Facebook's 'Hacker' Ways Trickle to Branch Offices 5 July 2012, by Karl Baker

Facebook's 'hacker' ways trickle to branch offices 5 July 2012, By Karl Baker

Denise Noyes stood in front of 80 fellow social- for her project. networking engineers on the 18th floor of Facebook's Seattle office on the northeast edge of "We're bringing in a barista from Trabant to teach downtown. Following the ring of a gong, she us how to make fancy lattes," she said, referring to announced the start of Facebook Seattle's second- Seattle cafe Trabant Coffee and Chai. ever "hackathon." "I'm a little bit of a coffee snob," she added. "If you've never used spray paint, this may not be the best time to start," she said, eliciting chuckles Brian Steadman, who normally works on from the crowd. Facebook's mobile engineering team, also stretched the definition of hackathon. His project But just about everything else was fair game. involved Legos, paint and pop art. He pieced together Legos to form the background of a Roy From noon to midnight on a recent Wednesday, Lichtenstein painting. He then painted the round engineers were set free to pursue interests outside connector tabs of each Lego piece to create a of their normal day-to-day work obligations. dotted image of a Lichtenstein work.

Engineering director Peter Wilson says these Steadman's only trouble? The plastic Lego base events are ingrained in the company's identity. cannot easily be attached to Facebook's office wall. Late-night hackathons - events where software engineers collaborate on coding - were a handy "I might have to frame it," Steadman said. way to zip out new code dating back to when CEO Mark Zuckerberg's first opened his company's Facebook, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is not the Silicon Valley headquarters in 2004, an eternity in only company to pay its employees to work on the tech community. projects outside of its main business plan. Google's 20 percent program, where employees were given But they also keep engineers' creativity and job one day each week to pursue their own computing satisfaction riding high. In a sector where tech interests, has been credited with developing giants compete fiercely for top talent, that's key. Google Earth, among other applications.

"Engineers value being able to have an impact, Wilson, however, argues Facebook's hackathon is being able to direct themselves, having ideas," different. It's more limited in time, he says, and the Wilson said. "A hackathon is just an extreme goal is to mainly explore conceptual ideas without example of that." worrying about the toughest coding challenges.

While hackathons are normally an opportunity for "It enables you to focus on what is the core value," programmers to flex their coding chops, this one he said. extended well beyond the digital walls of ones and zeros. Rather than work on her laptop, Noyes, for The project is appealing to at least one aspiring example, decided to improve the office's amenities. engineer. Parth Upadhyay is an intern who participated in the recent hackathon. He is a junior Normally one of two engineers who works on at the University of Texas and, in a year, wants to developing Facebook's video chat application, find a job as a software engineer. Facebook is a Noyes decided to solicit help from a coffee expert contender for his services.

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"They give you so much freedom," he said.

For the hackathon, he wanted to develop an application that will allow Facebook users to briskly review their updates, similar to how users can view photos.

He admitted, however, the idea is still in its infancy.

"I just started an hour ago," he said.

(c)2012 The Seattle Times Distributed by MCT Information Services APA citation: Facebook's 'hacker' ways trickle to branch offices (2012, July 5) retrieved 27 September 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2012-07-facebook-hacker-ways-trickle-offices.html

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