Street: So, you’re an intern. What are you doing?
Dan Judd: I’m working at Facebook as a software engineer intern. It’s a 12-week internship and I’m working in advertising. At Penn, I’m dual degree both Wharton and Engineering, so this is like a perfect fit for my interests. I’m really passionate about technology, and I figured, if that’s the case, then I should be in Silicon Valley. This is the first year that Facebook came to Penn to recruit on campus, so I think that really made a big difference.
Street: So you met them at Penn?
DJ: Yeah, actually I did a hackathon — do you know what PennApps is?
Street: Not quite…
DJ: So basically, you have 48 hours to start from scratch and end with an app, a website, a robot… literally anything. You’d be surprised, you can build some things in 48 hours! We built Trucking Now, which shows you all the food trucks nearest to your location. And it works anywhere in the country, not just in Philadelphia. That was in September, and I did it again in January. We built an app that’s an instant way to give everyone your contact information, with one button click. I met people from Facebook at the event, and they reached out to me afterwards and came on campus for interviews.
Street: What kind of hours are you working?
DJ: They say that as long as you’re here for your meetings, they don’t care. They give you your space, and it’s very unstructured. There are people who come in at 11 in the morning and leave at 4 or 5. For me, I like to get in early and leave late just because it’s an awesome place to be.
Street: How big is the internship program?
DJ: Last year there were like 500, this year there are 700 interns. That’s a little under a quarter of the company! What’s cool about Facebook is that it’s a small company — a company like Google is like 30,000 people, Apple’s like 54,000, Microsoft 96,000, we’re like 3,000-3,500 — so you’re really forced to wear a lot of different shoes. I feel like I’m making things that thousands or millions (or whatever it is) of people will see what I’m doing and interact with it. It’s really motivating and exciting at the same time.
Street: Do you get to know the other interns off the clock?
DJ: Every Saturday there’s this league that a lot of the tech companies compete in, and it’s a different sport each weekend. So last weekend it was flag football, the weekend before that was volleyball, this weekend is kickball. Last weekend we beat LinkedIn!
Street: Do you have your own office?
DJ: Facebook doesn’t have offices, not even Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a really open environment. All the desks are long tables—sort of like Huntsman, but a lot more spaced out. Everyone has a big monitor, and they give everyone a laptop and a phone as well. They really want you to be working together, they really encourage collaboration. But every once in a while you gotta plug in your headphones, so you can block out the noise. It’s a pretty amusing place. What’s really cool is we have these vending machines, but instead of candy, they’re for electronics. If you need a keyboard, you just go and get a nice keyboard. You can get headphones, a power cord for your iPhone…
Street: And you said you’re focused in advertising?
DJ: I’m in advertiser growth. We focus on doing whatever it takes to build advertisers, you know, just get more advertisers. Building platforms… it’s very technical. My job is to be a programmer. So I’m working on the platforms that advertisers would use, and building new ones as well. We definitely analyze a lot — we really do try to understand all the different people that use a specific page.
Street: Are you responsible for the ads on the sides of the page?
DJ: Yeah… I’m more on the platform, like actually building the platform to create those ads. I don’t know if you even know this, but a lot of Facebook ads are actually in your newsfeed. Facebook has put more of a focus on that — the idea is to show you content that doesn’t bother you, and is actually relevant to what you want to see. A lot of advertisers are just anyone who has a Facebook page that wants more likes, but did pay money and wanted to promote it, whatever it was.
Street: Any cool new ideas for ads?
DJ: Yeah, I definitely have a lot of ideas. I’m more focused on mobile, so working on the interfaces that advertisers would use to create ads. We don’t really do too much there yet, so it’s kind of cool to be at the forefront of that.
Street: What’s your favorite perk of the job?
DJ: Just the ability to have a huge impact as an intern and get an amazing experience out of it. There are a lot of neat perks… there’s a basketball court, a volleyball court, a nice fitness center, there are microkitchens all over the place that are always stocked with food and drinks, and it’s all free. But that’s not what made me want to come here.
Street: Have you met Mark Zuckerberg?
DJ: Unfortunately I don’t work in his building, so I don’t see him on the reg, but I’ve seen him a fair amount. He’ll go up to interns and ask them what they’re working on. I actually just walked by him!