Why I Left Meta — Exit Interview With Mike Schroepfer

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2022-06-08

YouTube video id: 6dCD3rKwXww

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dCD3rKwXww

we are joined today by mike schrepfer a
senior fellow and former cto at facebook
aka meta
this is going to be a the first time we
ever do a show like this and i'm really
excited about it it's going to be exit
interview format we're going to talk to
shrek about what went right what went
wrong at facebook what he can learn from
his tenure and then i also got a bunch
of questions from the exit interview
handbook that i promise i will ask so
stay tuned it's going to be fun shrek
welcome to the show
thanks excited to be here how did you
get your nickname did were people too
lazy to say the whole shrek for because
it doesn't sound too difficult for me to
pronounce or is that something that you
uh you insisted on i think no i
definitely not insisted and michael was
like the most popular name for like 20
years so i think it was just it was in
college and there were too many michaels
around so it was just easier and shorter
and my very first job out of college was
in a big open floor plan and i remember
being like okay i'm a professional now
people should know me as mike schrupp
doesn't really sound that professional
so everyone in that company knew me as
mike except when some college friends
came to visit in my big open office like
hey shrimp what's up and everyone's like
oh sure that works a lot better than
mike and so
i just gave up at that point right yeah
and i think that um out of everybody at
meta there's two people who are one
named people there's there's zuck and
there's shrek so it's nice to be on the
line with you um
so i wanna um first of all get a sense
as to how long you were at
meta for our listeners if you can share
that and then how did the company change
over your time there
well i joined in uh it was late summer
fall of 2008 and so to put it in context
at that time myspace had more users uh
than facebook so myspace was the big
social network on the block and facebook
was that was the new up and comer and so
it's been about you know coming up on
about 14 years since then and so
obviously
we
have changed a lot over the years it was
a much smaller company much smaller
website at the time you know that was
just around the launch of the mobile app
store um and so mobile was a distance
away
um and so it was uh it has changed a lot
in those 13 14 years
and what position did you come in as
so i joined um and uh
i
was actually my very first job was was
director of engineering and for about
two or three weeks i
ran part of engineering and actually
part of product management and design
and then i had a pre-planned vacation
that had planned like a year in advance
so i took off for a while and came back
and when i came back mark you know sat
chris and i down and said chris cox
chris cox was running hr at the time and
it was like this sort of half
engineering and chris is in hr it
doesn't make sense like how about chris
you run product and shrek you run
engineering and we're like that makes a
lot more sense and so we swizzled around
and chris became the head of product and
i became the head of engineering and
this was in early or fall of 2008 um and
that's how we operated for for quite a
long time
i'm going to get to some of the what
went well what went wrong questions um
but i you know you mentioned that it was
just around the time of mobile getting
off the ground i remember i was at age
maybe it was 2010 or 2011 where i wrote
the story that um for the first time
ever more media was consumed on mobile
devices than it was on desktop and it
was all of a sudden after everybody was
yelling year of mobile probably since
the moment you began
it had come and it came fast and it
didn't really lead anyone to have any
time to
to spend
a while making that transition
facebook had a very interesting moment
there where i if i'm not mistaken
mark zuckerberg was very intent on a
mode of developing where you would build
hybrid apps and then moved to a mode of
building
um native only for
uh for apple and android devices um
so i'm curious from from your seat what
that was like making the transition to
mobile inside facebook well it's i mean
it's important to back up because it did
occur very fast but there were many
years when i first got there mobile
wasn't on the horizon in 2008. um i mean
i remember when i was thinking about
joining facebook i had friends try to
convince me not to join because the
issue actually was
could you build a business in a social
network and the word on the street in
2008 was no you know that myspace was
having a lot of trouble if you remember
they had signed this big deal with
google that had minimums that they were
going to meet and they couldn't meet
them and then people had a long list of
companies before friendster uh you know
aol instant messenger and
and you know the word on the street was
like well lots of people use these
things but you can't actually build a
interesting company business out of it
and so really the first job was a just
keep the site scaling because friendster
had blown up because it it couldn't
actually keep up the load it would kept
crashing and then b assuming we could
actually scale it to the demand of users
how do you build a business on this and
that was sort of building the ads
business on the web
which started as the right hand column
so you had kind of your nav on the left
and your feed in the middle and these
ads on the third third column on the
right and we like kind of just gotten
that working
and that was like the can this company
survive moment and then all of a sudden
you know it's like 2011-ish time frame
12. um you know we saw the user base
shift very dramatically from
web to mobile and so you had a double
problem here you know the problem number
one was
we built everything on the web using php
javascript web technologies and now you
move to mobile and it's a whole
different technology stack so you need
um objective-c you're building an ios on
android you're building a java so like
the language that our programmers work
in is now totally different
all the tooling is different
and then you have this like giant screen
