I worked at FB for a year back in 2011 however things are still the same (so I am told by friends who still work there).
Facebook make money from ads and selling data to people who want to better target ads. Because of this everything boils down to how do we get data we can sell from this?
Yes you do get to work on interesting problems. Sometimes. Mostly it is quite boring and rather generic stuff though. The interesting parts of FB isn't the development side but the infrastructure side. Not many companies run at the same scale so you get experience with some crazy setups.
One thing you have to be able to deal with at FB is change control. If you don't like working in an extremely strict environment when it comes to pushing an update you won't enjoy it there.
While many people (myself included although not anymore) want to be a rockstar at these huge companies the reality is they are just like any other big company. Lots of rules and not a whole lot of freedom to "play" unless you really are a rockstar which, let's be honest, not many people are. You want freedom? Get a job that you enjoy and that pays the bills and play in your own time, which you will no doubt have much more of at a "normal" company.
One of the things I've heard about FB is the complete lack of change control. That, at least on mobile, people will add code with almost no oversight, which has lead to the apps having such huge numbers of classes.
They still have change control, they just have thousands of people committing to it and as long as it works it ships. Still lots of individual CCRs. Change control doesn't mean you get a decent end product, just that you have a log of who did what.
Facebook make money from ads and selling data to people who want to better target ads. Because of this everything boils down to how do we get data we can sell from this?
Yes you do get to work on interesting problems. Sometimes. Mostly it is quite boring and rather generic stuff though. The interesting parts of FB isn't the development side but the infrastructure side. Not many companies run at the same scale so you get experience with some crazy setups.
One thing you have to be able to deal with at FB is change control. If you don't like working in an extremely strict environment when it comes to pushing an update you won't enjoy it there.
While many people (myself included although not anymore) want to be a rockstar at these huge companies the reality is they are just like any other big company. Lots of rules and not a whole lot of freedom to "play" unless you really are a rockstar which, let's be honest, not many people are. You want freedom? Get a job that you enjoy and that pays the bills and play in your own time, which you will no doubt have much more of at a "normal" company.