Making Meta | Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth (CTO)

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
You were basically the 10th engineer at Facebook. I imagine there was a lot of pain and suffering that people don't often hear about.

**Andrew Bosworth** (0:06)
I didn't sleep for more than four hours at a time. I had to wake up every four hours and check the report and see if anyone was attacking the site. They don't tell you about that stuff in the movies.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:13)
You worked 120 hours per week. You had no hobbies.

**Andrew Bosworth** (0:16)
I don't want to take away from the romanticism of it. It's just that it's most often we hear those romantic stories from the successes. It's a healthy thing for people to want to throw themselves into something and take that risk, but it is not glamorous, like at the time.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:28)
The News Feed, that was one of your early projects. At Facebook, people did not want it. They were wrong, clearly.

**Andrew Bosworth** (0:32)
Now, News Feed was an easier case than people suspect. Everyone was outraged at the same time as they immediately doubled their usage of the product.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:40)
In terms of the economic utility, the Venn diagram of Boz of News Feed and ads created a trillion dollars of value.
Today, my guest is Andrew Bosworth, or Boz, as most people know him. Boz is the Chief Technology Officer of Meta. He joined what was then called Facebook in early 2006 as one of the first engineers. And during his 18-year tenure at Meta, he created some of the most impactful and important products in internet history, including the Facebook News Feed, which was the first ever algorithmically ranked content feed of any social network, and is basically what people think of as Facebook today. He also built the original Facebook mobile ads platform, which he then ran for another four years. He also helped build and scale the Facebook messaging system, the profile, the timeline Facebook groups, and even the internal engineering bootcamp. Most recently, he served as VP of Ads and Business Platform, where he led engineering, product, research, analytics, and design. And in 2017, he created the company's AR VR organization, now called Reality Labs. These days, Andrew leads Meta's efforts in AR, VR, and mixed reality, along with consumer hardware, across Quest, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, and more. In our wide-ranging conversation, we touch on so many important lessons and stories. What it was really like in the early days of Facebook, why you should be asking your manager for help more often, why communication is the job, lessons from Meta's turnaround over the past couple of years, Boz's thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro, a bunch of leadership and career advice, what it was like to build the very first newsfeed and lessons from that experience, and stories of failure and stories of success, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Andrew Bosworth aka Boz, after a short word from our sponsors.
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