and start to

grow. At what point did the London

office start to feel less of a startup,

a scrappy startup and more of a big

tech?

>> I remember a time after about a year and

a half or so I realized I don't know who

that person is or I don't know their

name.

That was a turning point.

>> Mhm. And at what point did you actually

start to think of leaving Facebook? I I

think I really enjoy the intimate

environment. So, I appreciate being able

to like at WhatsApp with 30 engineers, I

knew everyone's names. I knew where

everybody lived. I knew their spouses

and their children, their dogs names,

right?

I really like that type of intimate

environment. Um, we still hang out that

we have a pretty strong bond. And I feel

like when when I even when I don't even

know this person's name, I I just feel

less connected.

>> Yeah. So So was this the point where you

decided that maybe it's time for you to

leave and do something else?

>> Oh, so okay. I was um in London on a

contract. So I had a 2-year contract.

They said, "Hey, like go start this

office." And then once the contract

ended, I had the option to either stay

there to continue working in the London

office or I could come back to Men Park.

But then at that point, I had been

working there for 8 years. And honestly,

I think I was pretty burned out. I'm the

type of personality who likes to get

like A+ on everything I do every single

time.

>> Yeah.

>> So it was pretty tiring after 8 years. I

needed a break.

>> Yeah. And when you left WhatsApp, what

did you decide to do? What I say

WhatsApp but it was Facebook at that

point.

>> Yeah. Um I actually because I know my

personality I don't take breaks.

So I actually had a goal. This is simple

but I said I will do nothing for the

next 6 months. I'm going to challenge

myself to do nothing for 6 months.

>> Did you manage?

>> I did it. I did it. I did read a lot. I

exerc exerciseed. I went on long walks.

I did multiple meditation retreats. But

that that was my challenge to myself to

not work for six months.

>> So after 6 months of successfully doing

nothing, after setting yourself that

goal, what did you do to figure out what

next?

>> So initially I thought maybe I want to

go start a new company or join another

startup because I like working. I love

building things. So I decided, okay, I'm

going to start talking to other founders

or people who are hiring or people who

are looking to start a new company. So I

I actually talked to 100 founders. I

have a spreadsheet.

>> Wow.

>> To really see like is there any

interesting opportunities that I might

feel passionate about joining or

building. Then after talking to 100

startups, I realized I wasn't really

passionate about joining any of them.

And I thought like what what would I

feel more passionate about and what was

the thing that I liked the most about

working at WhatsApp for the past eight

years. And I realized I actually really

liked being a manager because I felt

like I was creating a culture of like

support so that other people can really

be learning and thriving and you know be

able to do things freely without people

breaking down your neck or there are

many things that make for a happy

career. But I found it really um

gratifying to be able to find that from

each person and really try to help them

out and create whatever that is. It

might be different for different people

and trying to unblock them so they can

really flourish. And I thought, well, if

that's what I really want to do, I don't

have to start a new company. I'll just

do that part. So, I started exploring

like mentoring people. Um I did a little

bit of coaching I don't do anymore.

making videos on YouTube, writing um all

of that to see how how would I find the

best way to support other people

>> and on on YouTube and on LinkedIn you

have been sharing a lot of your

learnings, your observations. What what

pushed you to to start sharing way more

than before like I I think you started

to do this publicly after you left

Facebook.

>> I was actually writing a blog about

this.

So, I actually just hit 100K subscribers

on YouTube like last week. Thank you.

Um, and I was reflecting

I almost gave up doing YouTube because I

was really not comfortable being seen in

public. And I I I've been thinking a lot

about this. Like my grandma's from North

Korea. She escaped during the war. And

in that culture, like you are you do not

speak publicly.

um you don't want to be seen because

it's dangerous and I think there's

generations of that still kind of

installed in me. The the fear of

speaking up is real. I felt really

uncomfortable. So I almost stopped doing

YouTube uh once one of my videos went

viral from early on and I felt really

uncomfortable. But luckily I was talking

to a mentor of mine and she said, "Hey,

it's okay to do something that you enjoy

doing. Just give it a shot." So then I I

stuck with it. I'm so glad I did.

>> Speaking of the thing that is happening

of course right now, AI, you you spoke

about this on on your YouTube channel as

well, but from your your vantage point,

how is AI changing how engineers work,

how managers work?

>> I do find it really interesting how with

AI, we're seeing smaller teams emerge. I

know that a lot of teams are saying,

well, we're small because of AI. But I

wonder if it's independent from AI. When

you're small, you're just more efficient

because WhatsApp did not use AI,

but we were efficient because we were

small.

>> And I almost feel that even today, I

can't cannot really point to too many

teams that are as small as WhatsApp and

have that kind of impact. Maybe and

might come to mind, but I think even

they're bigger. So I I wonder if if

there is a maybe just going back to

basics with all of us, maybe AI allows

to do the way most companies would have

wished they operated.

