On Leaving Meta

Before joining Meta, I was comfortable. I had carved out my niche in developer experience at a financial services company, making life better for front-end engineers through build systems, tooling, and design systems. Then came the opportunity that would push me way outside that comfort zone: a role at Meta.

Taking the Leap

I won’t lie – joining Meta was intimidating. This isn’t just any tech company; it’s one of the places where the tools and frameworks we use every day were born. The company that turned React from an internal experiment into the library that transformed how we build for the web. A place where some of the industry’s brightest minds solve problems at a scale that most of us can barely imagine.

As a father of two in the Midwest, far from the Silicon Valley bustle, I couldn’t help but wonder: Could I keep up? Would I belong? Looking at my interviewers’ backgrounds during the hiring process – MIT, Stanford, previous FAANG experience – it was hard not to feel like an outsider. The imposter syndrome was real.

But beneath the apprehension was genuine excitement. The team I’d be joining is working on Ads Manager – literally the oldest and largest React application in the world. The same codebase where React itself was born. The opportunity to work on something with that kind of historical significance doesn’t come along often. I knew I’d regret not taking the chance to be part of that story.

The Meta Way

Let’s talk about Meta’s dev tools. Unsurprisingly, I had opinions going in. Mercurial (okay, Sapling now) Instead of Git? A custom fork of VSCode when I had my Neovim setup just the way I liked it? Their own programming languages like Flow and Hack instead of my beloved TypeScript? My initial reaction was basically “why?”It seemed like swimming upstream from the rest of the industry.

But are they wrong? What I discovered was an incredibly cohesive development environment where tools didn’t just coexist – they worked in harmony. The way tasks, diffs, and chat seamlessly reference each other, how custom tools and even custom Chrome extensions are used to tie everything together, and how the entire company can work in a single repository – it’s impressive.

It’s also clear how Flow and Hack were born out of the company’s needs, and it’s obvious how they influence each other. They’re not creating Flow as an alternative to TypeScript. They’re making a language that feels familiar to Hack developers, and vice versa.

The Reality of Scale

Working on the Ads Manager brought another revelation. I expected the codebase to be immaculate – pristine code with no tech debt, bad patterns, or confusion. Instead, I found something very human: code that reflected the reality of maintaining a massive application over many years. Yes, there was tech debt. Yes, there were outdated patterns. But that wasn’t a weakness; it was a validation that software engineering is hard at every scale, even at Meta. It was also eye-opening seeing this code being incredibly performant and reliable.

On my team, we would regularly dive deep into both Hack APIs and React interfaces. We built in-app advertising features and streamlined complex workflows, always trying to make the platform more accessible to newcomers while maintaining its power for experienced advertisers of all sizes.

Finding Connection

Despite being remote, I found ways to connect. Our team operated like a well-oiled machine, everyone busy but never too busy to help explain a project flow or deployment process. During our onsites, I made the most of every moment – including a memorable karaoke party where I was the sole performer, belting out “Unbreak My Heart” to my amused colleagues.

I even took on the role of Social Captain for an internal, Meta-wide UIE Summit, helping create the conference’s intro video and bringing people together. These moments of connection made the virtual distance feel smaller.

The Balancing Act

In the span of a month I emceed a conference on one coast, organized and ran an internal conference on the other coast, and shipped two big features before a code freeze deadline! I worked more than 100 hours in a single week before it was all over. Wild. But here’s the thing - I did it. While being a dad. While running a podcast. While being a technical advisor to two startups. While organizing meetups. While speaking at conferences. (Writing this out now, I’m questioning how I had time for anything… 😅)

Time for Change

The decision to leave wasn’t easy. Meta challenged me, taught me, and showed me what engineering at massive scale looks like. But as time went on, I found myself craving something different. While my teammates were exceptional, I realized I was spending more time on team alignment and metrics than actual engineering. The technical problems that energized me were taking a backseat to the organizational mechanics of working at scale. In some ways, that’s probably inevitable on a product team of that size. But it wasn’t where I wanted to focus my energy.

I considered looking for an internal transfer, perhaps to an internal infra team where I could focus more on the technical challenges I’m passionate about. But with the current perceived emphasis on RTO, finding a team that was amenable to remote teammates proved challenging. As a Midwest dad with roots in my community, relocating wasn’t an option I wanted to pursue.

An opportunity emerged that would let me return to my developer experience roots – the kind of work that has always energized me – while building on everything I learned at Meta. It felt like the right time to take what I’d gained here – the confidence, the experience with scale, the understanding of complex organizations – and apply it in a role more aligned with my technical passions.

Looking Back

You know what’s funny about big tech companies? From the outside, they can seem almost mythical. I remember thinking Meta engineers must be coding wizards who never ship bugs and write perfect PRs in their sleep. But after a year there, I’ve learned something important: we’re all just people trying to build good stuff while juggling meetings and fixing prod issues.

Yeah, I worked at Meta. No, I didn’t become some 10x engineer or discover the secret sauce to perfect code. What I did do was show up every day, ship some cool features, work with some incredibly smart people, and learn a ton about building software at ridiculous scale.

I’m grateful for the experience, but I’m also excited about what’s next. Meta taught me a lot about what I want (and don’t want) in my engineering career. Most importantly? It taught me that there’s no magic - just people solving problems together, whether that’s at a FAANG company or a two-person startup.

Time to take these lessons and build something new.