What It’s REALLY Like To Work At Facebook

You’ve clicked, shared, liked and commented your way through its dozen different interfaces over the years. In just a decade, Facebook has grown from a Harvard pipe dream into the largest social network in the world. It’s more than likely become a staple of your daily routine, too. Some might call that unhealthy — others would call it the perfect reason to fill out an application.

Josilin Torrano is one of the latter. As a university design recruiter, Josilin often divides her time between campus visits, student interviews, perusing the portfolios of impressive young designers, and assisting recent hires in whatever ways she can. If you’ve got the “hacker spirit,” you may be the perfect candidate for a job at Facebook — if not as a recruiter, then maybe as the newest recruit. Read on to find out what a day at Facebook is really like.

6:00 a.m.: Alarm goes off. Lock screen reveals several new calendar invites and Messenger threads. Triage begins.

6:45 a.m.: Put out a couple of fires via my beloved iPhone and pack up my gym bag—off to work!

7:15 a.m.: Catch up on current events via NPR’s Morning Edition. Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep help keep up my smarts.

8:30 a.m.: Barre fitness class at Facebook taught by one of our many talented and masochistic trainers. She reminds me many, many times: “shaking is good!”

10:00 a.m.: Adjust standing desk to much lower sitting position, because, c’mon, that class was rough. Lead our weekly product design recruiting huddle where we discuss how we’re progressing toward our numbers, a recent Dribble Meet Up we hosted at our Seattle office, and our upcoming trip to the Rhode Island School of Design.

11:00 a.m.: Call with professor from York University to continue conversation about best ways to partner with their design students. Despite it being eight-below the last time we visited, we’re jonesing to go back!

12:00 p.m.: Make a quick sandwich in one of our on-campus cafes and head back to my desk to comb the Internet for promising student portfolios. Attempt to find a balance between this search and finding out “Which Harry Potter Character I am Most Like” before the day is through.

1:30p.m.: Start back-to-back interviews with various design students from across the country. Try and get to the core of whether or not they embody our hacker spirit and what excites them about design at Facebook. Hoodie not included.

2:30 p.m.: Take my visiting student over to our onsite print shop, lovingly called the Analog Lab. Gush over our wood shop (this place smells just like Home Depot!), clever posters, and letter press. The people behind this place are truly the keepers of the culture at FB.

3:15 p.m.: Check in with a recent new grad who joined us from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. How’s it going so far? What can I help you with? Do you think you’ll be able to adjust to the frigid temperatures in San Francisco?

4:00 p.m.: Meet up with one of my product design managers to brainstorm best ways to reach passive talent in the university space. Specifically, students from diverse backgrounds who are not able to attend some of the more well-known schools and may be more difficult to find online.

5:00 p.m.: Update the Facebook event page I created for an upcoming Quartz Composer + Origami Design workshop we’re hosting at RISD next week.

7:00 p.m.: Pick up Thai food from my fave restaurant in Mountain View, Shanna Thai. Stuff myself with pineapple fried rice, spicy eggplant, and beef and green curry. Food coma sets in shortly after.

10:00 p.m.: Keep chipping away at a little project I like to call “my wedding." Family Guy plays in the background.