>> Yeah. And I think there's also a shift

in the mindset like I remember back in

the days people when you go to

networking events, people would brag

about oh like we've hired like a

thousand new engineers or we're growing

at X times bigger and that was like a

point of brag. And investors also

thought that was a good thing. Like you

need to grow, you need to hire more

engineer. That was a sign of healthy

engineering environment. Whereas

nowadays

investors actually think smaller is

better, right? Like they don't

necessarily push you to hire more

people. And I think as a byproduct of

hiring less people and staying lean,

they have found this new found

efficiency and they happen to equate it

with AI. Although AI I think it's clear

it makes engineers a lot more efficient

uh in well we think it makes them

efficient because it can generate a lot

of code you can work on more things

parallel is happening with agents how

are you seeing the role of software

engineers change and also the role of

engineering managers

>> yeah I mean I love AI tools I I use it

every day as a thought partner I I often

ask chacha hey like be my executive

coach or be a hardware trained futurist

and and help me find the next trends or

you know there there are various ways of

really using AI to its full potential. I

feel like engineering management is less

affected by AI because it it requires a

lot of like peopleto people like asking

questions and learning about your

engineers. AI can maybe help you with

that but I don't see AI replacing that

part.

But again because the teams are much

smaller if you were the type of

engineering manager who was doing a lot

of these like OKR and process and

writing documentation a lot of that part

is going to be gone and I'm kind of glad

it it will be gone because I I don't

think it's really necessary.

>> Yeah. For example, a lot of performance

management of you know gathering the

impact it can probably be done by asking

agents to gather all these things. I

remember as an engineer manager I used

to go through gathering all the work

that my engineers have done. So on the

calibration meeting I could fairly

represent them and then turns out that

the managers who showed up without doing

that I had an advantage but that was not

fair for the engineers by the way right

maybe AI will get rid of this advantage.

Yeah, AI will do a lot of the the grunt

work, more tedious work that maybe

engineering managers or even software

engineers had to do manually back in the

days like uh we had an engineer who was

just there to add comments.

I think that is something AI can do

really well.

>> If you had to give career advice to a

new grad who says I would like to build

a durable career in software engineering

in this kind of AI native world, what

would you suggest they focus on? I say

foundations,

you know, tools come and go, languages

come and go, but foundations don't go

anywhere.

>> We mentioned that at WhatsApp that's

WhatsApp was very small, very efficient.

What do you think today's AI or like AI

native startups could still learn from

WhatsApp that made WhatsApp successful

and it probably helped them as well. I

think of AI. So like we went through

several trends like when I first got my

first internship ever, it was video

sharing website and I've seen how there

were dozens of video sharing websites

and how the ecosystem changed over time

and then I saw with WhatsApp there were

dozens of other messaging app

competitors and how that kind of settled

down over time. I think we're living

through something similar. There are so

many new AI startups and new tools and

so easy to get distracted by all the

different options and it can feel quite

overwhelming. There are too many options

and you can feel the decision paralysis

but really again go back to the core

foundation. Think about like if you're a

builder think about what you're

building, why you're building. If you're

learning, think about why you're

learning, what you want to learn, and if

you have clear goals of where you want

to go, it will really ground you because

otherwise you're just going to be all

over the place and you might work really

hard and end up nowhere.

>> Do I understand correctly that you're

saying that WhatsApp was successful

because the goal was clear. Jan said no

to the distractions and all the ideas,

but it was very clear marching. Whereas

all the other competitors, even all the

messaging apps, they got distracted

building. Oh, let's do like oh this cool

video feature. Let's do stories. Let's

do all of these things. They saw

traction and they did a lot of these

things. But WhatsApp was very good at

doing the core thing well and then

slowly adding things that were a value

added. Is that a fair summary?

>> Yeah. And also I noticed this when I

started advising and coaching uh startup

founders as well. And also for any

engineers who want to join new startups,

this is great way to evaluate new

founders. like some founders if you're

the opposite of yan and saying no to

things um that I call it removing

distractions right you're prioritizing

ruthlessly if you're the opposite of

that imagine what type of startup you

end up you say yes to everything maybe

it might feel really nice as a 20some

year old if I were to go back in time

and I go to the founder with all my

great ideas and he says that's a great

idea gene let's build it but imagine

like he said that to every single idea

that I had the company will be all over

the place in terms of the long-term

growth. It's not a very ideal situation.

>> So looking back, what are some kind of

like preI or not as modern practices

that you did at WhatsApp that were

really good that today's very modern AI

native teams or whoever could benefit

from.

>> Yeah, of several things come to my mind.

