Lenny Markus's Recent LinkedIn Posts

I haven't been out here on LI too often lately, but I just want to say a big "Thank You" to all the people that reached out to check in on me today. You're all lovely and I miss you <3. (Yes, I'm still employed.) It will always suck to see people that you've worked with leave your company. There's no easy/good way to do layoffs, but within the spectrum of what's possible, and what I've experienced, Meta definitely was on the better end. Wishing all the best to the people that left today. Y'all are talented, amazing, and I'm looking forward to learning what your next adventure will be! #meta

Even though I've been out of #paypal for the last 4 years, the layoffs there still hit close to the heart. (Doubly so for the DevRel crew, who *always* gave it their all to make things better for developers <3 ) For all the talented people who are now looking for their next opportunity, if you see any openings at Meta [ https://lnkd.in/gmnmtTBz ] that you'd like to be referred into, let me know. If I can help in other ways (interview prep, general advice, sympathetic ear, etc) happy to do so as well. Times may be tough, but y'all are amazing. Note for my extended network: If anyone has any openings, please reply here. You never know who you might end up helping.

Some thoughts on my first year at Facebook!

Hiring time! Are you open to changing roles? We are looking to hire multiple Mid(3+ YoE) and Senior Software Engineers into our team!  Ideally in the Bay Area/Seattle, but US-remote can be considered.  (Levels to hire: E4,  E5, and E6, Here's how those levels relate to other companies: https://lnkd.in/gCpznZFs ) Our Measurement Privacy team at Meta works on cutting-edge projects that prioritize data privacy at massive scale. With Privacy Engineering as a relatively new field, you will be paving the way for the future. • As a software engineer, you'll focus on high-impact initiatives that balance risk reduction and contribute to the company's privacy (most important) objectives. • Be part of a team dedicated to intelligent automation and streamlined workflows, promoting innovative privacy solutions. 🚀 • Enjoy a healthy work-life balance and distributed/remote-first (~20% of the team is remote plus a mix of Bay Area + Seattle) culture, ensuring seamless and effective collaboration. 💻 • Grow professionally in the emerging field of privacy engineering, sharpening your skills to drive meaningful change. Privacy touches all technologies at Meta, so the knowledge you build will take you far.💪 • Join us in a fast-growing organization building groundbreaking 0->1 tools and processes that safeguard user data and align with Meta's privacy vision! 💫 If you’re interested in learning more, please let me know!

Breaking into the tech industry is hard if you don't have a traditional educational background. Many people have the right skill set, but get caught up in recruiting filters because they may be lacking a few specific keywords on their resume. Rotational Engineering is one of my favorite programs at Meta. It provides a pathway to folks that have the right skills, by offering a one-year, *paid* opportunity to work with two teams (2 x 6=-month rotations), with the aim of graduating into a full time position. While you already need to have a basic technical foundation, the program offers training on the company's tech stack, as well as continued mentorship, to ensure you're set up for success. If you have questions on it, or would like to apply please let me know! You can read more (and even apply directly) here:

I'm looking for an Engineering Manager! (And no, this isn't an AI-gen'd post.) The org I support at Meta has been working on solving some particularly thorny problems in the privacy space: Regulatory bodies all over the world have made a very strong shift to enacting new laws to enhance how personal data can and cannot be used. Complying with these rules and regulations is not impossible, but it can be complex, and require a lot of time and human effort to achieve. This can make launching new products, entering new markets, or simply continuing to operate difficult. At high level, most of these regulations (and therefore our goal) boil down to a statement that is deceptively simple: "Make sure that data is only used for the purpose for which it was collected." Once you start peeling the layers of this onion, you'll find it leads down a fascinating engineering rabbit hole: How do you programmatically determine purpose? How do you effectively quarantine data at (very large) scale? How can you create governance systems to control access without grinding everything down to a halt? How do you make it durable so that when regulations evolve, the system can adapt quickly? How can you enforce it without bringing down critical pipelines or derailing roadmaps? How indeed? This is where you, dear reader, come in. This job places you in support of a strong, diverse engineering team in Menlo Park, tasked with building our next gen privacy systems. As a team manager you'll have a hand in identifying the most impactful opportunities ahead, and setting the roadmap for the next two years. Here are the things that will make you successful in this role: - You are proactive! You're not a spectator, but are actively engaged in building bridges with other tech and non-tech organizations, (eg: legal and compliance groups), where you are actively influencing their approach to privacy. - You care about work-life balance, because we're not running a sprint over here. You can set ambitious (but realistic) goals, and help the team achieve them in a responsible manner. - You are allergic to Band-aid solutions. Sometimes we need them, but in general you always push for the right fix, and promote a healthy engineering culture on your team. - You have a strong preference for back-end + infra. You won't have a lot of UI work aside from some internal tools. Your interests are best aligned for large scale, highly performant systems. - You care about people growth. Developing the talent in your team, providing frequent feedback and writing career growth plans are things that come naturally to you. This domain is not for everyone, but if you're looking for a very unique combination of impactful business growth, technology and engineering at scale, we should talk :) You can apply directly here, but I'd also like to hear directly from you. Happy to answer any questions you may have: https://lnkd.in/gUZmzHkt

