Monday, May 30, 2011

Prva nedelja u Facebook-u / First week at Facebook

Posle milion godina, doslo je vreme da opet blogujem :) Novina za ovaj unos je da je dvojezican. Za sve zamlate, da, moj srpski je sve gori i gori, a engleski nikad nije ni bio dobar, tako da ce biti razlika, nemoj ste zaludni da trazite nedoslednosti u prevodu. Ako se nateram da pisem jos nesto interesantno sirokom auditorijumu, mozda i zadrzim trend dva jezika.

After million years, it's time for me to blog again :) Novelty for this entry is that it is bilingual. For all of you whippersnappers, yes, my Serbian is getting worse and worse, and English has never been good, so there will be differences, don't waste your time to look for inconsistencies in the translation. If I make myself to write something else interesting to wider auditorium, I might keep the two-language trend.



Update od poslednjeg javljanja je da sam jos malo pa naglavila i do druge
godisnjice, vratila se na teren, radim u Facebooku ovog leta i dolazim u Srbiju u avgustu :) Elem, ono sto interesuje mnoge je Facebook. Imam ugovor na 12 nedelja, a posle u domovinu da trosim zapadni kapital. Deo ugovora je da ne smem da pricam mnogo o internim stvarima (ali ne, ne mozete da vidite ko vam gleda profil), tako da ne mogu da prenosim socne traceve. Ono sto mogu da kazem je da ima razloga sto je Facebook jedna od najpozeljnijih firmi na svetu, ali ima i razloga sto placaju koliko placaju.

Generalno, ova prva nedelja nije bila preterano uzbudljiva. Sestonedeljna obuka za ljude koji nisu na praksi je nama najbijena u 2 dana uz jos nekoliko sesija rastrkanih u prvih nedelju-dve. Dobili smo prve manje zadatke, da se upoznamo sa sistemom i uhodamo. Facebook u poredjenju s drugim kompanijama slicne velicine ima mnogo manje zaposlenih pa je i obim posla po coveku veci. Mi iako smo na praksi, dobijamo prave poslove jer nemaju ljudske resurse za bacanje. Ovo nije nuzno slucaj po drugim kompanijama jer oni mogu sebi da priuste da dovedu studente na praksu i daju im projekte koji skoro da ne sluze nicemu. Ma koliko to bilo uzbudljivo, dovodi nas u situaciju da imamo jako mali vremenski period da se uhodamo. Studenti kao studenti, zeljni da se dokazu ostaju i duze na poslu, rade i vikendom (da, cak i moja lenja guzica ostaje prekovremeno).

U ovih nedelju dana nismo izbacili neku veliku novu funkciju tako da ne znam koliko je stresno i haoticno u tom periodu, ali na svakodnevnoj bazi, cini mi se da se trude da odrze nivo stresa sto je moguce nize. Uslovi koje nude su i vise nego fenomenalni. Svi imamo prilicno dobre laptopove (izbor izmedju ThinkPada i MacBooka), monitor od 30", iPhone 4, Herman-Miller stolicu na koju se odavno lozim (da, stolica od 500 evra jeste vredna pomena :)) i gomilu drugih beneficija. Restoran sluzi dorucak, rucak i veceru zbog kojih cu leto da zavrsim sa 250 kila, a da stvar bude jos gora, imamo i mikro-kuhinje sa gomilom slatkisa, sokova, voca i slicnog koje ce da me odvuku u 340 kila. Kul stvar je sto nemam fiksno radno vreme... zapravo nemam nikakvo radno vreme. Njih prilicno ne interesuje kad cu da radim, dokle god zavrsim to sto su mi zadali u nekom normalnom roku.


Facebook je relativno mlada firma, prakticno jos uvek start-up, i ulazu puno napora da odrze kulturu start-upa. Timovi su prilicno mali, sto znaci da svaki zaposleni ima veliki uticaj na sajt. Fina stvar za nas na praksi je sto su svi prilicno prijateljski raspolozeni i otvoreni da pomognu (recimo meni sad pomaze Andrei Alexandrescu ^^ iako moj problem nije neki ultra-fensi dostojan tracenja njegovog intelekta). Manje-vise to je glavni razlog sto sam odabrala da radim u Facebooku pre nego u nekoj drugoj firmi.

Elem, polako ulazim u duzinsku zonu gde ce ljudi da se smore dok dodju do kraja, tako da cu sada da se mutiram. Ako bude bilo interesantnih desavanja, blogovacu cesce od jednom u godinu dana (htela bih da kazem jednom nedeljno, ali znam da to nece da se desi). Svi komentari i zelje za buduce pisanje su dobrodosli bilo kojim od medijumom komunikacije. 



Update from the last time I wrote is that I am almost at the second anniversary (sidenote: last entry was entry about my first anniversary in the States), back on court, working at Facebook this summer and coming to Serbia in August :) Anyway, the thing that is interesting to many of you is Facebook. I have a 12-week contract, and after that, I am coming to homeland to spend Western capital. Part of the contract is that I cannot talk much about internal matter (but no, you cannot see who is looking at your profile), so I cannot pass on juicy gossips. What I can say is there are reasons why Facebook is one of the most wanted companies in the world, but there are also reasons why do they pay as much as they do.

In general, this first week, wasn't overly exciting. Six-week training for full-timers is compressed in two days for us, with additional few sessions scattered around the first week or two. We got our first small tasks, to familiarize ourselves with the system and get up to speed. Comparing to other companies of similar size, Facebook has much smaller number of employees, so the amount of work per person is bigger. We, although interning, get real tasks because they can't allow themselves to waste human resources. This is not necessarily the case in other companies who can afford to bring interns and give them useless projects. No matter how exciting this is, we are in the situation where we have very small timeframe to get up to speed. Students, as students, want to prove themselves so they stay overtime or work during the weekends (yes, even my lazy ass stays overtime).

We didn't launch any big new featyre this week so I have no idea how stressful and chaotic it is during those periods, but on day-to-day basis, I think they are trying to maintain the stress level as low as possible. Working environment is more than excelent. We all have pretty good laptop (we can choose between ThinkPad and MacBook Pro), 30" monitor, iPhone 4, Herman-Miller chair I want to buy for the longest time (yep, $700 chair is worth mentioning :)) and a bunch of other benefits. The restaurant is serving breakfast, lunch and dinner which will make me end up summer with 500lb, and to make the things worse, we have micro-kitchens with a bunch of sweets, juices/sodas, fruits, etc. that are going to drag me to 750lb. Cool thing is that I don't have fixed hours... actually I don't have any hours. They pretty much don't care when I am going to work, as long as I finish the assignments in some reasonable time.

Facebook is very young company, pretty much still a start-up, and they invest a lot of effort to keep the culture of a start-up. Teams are fairly small, which means that every employee has large impact on the website. Nice thing for us internts is that the teams are very friendly and open to help (for example, Andrei Alexandrescu is currently helping me alhough my problem is not ultra-fancy worth wasting his intelect). More or less, that's the main reason I picked Facebook over some other companies.

Anyway, I am slowly getting to the lengths where people are going to get bored by the time they get to the end, so I'm going to stop now. If there are interesting events, I'll blog more often than once a year (I want to say I'll do it once a week, but I know that's not going to happen). All comments and wishes for future entries are welcome through any mean of communication.


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