Here's The Guy Facebook's Engineers Have To Suck Up To

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Here's The Guy Facebook's Engineers Have To Suck Up To

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If you're an engineer at Facebook, there's one guy you've got to get to know.

And it's not Mark Zuckerberg.

Chuck Rossi, Facebook's release engineering manager, decides what new features go into Facebook's daily and weekly "pushes."

Normally engineers submit changes and lobby for them internally online. But if they're really keen on getting something in, they go see Rossi in person, often bearing gifts, he told Bloomberg Businessweek:

Rossi and a handful of other people review the tweaks, approve some, and kick back the rest for improvement. The engineers, proud of their ideas, often try to charm Rossi into approving their code. They gather in chat rooms to try to convince him that it’s crucial that their changes go in today’s push. When tomorrow is absolutely not an option, the engineers leave their desks and make their way to Rossi with an offering—hence the Scotch selection at the Tiki bar. “A little bribe never hurts,” he says. “I love cupcakes, too.”

Before joining Facebook in 2008, Rossi worked at IBM, VMware, and Google.