going to a tiny screen so where we had
three columns on the web you have one
column on mobile and we had built our
business on the third column so it's
kind of like what do you do with that
third column and so we basically have
these two crest two challenges at once
which is
technologically how do we build on
mobile um and then business-wise how do
we actually make our business work on
mobile we kind of had to tackle both at
the same time so you know when we looked
around i said look we've got hundreds of
engineers who are trained up and best in
the world at building web technologies
we've got to either cross train all of
them into a brand new technology stack
on ios you know or if we can bring some
of their knowledge and expertise over
onto mobile that will allow us to move
much faster
said much more simply like you have a
whole bunch of people writing one
version of your product here you know in
this form and then on mobile you had to
basically like copy the whole thing and
do it again in a totally different
language and by the way do it again a
third time if you want to also do it on
android since it's totally separate and
that just felt untenable at the time so
we tried to figure out how much
basically code and knowledge could we
share between web development and mobile
uh and that was you know our first sort
of attempt to scale up on mobile and as
as you say it it
sounded good at the time but it was
quite challenging technically to build
a product that was
what people expected which was high
performance when you scroll you know a
feed on your phone you don't expect it
to stutter and jutter and a loading
wheel you just expect kind of buttery
smooth you know feed and that was
quite challenging to do
at that time hybrid yeah that technology
stack
those apps did not did not work very
well
yeah no we had to basically reverse
course um and we
built uh a new version we started on ios
and we basically started from scratch
and said
rewrite the whole thing start from
scratch
and your number one feature is
performance and everything else kind of
can fall off the boat in order to make
the performance target and this is you
know all seems great now because it all
worked out but at the time you know we
had tons of business objectives tons of
ideas and we basically got to say no new
features on the existing app because we
still have the existing app in the app
store still a product that hundreds of
millions of people use and we said stop
development on that except for security
and major bug fixes and everybody just
wait
nine months ish until this new version
comes out and you don't get to deploy
any new features and
being able to sort of silo and focus
that team and build it who built a sort
of native first product was a was a huge
challenge at the time but when it came
out people people love the new version
um and this is the 5.0 version of the
ios app and it was uh you know built a
huge success from there right and it's
interesting that you started talking
about with how can you build a business
for facebook and this is a story the
stat that
you know
i like to start whenever i i like to
cite whenever i talk to people about
this is that
now
uh facebook's revenue is 95 to 98 mobile
or something like that somewhere in that
range
yeah and this is the sort of platform
transition that typically kills
companies so we built a business on the
web different technology stack different
product experience moved to mobile
that's the time when usually most
companies hold on too tight to their
existing business uh because it's
getting disrupted and and it's hard to
remember at the time most people say
like ah people aren't gonna buy stuff on
their phone like who wants to type their
credit card into this little device like
and that's not gonna happen and so it
wasn't even just like it's hard it's
like people didn't believe it would
exist and so my experience at meta has
been like every three years there's some
what feels like an existential crisis
when i got there it was like can we
scale the site can we build a business
and it's like cool we're kind of getting
through that it's like oh you gotta do
it all over again on a whole new
platform and like do it fast and this is
you know part of the honestly the power
of a founder ceo engineer is you alluded
to this as mark at the time basically
just threw the switch all the way to
mobile and said
we've got to do mobile it's the future
and not only were able to silo this team
and like stop development which is a big
deal for a company he said look anytime
you come in and bring me a
preview
of a new product new experience it has
to be on mobile like i don't want to see
anything that's a web mockup and people
didn't think he was serious and i
remember the first team that rolled in
it's like here's our new thing and like
and he's like wait these are web box
they're like yeah like
like come back with with mobile mocks i
don't want to do this review i know this
facebook you're serious so like that
sort of thing i think is is needed in
these transitions does facebook go a
debt of gratitude to android and apple
um for developing mobile operating
systems that could take people from that
oh no one will ever transact
on phones to actually hey wait a second
advertising is legitimate business on
phones
i mean i think it's fair to say that you
know facebook obviously wouldn't exist
without the internet first and a lot of
technology is built on there and then
the explosion of consumers on on mobile
devices you know they're more people
with mobile phones than you know would
ever have desktop computers so um so i
think it's a huge part of the grow story
and part of why we're so interested in
building the next platform arvr and the
metaverse is because
i think these platform shifts can be
you know big danger for companies but
for a company like meta
facebook i think it's a huge opportunity
for us in the future okay but so that
sounds like a yes in terms of some some
form of you know debt to these companies
for creating the conditions that you
were able to do business on their
operating systems i think like having
mobile operating systems out there and
ability to deploy our apps has been been
really great for facebook yeah yeah
okay let's get to some of these well
that was
again i'm glad we did that diversion um