I think one of it is by having lean

teams, you get several benefits. You get

to remove a lot of the distractions and

process and through that you get two

really incredible benefits which is

ownership and the the really like the

freedom to build things

right because Jan was always like Jan

and Brian were always very specific

about what we're building

but how we're building it was up to

debate right I mentioned earlier that

the only time we did a actual code

review was the first time I made my git

commit. Uh Brian reviewed my code and

asked me a bunch of questions. So Jan

and Brian were both like so technically

adept. They were really excellent at

doing this. They would ask we're trying

to achieve this like what is the problem

here or what is the best way to solve

this issue? What are like different ways

we can approach this? Tell me. So, so do

I understand correctly that of course

the small teams help with a lot of

things but then having the founders push

people they hire especially early on it

almost like push them to excellence

right is it fair to say that by Brian

doing that super detailed code review

with you the first time it it just upped

your game and later he didn't even have

to do anything right

>> yeah and there's like multiffold right

like one is to really challenge me to

think critically and then I took I I

learned a lot just from that

conversation. And then also like from

then on he never checked my code again.

So I know I am responsible right and I

do believe when you give

responsibilities to people people will

step up. I mean not everyone

>> but most people will

>> but I think this might be a bit

underrated. I I wonder if we've had a

little bit of two over babying of

engineers. I I remember for a long time

there was this talk in the you know in

the past 5 to 10 years in the as engine

managers like well I have a new grad

will take them months to on board. I

need to sign up a mentor for at least 6

months maybe even a year and where are

we over babying these very capable

adults you know they're adults right

even if even if they're 18 but they're

typically 20some because they came out

of college and they're hungry and

they're ambitious and maybe we don't

need to do as much of it always.

>> Yeah. I think as long as you hire smart

people, it's kind of like a mold, right?

If you make a mold too small, that's

that's only the limit of how far they

will grow.

>> Yeah. If the mold is too small, you have

to throw away a lot of things that could

have made excellent material. And

finally, you're a reader. What are some

books that you would recommend for

software engineers or people wanting to

grow professionally or in a personal

sense?

>> I love reading books. I did um so while

I I challenged myself to do nothing, I

actually read I actually took a year but

I did read a 100 books during that time.

That was my doing nothing. Anyways, um

it kind of depends of what your goals

are, but you gave me some specific

things like for your career. I think for

me what was really helpful was what

color is your parachute? That helped me

really understand my strengths and my

goals and priorities in my career and

life. I mentioned the book surrounded by

idiots. I know the title is kind of

funny, but it's an excellent book if you

want to learn more about how to really

communicate and work with different

people. If you want to understand

finance, I mentioned earlier the random

walk down Wall Street. It's a great book

for understanding how to manage your

money. Yeah, I I would recommend those

books to start with.

>> And any fiction books?

>> Hunger Games was one of my favorite

books. I I read the whole series.

>> I I read it as well and I I almost like

the I like the movies as well, but I

love the books. Yeah. Yeah. I I love the

story of like this woman overcoming her

challenges

>> and everyone else and winning in the end

several times.

>> Yes.

>> Well, Jean, thank you so much.

>> Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me

on the channel.

>> This was a great conversation.

>> I hope you enjoyed this rare

conversation with Jean. One thing that

stuck with me was Jean's point about why

WhatsApp had almost no process and why

it worked. Processes exist for audits,

for accountability, and for tracking who

did what. But when you have 30 people

and everyone can see what everyone else

is working on, you don't really need a

paper trail. You just walk over and

talk. This is a good reminder that most

processes exist to solve problems that

are created by scale and not by the work

itself. I also found the Skype contest

really surprising. A thousand engineers,

Scrum certifications, twoe sprints, and

a dedicated scrum master for every team.

I was one of them at Skype. and WhatsApp

with 30 people and zero for my

methodology was shipping faster and

growing faster on every metric that

mattered. This is a much needed reminder

that organizational discipline and

actual shipping speed are just not the

same thing and I was in the middle of

this at Skype and Gene was at in the

middle of it in WhatsApp. Finally, it

was interesting as a former manager to

hear how Gene described performance

reviews as a manager herself. She

described herself as a lawyer

representing her clients, as in she

doesn't control the promotion. She just

makes the case. And the engineers who

had the easiest time getting promoted

were not necessarily the best engineers.

They were the ones who made their work

visible. They posted about their

launches in the internal Facebook

workplace. They engaged in comments,

answered questions publicly, and the

managers in those calibration rooms are

making decisions about people that they

might have never worked with directly.

So visibility is not just vanity. It's

how the system inside larger companies

actually works. This is an uncomfortable

truth, but I think every engineer at a

big company needs to hear it. If you've

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you if you also leave a rating on the

show. Thanks and see you in the next