阅读笔记——《How a Facebook rejection pushed me to start and grow a profitable business in 12 months》
Author: A young cat
Date: November 24, 2019
Brief introduction
Author, with a good salary CTO (I was and still am the Data CTO). FaceBook received an invitation to interview, and participate in, but out of the second round, then decided to find his programming skills, so the use of leisure time produced a pixelixe.com website, a photo editing site.
The authors say: "realize this is more important than my current job, even though I have a background in software engineering, I did not write too much code I was, and still is headquartered in 16 countries around the world of large retail companies. chief technology officer of data, most of my time is spent on management and strategy sessions. I exchanges and engineers, but I really coded up to now, almost three years later. "
作者原话：It is important to be aware than in my current job at that time, even if I had a software engineering background, I didn’t code that much. I was and still am the Data CTO for a large retail company based in 16 countries worldwide and I spend most of my days doing mostly management and strategy meetings. I was interacting with engineers but almost three years had passed since I really coded.
Receive an invitation to interview
On receipt of the invitation FaceBook, interview there are three steps:
- Phone call interview
- Coding screen interview with one of their software engineer leads.
- On site interview
The first telephone interview went well, recruiters believe I am the right person for the team. She also added that our conversations, such as Facebook posts internal salary is 150,000 euros, we all agree should be organized as soon as possible coding interview.
Even before the first contact Facebook, I've spent 10 years developing software, but I dutifully completed my work. I read a lot of articles about how to prepare for Facebook software engineering interview. I spent a few days to review the basic data structures course, Big O notation, recursive functions, etc., in order to increase the chances of success. I even did a lot of false coding interview to make sure I can be ready.
But the authors failed second interview
The authors say:. "To be honest, I do not blame Facebook, I talked to two recruiters are very friendly and professional . Also, I've always admired those carefully selected staff, often to attract the best talent the company has too many companies did not raise the threshold to a high enough level is very low or very weak, and ultimately never be "innovative" drive. "
作者原话：To be honest, I do not blame Facebook at all, both recruiters I talked with were really kind and professional. Moreover, I have always admired companies that select their employees carefully and tend to attract the best profiles. There are too many companies out there that do not raise the bar high enough and have poor or weak level and ends up never being “innovation” driven.
Programming decisions
After the failure of the decision to re-start programming. "A few years ago, I read an article, which explains Amazon's chief technology officer Werner Vogt • Wales (Werner Vogels) encoding at least monthly day, even if he is in such a large organization in a busy Amazon people. this article always caught my sympathy. If a CTO lost contact with the subject matter, and does not understand the pain suffered by his technical team, then how can he effectively to organize work?. " (Here involving different one kinds of domestic and foreign engineers, refer to the article: Why the United States than the Chinese programmers programmers to easily work less overtime? )
" In your career, there is a better way to write code than what a regular basis to understand the problems of computer science and engineering development team encountered it? "
Therefore, in April 2018, I started in my spare time (evenings, weekends, holidays) to re-start writing code. Facebook refused to let me very motivated, I want to prove to yourself, I can not just write code, but also their own to develop a complete product.
第一步: Find a product idea challenging enough from a technical point of view
We need to meet four conditions:
Condition 1: all done by myself
From idea, to concept and design, to separate each line of code development: database, middleware, api, site definitions UX / UI, everything !!
Condition 2: do not do something too simple
I do not want something too simple. I want it to be interesting, complex, there are many problems to be solved calculus (mathematics and also modify the coding), maybe a little 3D, few people would happily use, I would be proud of something.
Condition 3: Use unlimited access
It is clear from the very beginning, I wanted to create a freemium Saas products. Since this will be a project comes, I can not bear the costs of business, because I have with people face to face (sales), turning them into potential buyers or users. Plan is to create a 100% online access tool. Users will be able to use the free program to upgrade or use a credit card, without any human intervention. In that case, keep my full-time job would not have a problem at all.
Condition 4: no costs
Finally, I decided not to spend a penny on this project. (Unless you buy a domain name is mandatory) guide is the right approach. I wanted to convince myself that, in 2019 on the Internet, you can still start from scratch. (Just like in the 70's, 80's and 90's, geeks start making money directly from their garage).
Step two: find a business idea
这个点子需要激励你，使你想去做。“Moreover, this idea was motivating me a lot, I decided to build the most easy to use and accessible graphic design studio on the market. Developing a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor was complex enough to challenge my computer engineering skills. A lot of mathematics and calculus would be involved, perfect. I was excited as hell!”
The third step: start (start looking for a domain name like) There is no such thing as finding a startup name, In reality, the trick is to find a free domain name that looks like a startup name
Achievement
Finally, the author succeeded, less than a year, and profit.
At last
I am glad I went out of my comfort zone accepting this Facebook interview. I learned and grew a lot since then.I am proud to say I regain my coding abilities, design abilities, web marketing abilities and I can carry on as there are so many skills required to launch a startup as a side project.
