Work in Facebook’s First Office
In a plain white building above a Chinese restaurant, was a
smallish space, with 3 small doored offices, and 3 smaller storage
rooms that worked as close-able offices, and maybe a 20 by 35
foot room with a table taking up most of it that could function as
a conference room. These all surrounded a central open area
(maybe 40 ft by 100 ft), about a quarter of which was a makeshift
reception area, and the rest was... everything. In that space, in
which a person could not walk more than 10 steps without hitting
a wall, about a dozen people worked.
The key principle that made this possible was that no one had any
of “their own” space, except the few people enshrined in offices:
Sean the President, the summer interns, and Operations in the
persons of Taner H15 and Nick Heyman. Zuck would come in, see
16 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
14 Noah: Right above the bead shop which is a great place to meet women and
across from the delicious Miyake. Karel: Noah doesn’t know Japanese food. But
that’s okay, I don’t know women. Go to Sushi Ya, a few blocks down on the right.
15 Halicioglu. Over 12 months, I never spelled it right, and just now cribbed it
from my Facebook friends list. He understands server hardware and operations
troubleshooting better than anyone I know.
every chair full and just lie down on the thin carpet, on his belly,
sandals flapping, and start typing into his little white mac ibook.
Each of the two small tables had four nice 24” LCD monitors that
pointed outward to form a square in the middle of the table,
leaving space for 4 keyboards facing each chair and not much
else. The center behind the monitors was a garbage can. Or the
place where very important papers were collected from around the
office and gently deposited. I’m not sure which. Along with food
wrappers and empty cans, I’d find my notes and important mail
for Zuck. My first hint to evolve beyond trying to keep paper
notes.
Karel Baloun 17
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
Notice anything else quite interesting in this picture of me from
that time? It’s obviously nothing about me. Nice paint in the
background, eh? Just about every wall was painted with blueishmetallic
graffiti. From the well endowed lady on the cow (i think)
in the entry stairwell, to something that needed to be painted over
in the ladies room before I ever saw it, and before we hired some
ladies. You can also see the nice chair that we assembled
ourselves, and some typical computer clutter on the ground.
I had been on a linux desktop for 5 years, but switched to a nice
OS X laptop, and the company is divided about half and half
between PC and Mac laptops. McCollum had a desktop tower at
the beginning; I don’t know why. Maybe to secure his physical
space in the open office! At the beginning there weren’t enough
chairs, so it was better to get in early in the day. Once the nice
chairs arrived, just like at early Ebay, we all assembled our own
chairs. Of course there were no phones. There are still no
personal land line phones. We used IM heavily and some email,
though most communication was done just by being in the same
place, especially at night.
The huge refrigerator was kept full by shopping trips to Safeway
by one of the office helpers16 or even by Zuck’s very nice
girlfriend at the time. It was loaded with various cool caffeinated
drinks, and commenced my 9 month addiction, finally broken, to
18 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
16 All really nice girls like Jennifer (whose profile i can’t find, since we no longer
share a network, see there are limits) and Krysia.
those small Starbucks bottled coffee drinks.17 I myself made one
run, to the nearby Whole Foods to create a Tea Bar, which
remained quite consistently untouched. The Odwallas I bought
though were drunk in hours, but they exceeded even the
generosity of the pre-office-manager Facebook.
Unfortunately there was only one couch at the time, and besides
being well used at night, it was also in the game room, where
especially late at night a few engineers could be found playing on
the Xbox console. I was also woken one night by Sean around
4am, asking whether I could drive him home (to the place he
shared with Zuck and Dustin, whose pre-VC car I also once
jumped). I don’t remember why, but I think his car got
impounded, since he couldn’t organize both a license and
insurance at the same time, even with an assistant’s help. Sean is
like that - extremely valuable as a visionary, idea driver,
cheerleader; he gave Facebook much credibility at a time when the
company maybe couldn’t have continued without him, but he’s
even more scattered on practical matters than me, which says a
lot.