Announcement time! It has been one and a half years at Meta/Facebook, where I've continued to learn and grown a lot (Especially during this crazy pandemic!). Now, I'm happy to share with all of you that starting next week, I will be doing the exact same thing I am doing right now. I've spent this time growing a kick-ass team, full of happy and motivated people. I have a supportive management chain, good business partners, and there's no reason to change any of that. Sometimes the status quo can be something to celebrate too 😄. And yes, I'm hiring. I have four early-career positions coming up on my team, and I'd love to have a diverse pipeline of candidates for these roles. The work will focus mostly on back-end, so if you enjoy writing business logic more than centering divs, these roles may be a good fit!

ML Positions! Remote friendly! If anyone's interested, do let me know :)

Just a mini-rant on managing with empathy.

Product Managers on LinkedIn: (I kid, I kid! Y’all know how much I appreciate you )

… in which I give Good Advice™

Positions open again! I'm hiring local (Bay Area) AND remote (US). Come join a high functioning team that's gearing up to build an experimentation platform from scratch :) I have both Senior (5+ yoe) and Mid-level (3+ yoe) roles open. https://lnkd.in/gQADYZMS

Do I have any Sr. Data Engineers in my network? There's an opening on the DE team that supports my group. We're working on some really cool problems, and you'd get to work with the awesome Jiefu Pei too!

Friends, Can anyone recommend some good resources I can give to an introvert that needs to inject a little bit more energy in how they present / show up in meetings?

Filed under: people who make a difference

I posted about an upcoming opening in the team I support a few days ago. It's now officially open :) I've tried to add as much detail as possible (Outside of an NDA 😀 ) on what this role will be like, and what a Sr. Engineer can expect to learn in it. Those who've worked with me in the past know that I pull out all stops to help people grow in their careers, and I think this opportunity is ideal for that: Big problem space, early stage, scope for big impact. If you have 7+ years of experience in building large scale systems, this could be your next adventure. Happy to go more in-depth if you're interested.

Go work with Ed! He runs a fun operation

🚨 Senior Roles Open in ML / Stream Processing for a pretty interesting domain! The Sales Data & Planning Systems organization is focused on data & infrastructure to enable our sales & support teams to understand our customers across the Facebook family of products which in turn enables them to provide the right strategies to their clients to get value from our products. The team is responsible for real time, batch, and machine learning systems that maintain billions of data points, provide real time reporting on customer performance, help our leadership teams effectively identify opportunities to better support our clients, and enable our sales teams to rapidly respond to changing industry conditions. The roles will design and implement a real time signals systems that ingests data from across internal and external business products across the Facebook family. This data will be used to draw insights and Machine learning features to enable a partner machine learning team to enable our sales and support teams to more effectively identify real time opportunities to unblock or provide guidance to our clients. Interested? Talk to me or Justin Grant

Opportunity Hack is one of my favorite hackathons. It connects software engineering with *real* problems that need to be solved. I really want to encourage everyone in my network to participate, in particular those with more experience should consider being mentors for the duration of the event. A little direction and some nuggets of wisdom can go a long way in events like these.

Opportunity Hack is one of my favorite hackathons. It connects software engineering with *real* problems that need to be solved. I really want to encourage everyone in my network to participate, in particular those with more experience should consider being mentors for the duration of the event. A little direction and some nuggets of wisdom can go a long way in events like these.

There are bad ideas, and then there's this... As somebody who has worked to help many folks from underrepresented backgrounds break into tech, this is one of the most disgusting things I've seen related to gatekeeping in our industry. An interview should not be an adversarial setting. Interviews need to be opportunities for candidates to showcase their abilities and knowledge. This is an extreme case, but I hope it helps hiring managers think long and hard about how their fancy interview process can actively harm others, and keeps amazing people away from their companies. (They took it down, but you can still view it in internet archive https://lnkd.in/g7MMiJ4y )