so here i wrote some exit interview
questions uh maybe that our discussion
just now leads into the first one which
is you know you go from being smaller
than myspace to being
3.6 billion people using your products
every month
what went well
well i mean i think the fact that it
worked
like there's a huge survivor bias in
everyone it's just like you assume
because this thing exists it was easy
along the way or even that it was bound
to happen and i think this is this like
techno determinism that these
technologies will exist or these
companies exist is just not my personal
experience it was you know
one fire after the other along the way
and i think that you know looking back
at the time this is a heck of an answer
for the what went well part sorry go
ahead well no i just like what went well
is like we survived as like part of it
and like back in the day there wasn't a
software stack for us to build on like
people had built you know web search
they had built new sites where you could
serve the same article to billions of
people no problem you just copy it cz pc
at the time we were like trying to build
this thing where anyone could write on
anything they could comment or like and
then anyone could view that thing and
they expected to get the most recent
version at any point in time and so at
the time it was i remember justin it's
like oh gosh is justin bieber going to
post today because justin bieber posts
and all of a sudden millions of people
want to like and comment and like the
whole world expects that to just like
work and there wasn't like a product i
could buy on the internet or go to fry's
and buy like we had to build a whole new
software stack to do this that worked
and worked at like massive scale um and
then we had to kind of build the whole
team along the way that built this and
then while we were building this new
software stack to scale we also sort of
made this decision said look
consumer like preferences change we have
to have this culture of speed our
ability to deploy code so we actually
accelerated our ability to deploy code
over time when i first got there it was
a weekly push so we would change the
site in major ways once a week it's now
a continuous push which means literally
as we're doing this podcast like changes
are happening and so and everyone i get
asked for advice i was like no no no you
go slower as you get bigger because it's
harder and we said no we thought ability
to move quickly was important so what we
needed to do is build really robust
tools and really robust process to make
this all work um
and so i think that that you know a lot
of that is is what went right you know
the other thing i'd say is um along the
way we built a lot of tools for
ourselves that have become the sort of
industry standard for how people build
stuff like if you talk to someone's like
they're going to build a web app they're
going to build a mobile app they're
going to use react probably or react
native on mobile and these are how we
build our own products and if you're
doing state-of-the-art ai research right
now you're you know three out of four
times gonna be using pi torch which is a
tool again we built for ourselves you
know and if you're going to do storage
you're going to use rocks db if you're
running php you're going to use hhvm
like these are all products that we
built and have open sourced and have
become sort of part of the dna of how
people build things on web on mobile and
in ai so it's not just
one
technological realm it's sort of several
so that ability to sort of scale solve
problems and then do it in a way that
like people kind of love as a developer
is is i think one of the things that
went what really really well
why open source those code code bases
there's lots of reasons i mean i i think
that
you know one is just leverage so it's
basically it's just for definitions
you're giving this stuff away to
developers that could potentially
compete with you
yeah everyone can use the same tools
we're using and we actually did this in
our hardware too so most people don't
know about open compute but it's
basically like go use the designs for
our servers and data centers yourself
but you know when you talk about things
like an ai
research framework or a web development
framework or mobile development
framework that's like need tons and tons
of people have and so i'd rather people
collaborate together to build the best
one rather than everyone build their own
special version that's not as good and i
also like
my favorite part about it is it keeps us
honest because our culture inside the
company is one of developer poll rather
than centralized push meaning
you don't have a mandate in the company
that you must use this technology which
happens in big companies and what
happens is that technology sort of was
really good and then sort of isn't as
good as what everyone else could use and
so you're fundamentally slower than
every other company out there and by
using open source like everyone else who
uses these products outside the company
doesn't have to
so it's got to be good and if people
stop using it that's a really important
signal to us that there's something
wrong with it that we need to fix or we
should switch to a different technology
because like my job is to always have
our teams on the absolute latest
greatest best technology so they're as
productive or more productive than
anyone's in the industry and being an
open source on the core of what we build
is is a really good way to ensure that
um and so it's you know why we did it
way early day in the early days with
hhvm then we did it with react and then
when ai has been the big revolution it's
pi torch and again back to what you're
saying it's it's i think the thing i'm
most proud of is us ability to jump from
platform and technological realm web
mobile ai
ar vr that is pretty unusual um usually
have a company gets really good in one
thing and they sort of miss the motion
so it's actually
our ability to migrate these things and
take our
approach to them that i'm i'm most proud
of
yep and okay what went wrong
what went wrong
well there was you know lots of
challenges along the way um
and um you know i think we've seen over
the last
five plus years you know the the sort of
struggles with content moderation and