Through the couch room, one could get to another essential work
area of the early office: the roof. Stepping up on a table, and
sliding out a tall, thin window, we could enjoy about 300 square
gravelly feet of fresh air, equipped with an handful of laid back,
wood and cloth pool chairs. Of course, we had wireless internet,
Karel Baloun 19
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
17 Broken by the best tasting hot chocolate in the bay area. I replaced it with an
addiction to the finest Venezuelan Abuelo.
so could take our laptops anywhere we want. It was a beautiful
California early summer - bright, blue yet not hotter than
comfortable. A powerbook give just enough backlight to function
with sunglasses. And the roof was the only place to make a
phone call without bothering every engineer, so I did many
interview telephone screens out there, or on my daily commute on
my cell phone.18 One day Zuck fell asleep out there and came in a
few hours later with an impressive sun burn. Ezra, the original
product manager, who still may possibly one day stop requesting
deferrals and actually go to law school, also loved to work out
there, developing the finest tan.
Within my first month, the atmosphere of the office was
dramatically upgraded with the hire of Susie, who somehow got
everything organized, and has been a stable rock in every stage of
the company’s growth.
Around the end of May 2005, Zuck painted the word “Forsan” on
his room wall in huge font, and used this as his facebook picture
for a few days. It comes from Virgil’s Aeneid as “Forsan et haec
olim meminisse iuvabit” which can be loosely translated as
“Perhaps, one day, even this will seem pleasant to remember”.
Zuck has a flair for personal dramatics, mimicking the pose of the
statue in front of Father Junipero Serra, and connecting his launch
into the social networking space to the launch of Virgil’s voyage.
20 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
18 My commute was 60-90 minutes, each way. That’s long even for the bay area
and genuinely reflected my enthusiasm for the opportunity.
The first day I walked into the office, I saw Zuck and Sean together
for the first time. Zuck was wearing his Apollo shirt, a low key
basketball jersey like t-shirt, with the name Apollo on the back,
with a large number 1. In the bright summer sunshine both men
had golden locks of curls, and the thought quickly swam through
my head that, in appearance and confidence only, they did look
like Greek god prototypes, like the statues I saw when I toured the
Parthenon.
Zuck also has fun with his position. Jerry Yang labeled himself
Chief Yahoo. Zuck had two sets of business cards made: on one
he was “CEO” and on the other he was “I’m the CEO.... bitch!”. By
the way, did you know that it is possible to decorate a birthday
Karel Baloun 21
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
cake with a perfectly printed web page? Zuck found this out on
his last birthday at an all hands party.
In a plain white building above a Chinese restaurant, was a
smallish space, with 3 small doored offices, and 3 smaller storage
rooms that worked as close-able offices, and maybe a 20 by 35
foot room with a table taking up most of it that could function as
a conference room. These all surrounded a central open area
(maybe 40 ft by 100 ft), about a quarter of which was a makeshift
reception area, and the rest was... everything. In that space, in
which a person could not walk more than 10 steps without hitting
a wall, about a dozen people worked.
The key principle that made this possible was that no one had any
of “their own” space, except the few people enshrined in offices:
Sean the President, the summer interns, and Operations in the
persons of Taner H15 and Nick Heyman. Zuck would come in, see
16 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
14 Noah: Right above the bead shop which is a great place to meet women and
across from the delicious Miyake. Karel: Noah doesn’t know Japanese food. But
that’s okay, I don’t know women. Go to Sushi Ya, a few blocks down on the right.
15 Halicioglu. Over 12 months, I never spelled it right, and just now cribbed it
from my Facebook friends list. He understands server hardware and operations
troubleshooting better than anyone I know.
every chair full and just lie down on the thin carpet, on his belly,
sandals flapping, and start typing into his little white mac ibook.
Each of the two small tables had four nice 24” LCD monitors that
pointed outward to form a square in the middle of the table,
leaving space for 4 keyboards facing each chair and not much
else. The center behind the monitors was a garbage can. Or the
place where very important papers were collected from around the
office and gently deposited. I’m not sure which. Along with food
wrappers and empty cans, I’d find my notes and important mail
for Zuck. My first hint to evolve beyond trying to keep paper
notes.
Karel Baloun 17
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
Notice anything else quite interesting in this picture of me from
that time? It’s obviously nothing about me. Nice paint in the
background, eh? Just about every wall was painted with blueishmetallic
graffiti. From the well endowed lady on the cow (i think)
in the entry stairwell, to something that needed to be painted over
in the ladies room before I ever saw it, and before we hired some
ladies. You can also see the nice chair that we assembled
ourselves, and some typical computer clutter on the ground.
