I was the 19th engineer to join WhatsApp we may have had around 20 million users

at the time and by the time I was leaving the company we had 1.2 billion active
monthly users I've been working in tech for 17 years so over the years I probably
work with thousands of Engineers every single person wants some kind of influence
it could be influence in terms of I want to get a promotion that's a form of
influence you want to influence your manager or I want to get a different job so
that's part of our curriculum influence and we say influence is about likability
and credibility when I ask Peter I know Peter will deliver ex I know he's
dependable and he's not going to make me feel like [ __ ] he's not going to be an
[ __ ] and he's going to be pleasant to work with so like ability plus
credibility can bring you a lot of influence people will come to you for New
Opportunities if I'm building a new startup I'm thinking about who do I want on
my team they're going to think of people who have the like ability and The
credibility together because if you only have one or the other you're okay you
might be able to tag along but you're not going to be the first person they think
of so I do recommend okay even if you are really good at all of them please
choose one what is your thing what do you want to be known for as I started
getting more involved with YouTube I've been watching more content that it drives
me crazy when I see these videos like top five Trends or top five languages to
follow because I don't think that's what really will help you be successful it's
not about which language you know because as a hiring manager I'm often trying to
just understand are you a smart engineer can you code because what languages
we're using today may not be applicable tomorrow so I want to be able to work
with people who can learn new things pick up new skills and that's what I'm
interviewing for when I talk to new software Engineers similar principles apply
to success blindly following Trends is recipe for failure because you're you're
always going to be a step behind so I encourage people to be inquisitive and
explore your passions what are you good at what do you enjoy doing and follow
that at whatsapp we actually had a note written by one of the founders we wrote
no gimmicks and we had it posted on the walls we decided we're not going to do
games we're not going to do gimmicks we're not going to throw in bunch of feates
just to appease every single person the way we are going to appease every single
person is by focusing on the core utility features like does the messaging
actually work can you call someone and can you actually hear them I guess another
word you can say is we focused on quality we wanted to drill in to make sure it
worked every single time rather than adding on a bunch of new features we would
get a lot of emails from people all over the world and they would tell us there
was a natural disaster nothing was working the phone lines were down but I was
able to use what WhatsApp to call the firefighters and I was rescued or I was in
a car accident and I was rescued so I do believe it worked so when I was in
college I actually interned for a threepers startup and we had a lot of fun I
loved the ownership the autonomy I could really see the impact of my work I also
felt like we were lacking Direction and Leadership and mentorship and that's part
of the reason why I joined IBM and when I did join IBM I felt like there was
great mentorship but I lacked the autonomies so WhatsApp for me struck a balance
because at the time I was the 19th engineer it was small enough where I could see
the impact of the work but the founders had a lot of experience they were both
from Yahoo They had a lot of experience working in Tech and I felt like that
would be a great balance for me to find both ownership and mentorship and it's
not like we had one-on-one every week it wasn't a formal mentorship but just by
being there in a small company and observing and watching similar to my
upbringing I guess just learning how they operate how they lead was a really
great opportunity for me and I learned so much by just being there we may have
had around 20 million users at the time and by the time I was leaving the company
we had 1.2 billion active monthly users there were several values I think that
was key to the success of WhatsApp and as we experienced the growth I think it
was really important to be able to hold on to our engineering culture and that
was part of my big Focus as well when I was starting the new office in London I
went there in 2018 we grew the office to about 100 engineers in a couple of years
and in that short period of time we were hiring new Engineers every week and one
thing that we tried to really do was to make sure that everyone understands the
engineering culture for WhatsApp I think was pretty special and if I were to sum
up the WhatsApp engineering culture in one word it's challenging but I would say
it was simplicity so simp Simplicity can mean a lot of different things but one
way of achieving Simplicity is really prioritizing it's easy for us to say I'm
going to do 10 different things and be really great at it but it's actually much
harder to be focused on few core features and few core offerings that we will
offer and prioritize them ruthlessly we had a clear decision maker who gave us
clear messaging about which features we're going to deliver and we came up with
with these features really intentionally as well we had ideas like okay we want
to make sure even someone in the middle of nowhere with bad internet connection
on an old device should be able to use our app so we wanted to prioritize the
user experience so even people in remote places with body internet connection on
older devices can use our app also we like to talk about can a grandma in the
middle of nowhere use this feature and that was our guiding princip principle for
how we prioritize our work we made sure that every single person understood what
we're building and where we're going and I also implemented that in my personal
team as engineering manager as well I let people know these are the things that
we're building and this is our long-term overall goal so when they are working I
can't always be there to hold their hand and guide them but when they're working
they can prioritize their own work when they have competing projects or features
or priorities they can say the these are our guiding values or priorities and I
know exactly which one I need to prioritize and it would work also when you're
working cross functionally if someone's asking you for help or giving you new
ideas or suggestions you understand what needs to be done for not just yourself
but for your team and a company as a whole so achieving Simplicity through
prioritizing was one of the key factors for success for us when WhatsApp got
acquired for $19 billion I actually wasn't even sure what a billion dollars was
the type of amount of money that you can't really tangibly describe how much is a
billion dollars the moment that I heard the acquisition news I was sitting in the
conference room it was really weird the founders looked a little weird I couldn't
articulate at the time because I didn't know what was happening but they're like
waving their arms and like saying you need to get into this conference room I
couldn't believe my ears I wasn't sure what was happening but when I heard the
news Okay Facebook's buying us for $19 billion and I was sitting in the
conference room thinking how much is that and what does that mean for me like I
was pretty young at the time so I didn't know how much shares I actually exactly
had and I wasn't really sure what that meant for me and I was trying to calculate
the number what does that mean for me and I couldn't do the math so yeah it was
an incredible opportunity and it was really exciting to be there and it does
really change your life there are many things money can change change or doesn't
change as well it can bring you certain fulfillment and stability but there's a
lot more that we need beyond that what do you want to do if you don't work yeah
you can stay home watch TV but after a while TV is kind of boring so I think it's
about how you view your I don't feel like I'm working I'm just having fun that's
why you need to find something that's interesting for you right why does Bill
Gates work he's still doing so much he's working all the time but I don't know
Bill Gates and I don't know why he's working but I was suspect most of these
people who continue to work they don't see it as work they see it as a meaningful
part of their life I think it was a turning point for my life because I was never
financially free growing up so having the Financial Freedom was a little bit
confusing at times I did have to go experiment a lot and explore again to
redefine the meaning of work for myself to understand how do I want to spend my
time