you know how to to manage that i think
the world is still sort of sorting
through this um
and you know not only
what the
right rules of the road are in terms of
what policies people want you know for
for to balance sort of safety versus
expression um but then how to implement
them and and how to build them
in an operationally robust way so they
scale to to billions of users like i
think that's been a a real challenge and
i think
one of the lessons we're trying to take
to the metaverse is to
think a lot further in advance of all of
those things so
what are the you know downsides what are
the possible ways bad actors could abuse
the system and if i knew that that was
going to happen what are all the tools
and
features i can build in my products now
rather than wait for it to be a big
issue and i think that's been a big
lesson for us over the last you know
many years
a few people have built a product or
helps you know build the infrastructure
to enable a product to scale in the way
you have
i'm curious if you know looking at the
way that that facebook in particular
scaled you know over time and having
built the um the infrastructure to
enable it to scale sometimes you know
critics would say too fast do you have
any reflections
on you know
on on products becoming that big that
quickly
well look i mean i think that what what
attracted me to facebook in the early
days was um
you know
the basics of what the company was
trying to do was filling a fundamental
human need which is like
do people want to stay in touch with
other people they care about
around the world with as little
friction as possible and i think that's
an emphatic yes and i think that
that is definitely a net good to society
in terms of people being able to keep in
touch across the world and i think there
are some challenges that that come along
with it and that's the that's what we
just talked about um and what we're
learning about but it's it's hard for me
to sort of
run the reverse and say like actually
let's go back to a time when like
messaging someone cost you 10 cents a
message
like i don't think that that's a better
world for for people um and so i think
there's a question of you know how much
of this i think when anyone's building
in a high growth industry how much of
this is truly unknown versus if you just
sat and think about it say let's spend
the time to red team this a war game at
let's think about all the ways in which
people might use this for ill and let's
let's like plan out our defenses up
front and i think that's the big you
know lesson for me and how we're
building
you know four products in the future
yeah and just a one last question about
growth i think sometimes people will
look at growth and they say as long as
that line is going up and to the right
then life is good things things are
going well for the company
um
do you do what do you think what would
you say to people who who look at that
as the soul metric
i mean i think a single metric is always
dangerous and never how we've operated
the company because there's so many ways
in which that can go wrong among them
can be you could be at a really
near-term local maximum where it's going
up but it's going to stop and it's going
to come back down the other side there's
been plenty of businesses that look like
that plenty of fads that occur in the
industry and so you always got to be
clicking one level down and looking at
the fundamentals like are people happy
are they enjoying it um do they do they
want to come back over the long term
because if you're building a
multi-decade business that's that's what
matters not like is next quarter good um
and then you know all the other things
we talked about in terms of
understanding the the other consequences
of the business you're building so
i think that the sort of anyone who ever
operates who's operated anything knows
that a a single metric is a great way to
to really get yourself in trouble and
not in how we've operated the business
yeah well i want to put one finer point
on it because i feel like maybe this is
a better way
to ask the question because i feel like
this is what people have have said in
the past do you think the company grew
faster than it could handle
i think it's really hard to run the like
historical ap comparison so like i i
think that
you know i i don't know so i i think
that
because you'd have to ask what would
have grown in instead what would people
be using instead would those things be
better or worse it's really hard to know
i think all i know is what i have
learned and what i can take forward now
which is you know what i said just
thinking hard about you know
about what we could know and how we can
prepare for those things right now yeah
another question that i wanted to ask
you is looking at i'm i always look at
the um the reports that facebook puts
out on takedowns
and oftentimes it's like you know
millions of terrorism posts hundreds of
millions of you know pieces of child
pornography we all know
you know what some of the content
moderators have said about like the
effects some of this stuff has
on their mental health i'm curious
what you've learned about the nature of
humanity i mean seeing how much bad uh
people have the ability to produce has
it changed your perspective
at all
i mean look i i'm
i'm probably at heart a massive optimist
um but
um i would say that that uh my optimism
armor has been severely dented uh over
the last five years it is hard to not
have it when you experience some of
these things firsthand and actually look
at the content and look at what people
do and realize that
sometimes some people are capable of
great
evil and harm and you have to understand
that
to be real about it to be willing to
fight uh and fight those things and say
these things exist we can't just plan
for the happy path and assume everyone's
going to be nice all the time because
they won't it doesn't mean most people
are or that i'm despondent about
humanity but it does mean that a loud
minority can be really terrible and it's
our job to fight against them and and
make it good for the average person on
the product which i think is achievable
and i think
you know when you look at content
moderation for example you know on on
the platform
you know i know this is probably not
going to resonate for for people but the
