How Facebook Ships Code

Hugh Pickens writes "The two largest teams at Facebook are Engineering and Ops, with roughly 400-500 team members each, together making up about 50% of the company. All engineers go through 4 to 6 week 'Boot Camp' training where they learn the Facebook system by fixing bugs. After boot camp, all engineers get access to the live DB and any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will so that engineers can modify specs mid-process, re-order work projects, and inject new feature ideas anytime. Then arguments about whether or not a feature idea is worth doing or not generally get resolved by spending a week implementing it and then testing it on a sample of users, e.g., 1% of Nevada users. 'All changes are reviewed by at least one person, and the system is easy for anyone else to look at and review your code even if you don't invite them to,' writes yeegay. 'It would take intentionally malicious behavior to get un-reviewed code in.' What is interesting for a company this size is that there is no official QA group at Facebook but almost every employee is dogfooding the product every day."

no process

[mortonda]

any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will

That explains a LOT...

Why would Facebook need 500 engineers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like anything really changes on it.

Re:Programmers != Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

But then again, anyone in the good old US of A is an engineer. From the sanitation engineer who picks up my trash, to the beverage refreshment engineer who makes my coffee at Starbucks.

Engineer is just another cheap title, like CEO/CFO/CIO/CTO, etc, free to be used by anyone.

As one of slashdot's many Comment Moderation Engineers, I believe you bring up a good point - henceforth Anonymous Coward shall be known as Anonymous Engineer.

Re:"dogfooding"?

[Urban Garlic]

The choosing is weirding, you're right, but as long as the meaning is clearing, it's not really probleming.

Re:no process

[Hoi Polloi]

Facebook does have a formal QA group, it is called the user base.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Based on old, irrelevant information from a year ago, and with my opinion which means nothing because I don't have a god damn clue, I'm surprised Facebook needs engineers!"

Re:no process

[syousef]

any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will

That explains a LOT...

Personal journal: This company trusts me with the code base. I don't know why. Dumb fucks!

Re:no process

[NoSig]

I could care less about your question. In fact, I think it's very interesting. Thank you.