I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

Hi, nice to meet you, I like to give more personal advice because every path is different and I want to find something a little unique about you that I can hone in on. My most general/therapy-like advice is focus on these four traits: 1. Grit: if something doesn't make sense just relentlessly keep trying until it does. Study the same concepts from different angels, debug something diligently line by line until you figure it out. 2. Curiosity: never be satisfied with "it just works", keep asking questions until you have a better sense of why. 3. Ownership: don't expect anyone to tell you what to do or anyone to have the definitive answer to anything, you need to ultimately be responsible for understanding or not. 4. Teamwork: help those around you who are learning. Oftentimes you get better by making the people around you better.