numbers tell the story if you look at
our you know quarterly reports where we
lay this out what you've seen is a
steady decline in the occurrence of
these things on our product when we say
prevalence how likely are you to you
know see one of these things
you know and in some cases like hate
speech it's gone down by 5x in 18 months
you know and it's from 0.1 to 0.02
percent you know and i'd ask how many
people listening this have seen nudity
on facebook in the last you know three
six months
and you know this is a product where
there's a big button on your phone where
you can just say upload image and you
can upload whatever you want yeah and it
could could be adult nudity but that's
against our policies and it's up to us
to find that before you do and get rid
of it
and six seven eight years ago
we would have to do that by someone
seeing it reporting it and now 95 to 99
of the time we catch it first and and
pull it down before anyone's seen it and
that i think you know that gives me some
hope that we can sort of build the right
sort of guardrails around these systems
to allow people free expression not
restrict what you want to say but
like remove the worst of the worst so
that people can have a
safe and enjoyable experience right and
about the nature of of humanity question
in particular like i have tended to
think that the nature of
of humans is good um however like if i
think if i was sitting in your chair
where i saw how many awful images are
are uploaded and i'm not saying that
people see them
you've you're basically you've been
behind some of the ai systems that catch
this stuff before
before it happens the fact that facebook
blocks nudity largely due to ai systems
that you've built to detect it before it
ever can be posted so i'm curious if you
maybe you don't want to answer this one
but
what your view on the nature of of
humanity good or something else
look i i won't lie and i say that
there's been mornings that that my faith
and humanity have been
been tested um i i think
particularly acts of violence and hate
you know uh
the christchurch shooting you know the
recent shooting and vivaldi like
it's really hard to wrap my brain around
the
the
pain
people cause
um and choose to cause
um and so
but i think that if you sort of zoom out
and look at the numbers and say that you
know the vast vast majority of people
don't do this and are good and help
their neighbor across the street and
like our job is to bend the arc of
society positively and if you zoom in
history like
despite all of the terrible things
happening we're in the least violent
time in humanity
and a lot of that is because of progress
and because of opportunity
and generating wealth and technology and
so you know this is where it gets me you
know there are times that i am on the
floor and i got to pick myself back up
and the reason i get back into the chair
and get back at it is i say
what we can do is make tomorrow better
than today i can't i can't fix today or
yesterday
but if if we can make people more
prosperous give them hope
give them ability to connect with other
people then i know that that makes
tomorrow better and and when we open
those opportunities i think people are
wonderful
interesting i'm glad we i'm glad we
spoke about this uh let's talk about
open culture um facebook has an
extremely open culture you've been part
of the the leadership others i'm using
facebook and meta interchangeably please
forgive me um you've been part of the
leadership for a long time um
and
i look when when the the documents that
francis haugen uh leaked came out i
actually saw your name in a lot of the
conversations
i'm curious and and afterwards facebook
did take um you know some of the
permissions that there used to be some
of the openness and close it up a little
bit
i'm curious if what your view is on the
culture um and the openness perspective
in particular was that just a little too
optimistic or are you still a believer
in the open culture
look i still believe that you want
everyone involved in an endeavor to have
i mean the source of the open culture
was very practical sort of like if you
are missing some piece of information
that would help you do your job better
that's like on us right like my job was
to make sure that every engineer in the
company had the best tools were working
in the right direction and had all the
information they needed to make the
right decisions and then i got out of
the way like all the best stuff we built
was not me showing up and saying i have
this great idea it was creating the
conditions for those ideas to emerge and
then in some cases at being an editor
and curating and saying that's a really
good idea i'm gonna accelerate that or
protect it um and and so i think that
requires information
i i think
on the flip side
you know
there's a reason why people don't live
stream their living room conversations
right if you know the entire world is
watching
you will think a lot before you say
things right
and i think when you're having a knock
down drag out conversation about a
policy or a product or a thing you kind
of want people to say here's what i
think i think this product's dumb i
think we shouldn't do this i think this
is the wrong strategy and if you're like
oh geez this is going up on youtube
you might be quiet and not express
important things and so i do think that
like shining a uh you know a spotlight
on these conversations causes people to
climb up and so i think that that that
is a challenge is like we want to get
all the information we can to people
want to distribute be as open as
possible but we want to create an
environment where people are comfortable
expressing
their views their opinions and add it to
the conversation and that requires
some guardrails to say that like look
you're not
you know your comments aren't going to
be live tweeted on the internet um and
so you could be wrong you can use
inflammatory language you know about how
terrible this product is even though
it's probably overstated from how you
really feel but your emotions are
catching on like
i think that people miss that and so i
think what we're trying to do is say
look look we want the information we've
got to create safe spaces for people to
have
really direct honest conversations
so