I had been on a linux desktop for 5 years, but switched to a nice
OS X laptop, and the company is divided about half and half
between PC and Mac laptops. McCollum had a desktop tower at
the beginning; I don’t know why. Maybe to secure his physical
space in the open office! At the beginning there weren’t enough
chairs, so it was better to get in early in the day. Once the nice
chairs arrived, just like at early Ebay, we all assembled our own
chairs. Of course there were no phones. There are still no
personal land line phones. We used IM heavily and some email,
though most communication was done just by being in the same
place, especially at night.
The huge refrigerator was kept full by shopping trips to Safeway
by one of the office helpers16 or even by Zuck’s very nice
girlfriend at the time. It was loaded with various cool caffeinated
drinks, and commenced my 9 month addiction, finally broken, to
18 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
16 All really nice girls like Jennifer (whose profile i can’t find, since we no longer
share a network, see there are limits) and Krysia.
those small Starbucks bottled coffee drinks.17 I myself made one
run, to the nearby Whole Foods to create a Tea Bar, which
remained quite consistently untouched. The Odwallas I bought
though were drunk in hours, but they exceeded even the
generosity of the pre-office-manager Facebook.
Unfortunately there was only one couch at the time, and besides
being well used at night, it was also in the game room, where
especially late at night a few engineers could be found playing on
the Xbox console. I was also woken one night by Sean around
4am, asking whether I could drive him home (to the place he
shared with Zuck and Dustin, whose pre-VC car I also once
jumped). I don’t remember why, but I think his car got
impounded, since he couldn’t organize both a license and
insurance at the same time, even with an assistant’s help. Sean is
like that - extremely valuable as a visionary, idea driver,
cheerleader; he gave Facebook much credibility at a time when the
company maybe couldn’t have continued without him, but he’s
even more scattered on practical matters than me, which says a
lot.
Through the couch room, one could get to another essential work
area of the early office: the roof. Stepping up on a table, and
sliding out a tall, thin window, we could enjoy about 300 square
gravelly feet of fresh air, equipped with an handful of laid back,
wood and cloth pool chairs. Of course, we had wireless internet,
Karel Baloun 19
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
17 Broken by the best tasting hot chocolate in the bay area. I replaced it with an
addiction to the finest Venezuelan Abuelo.
so could take our laptops anywhere we want. It was a beautiful
California early summer - bright, blue yet not hotter than
comfortable. A powerbook give just enough backlight to function
with sunglasses. And the roof was the only place to make a
phone call without bothering every engineer, so I did many
interview telephone screens out there, or on my daily commute on
my cell phone.18 One day Zuck fell asleep out there and came in a
few hours later with an impressive sun burn. Ezra, the original
product manager, who still may possibly one day stop requesting
deferrals and actually go to law school, also loved to work out
there, developing the finest tan.
Within my first month, the atmosphere of the office was
dramatically upgraded with the hire of Susie, who somehow got
everything organized, and has been a stable rock in every stage of
the company’s growth.
Around the end of May 2005, Zuck painted the word “Forsan” on
his room wall in huge font, and used this as his facebook picture
for a few days. It comes from Virgil’s Aeneid as “Forsan et haec
olim meminisse iuvabit” which can be loosely translated as
“Perhaps, one day, even this will seem pleasant to remember”.
Zuck has a flair for personal dramatics, mimicking the pose of the
statue in front of Father Junipero Serra, and connecting his launch
into the social networking space to the launch of Virgil’s voyage.
20 Inside Facebook
Copyright, Karel Baloun, 2006. All rights reserved.
18 My commute was 60-90 minutes, each way. That’s long even for the bay area
and genuinely reflected my enthusiasm for the opportunity.
The first day I walked into the office, I saw Zuck and Sean together
for the first time. Zuck was wearing his Apollo shirt, a low key
basketball jersey like t-shirt, with the name Apollo on the back,
with a large number 1. In the bright summer sunshine both men
had golden locks of curls, and the thought quickly swam through
my head that, in appearance and confidence only, they did look
like Greek god prototypes, like the statues I saw when I toured the
Parthenon.
Zuck also has fun with his position. Jerry Yang labeled himself
Chief Yahoo. Zuck had two sets of business cards made: on one
he was “CEO” and on the other he was “I’m the CEO.... bitch!”. By
the way, did you know that it is possible to decorate a birthday
Karel Baloun 21
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
cake with a perfectly printed web page? Zuck found this out on
his last birthday at an all hands party.
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