i'm trying to put a finger on what what
exactly your your view is on this so yes
to open culture but
i think i think you start with openness
and say like we want to get as much
things out to as many people as possible
um except when the sort of the
largeness of that you know the extreme
of openness is like live broadcast on
the internet right um
and when that starts to cause people to
not provide critical information or not
express their true views then you need
to create safer
contained spaces and it's it's never
been one or the other even back in the
open culture days
it's not like every team meeting would
be broadcast to the entire company you
could have a short team meeting it's
like oh we're really like not sure about
is it react is it this is it face web is
it native i mean when we chose we we
went through three different technology
stacks for the mobile app that we talked
about earlier we had three teams out
there proposed three different ideas and
we had a closed meeting to decide which
one to use we didn't invite the whole
company like in a stadium to like watch
that decision happen because that would
have really clap and i wanted everyone
to critique everyone else's approach it
was like a dozen people in a room right
so i think this idea that open means
that there's like a stadium for everyone
to watch everything you like
misunderstands how that affects people's
ability to to have an honest
conversation once we have that
conversation said this is what we're
doing share that on the rooftops explain
why
talk about the pros and cons like don't
sugarcoat it like so i think there's
this balance of
allowing people to have safe
conversations and then
once you've done that like
spread information far and wide um and
making sure that everyone can be
involved
interesting it's interesting that you
said back in the open culture days so
obviously things have shifted
after hog well i mean i think as we've
discussed it's it's harder when you know
when at our uh when stuff is um
you know in this mode you have to adjust
you know what conversations happen but
i'm just saying that like it's not like
everything was you know open to
beginning live stream to the whole
company and 2. it was open
now it's closed yeah but but it's hard
to measure these things because like the
company was also a thousand people now
it's you know tens of thousands of
people so and even back then we we had
these you know ten person conversations
about critical issues so i i think it's
like it's always just a balance of like
i said i think you start with like get
everyone from the information they need
but don't but make sure you can have a
critical conversation where people feel
ability to be open and those two things
pull against each other and i think the
question is like at any one extent in
time how to how to perfectly balance
them like a lot of things in life it's
balancing equities there's no like
magic right solution to these things
yeah
every exit annual uh every every exit
interview manual uh that i've read has
said you really gotta try to figure out
why the person is leaving and you're
still senior fellow at the company but
no longer chief technology officer
what's the story
i do know there are manuals out there
can you send something to me i mean just
google exit interview questions on the
internet and
there's some wild questions out there
some of them i knew i wasn't going to
get a good answer from you so i didn't
ask them so
okay
well thanks for doing your homework but
this is one i think that everyone has
and um yeah would like to hear about it
i mean it's pretty simple it's basically
look i've been at the company coming up
on 14 years which is a long run by any
tech tech i've been in tech for 25 years
so you know and seen started my own
company seen a lot of different things
things happen you know the last few
years um i've built a particular passion
in
putting my own personal time and energy
into fighting climate change i started
doing this philanthropically kind of
years ago we have a bunch of stuff
cooking there and i just i i really was
a tale of two loves which is look i want
to invest more of my time and energy and
this work on on climate change and i
feel like if i can put more days of the
week in there i can do more um but
there's a bunch of things that meta is
doing that i i really love as well and
think are fundamental to the
prosperity advancement of humanity
particularly ai and arvr our metaverse
work and so it really was this question
of like how do we how do i do both of
these things at once and this is why i
mean people are surprised when i say i'm
a senior fellow they think of it as a
you know perfunctory title i'm i'm at
the company two days a week you know um
you know it's it's a i'm doing serious
work there and able to continue to work
in ai and it's freed up some time for me
to to work on uh my work on climate
mike trapper is with us he is a senior
fellow at metta formerly the chief
technology officer we're talking about
um
a reflection of why he decided to leave
and everything he saw at the company and
he just teed up an amazing
second half where we'll talk about ai vr
ar and i'm going to toss in some climate
change we'll be back right after this
and we're back here on big technology
podcast with mike sharp for senior
fellow at facebook uh oh sorry meta did
it again and formerly the chief
technology officer there
actually let's start with the climate
change question
during covid myself and i think a lot of
people who i spoke with said if we can't
get people to
adopt vaccines and protect themselves or
we can't get people to stay inside and
protect others and we have an immediate
threat in front of us we've really lost
faith that we can actually do anything
toward the climate change problem
i find it interesting that climate
change is your next big thing that you
want to tackle
i'm sure you might have had some of the
similar thoughts so why why are you
optimistic that we can actually solve
the problem
yeah i think if you come at it from
asking overloaded people to do one more
thing you're going to get pretty down
about the whole thing but when you
actually look at it and say wait a
second what are the technological
advances we can make uh
that make this an easy guess for people
that it's just strictly better
for example you know we're now at the
point where solar plus batteries is
cheaper than coal
uh
and whatever you think about climate
change nobody likes air pollution and
you put a cold power plant and a bunch
of people are going to get sick and die
and you replace that coal power plant
with solar and batteries
it people don't die it's good for their
health
and it's cheaper and by the way it also
helps with climate change so like there
are a lot of those wins on the board yet
to be had and a lot of interesting
industries if you've driven an electric
car
and you realize how little service it
takes there's no oil change there's no
spark plugs no timing belt no
transmission i mean there's just like a
ton of stuff you just don't have to do
anymore it's basically a vacuum cleaner
on wheels like and the cost of operating
is so much lower especially in today's
crazy gas prices you say okay if we can
bring those to market at reasonable cost
that's good and you just sort of say
what are all the advances in materials
in computing and ai and then others that
are going to bring things to people like
nah i want that because that's better
and oh yeah it happens to help with
climate change but like also it's better
so that's the opportunity ahead of us
and this is why i'm personally so
excited about it because so much of what
i've learned is how to build and scale
technological operations how to do r d
in new areas like ai and ar and vr and
that's what i want to you know help
accelerate in this industry
and i've always felt that um well not
always actually in particular after kova
that climate change was going to need a
technological solution versus like a
mass conservation solution you know
after we use technology via the vaccines
to actually help get us out of covet
versus anything else um it sounds right
to you it sounds like well i mean i
think you know people don't readings of
history my reading of history is like
technology is is the great accelerator
of prosperity um because it increases
productivity and it removes like
trade-offs and and that's one of the few
things out there and i talked about
solar i mean led lighting is another one
you know 1000x reduction in cost over
the last 20 years which is just crazy
genome sequencing you know is is just
fallen you know these curves you just
don't see these curves in nature that
look like these massive down to the
right but you see them in technology um
and when you get one of these curves it
just like throws off all sorts of
benefits to humanity and that's that's
what's exciting about this space
especially batteries electrification
there's so much to do um and it i think
it will make us a like less polluted
better happier more prosperous
productive world that also will happen
to help the climate change problem
that would be neat
okay so let's round this out talking
about ai ai vr and ar
a what's the state of ai right now
because you know i think a few years ago
when facebook was working on you know m
which was this af you know ai train
training messaging bot which i wrote
about while i was at buzzfeed um you
know you built facebook ai research with
jan lacoon who we've had on the show
there was a moment maybe in 2017 where
it seemed like
ai was rocketing in terms of its ability
to do things and then the buzz died down
there was like it was like when people
were putting blockchain in the name of
their company to you know increase their
valuation you looked at earnings reports
and people were saying machine learning
in the same way um just a couple years
ago and it looks like people have moved
on from that fat now obviously ai is
still continuing to move i'm curious um
what you think has been happening as
people have been um more quiet about it
and you know for those listening shrek
just gave me a face from across the
screen so i think he's going to dispute
my characterization of the buzz lying
down well i think certainly like the
hype train and sort of throwing crazy
money at it like any new technology you
unfortunately have some over exuberance
you know and you can debate whether it's
a you know a boom or a bubble and we
certainly have had that in ai but if you
sort of zoom out a little bit and even
just take a very short term like 10-year
look at ai and you know back in 2012 is
is around the time when the first deep
learning network won this thing called
imagenet which is a challenge fei-fei
lee now at stanford created to like
help people build ai systems that can
recognize objects and images and she
built this in the late aughts and and
for years it was like this backwater
project that nobody cared about and then
all of a sudden alex and i showed up and
it um you know was a 10 better than the
next entrant because it used deep
learning and that was 2012. and then it
took us a while we talked about content
moderation it took us years to get this
technology to be useful enough in
productive scale in this sort of
supervised training mode where you kind
of feed the ai lots of handcrafted sort
of data you kind of spoon feed it data
from a human
and that sort of what what got us
through years and if you again go back
to these standards reports and look at
our advancements it's all from this for
for the early years and then in the last
few years we've actually had a second
acceleration which was you know i
remember we were just like getting this
stuff to work and john le who hired
a couple years later was like yeah this
supervised learning thing is it's not
going to scale so we really got to
figure out how to make unsupervised
learning work where like the machines
just like figure stuff out on their own
and i remember like i was like are you
kidding me we're like just got this
stuff to work and you're telling me it's
it's like it's like the mobile thing all
over again it's like oh my god i just
got the store oh nope change the
platform and here we are on ai he was
right um and we've gotten unsupervised
or self-supervised learning to work
across the industry
where you build these massive language
models that basically can build kind of
training sets on their own just by
looking at the data and doing tasks like
given a sentence predict the next word
which kind of gives you the test and the
answer all in one by just finding text
to look out there and we've seen this
massive sort of improvement in the
capability of ai systems even the last
few years we've deployed them internally
and we built models this is the other
thing that like
people are probably gonna get bored of
but i just got to say it it's just like
a couple years ago we're like hey can we
build a model that understands a concept
in more than one language so this idea
of hate speech can we build instead of
building an english one and then a
french one and then a you know a spanish
one can we just build one model across
multiple languages that understands this
concept and for a long time the team
building this multi-modal model was like
getting worse results than the best of
the monolingual models except one day
they didn't and they're like huh it
turns out there's a lot of data in
english and the more you train in
english the better you get in smaller
languages and that gap has just
increased over time and so we now have
these models that are not just
multilingual they're multimodal so they
understand text images video audio
and then they're multi-tasks so they're
not just like
like hate speech it could be bullying
hate speech a variety of other things so
you have these models that just
understand more and more and more over
time
and they're getting better and better so
i i think that and it's hard for people
to see because most of what ai does is
that like it's like we went into the
engine and like souped it up it's like i
just showed up with a like a hundred
more horsepower every year and like this
magic went into it it's kind of the way
ai is manifesting itself in the world
it's not so obvious to people yet but it
will be more and more obvious over time
um as this technology gets deployed in
ways that people can see
people are asking when's it going to do
stuff for me like i set it out on tasks
and it completes them is that 10 years
away
i you know i don't ever give the the
tenure-ish directions i mean i think um
i don't know i think that you know well
you guys tried to do it with m and
eventually gave up on the project that
you know it's too early like so yeah and
and away are we
i think
years not decades okay
interesting
um did you by the way did you see uh
have you seen this dolly stuff that open
ai is doing we're just drawing pictures
yeah that stuff really blows me away
yeah i mean the idea that you could you
know type you know pandas playing
you know tennis on the moon and produces
an image that looks reasonable is is
sort of mind-blowing to people and i
think
i think we're going to continue to see
these advances i mean
we've seen this scale out too where you
just you kind of build bigger models and
you scale them and we haven't yet seen
like the limit to what can happen there
and right there's more that needs to be
figured out but i think there's it's
going to be exciting couple of years as
as we advance i i the reason i gave you
that frowny face is like despite all the
hype i expected things to slow down more
than they have in terms of actual
progress right so people have made
actual like
useful production ready progress in
these these models faster than i thought
for a longer period of time
do you think we're going to get within
our lifetimes oh this is already in a
question that's going to annoy you but
i'm going to ask it anyway
to
artificial intelligence that can mirror
or surpass human intelligence
i mean i i think this is a uh
it's a tough benchmark to talk about
because humans embody so many different
things and there's you know there's so
many different ways to look at the delta
between ais and now i mean the human
brain uses like 20 watts most ai systems
are using hundreds thousands megawatts
um so we're like we're missing some
algorithmic tricks for sure um and even
if you look at the biggest ai systems
out there and you try to do some like
rough comparison to synapses in the
human brain they're not perfect you know
parameters or synapses but you're still
in the like less than a percent of the
scale so like we're way off in terms of
getting anything that looks like or
computes like the human brain i do think
what we're going to see though we
already see this where specialized
systems can work better than humans it's
like can you identify
objectionable content as good or better
than a like well-trained person
yeah we're getting there you know can
you translate in hundreds of languages
yeah can you read x-rays you know and
assist humans and the other thing is i
think that the best systems are actually
combinations because computers are good
at things that humans aren't vice versa
and so people always are obsessed with
this replacement but like for in x-rays
for example i think you're going to see
computer assisted radiologists and
they'll be the best out there because
the humans will add to it and they'll be
better with the computer but um you
still want the human in the loop so
i think we're going to see a lot of
those things occur over time i think
you're going to see self-driving you
know as as much as that's been you know
sad for everyone
we're making real progress there are
level you know level four systems out
there in the world um and they you know
can perform really well in certain
circumstances um and so i think people
will be surprised how quickly these
things show up uh you know in the coming
years do you trust a tesla on full
self-driving mode
um that's a tough question
uh i i have a tesla and i do not run it
in self-driving mode put it that way
interesting
um ai uh no sorry ar um
google tried it with glass
the problem wasn't technology the
problem was that it was awkward where
people felt that there was a spy cam on
people's faces at all times now we're in
a mode where everyone wants to do ar
again um
why do you think it will be different
this time i mean apple's out there
trying to do their own device people
think oh it'll be stylish it will solve
all the problems again it wasn't the
technology what do you think i disagree
i mean did you use the google glass i
did
i think it was just too early like i
think they tried really hard and they
built something great using the
technology at the time but if you
remember the display like i'd go like
this to look at it and it was a tiny
postage stamp little image there in the
corner and it was like what does this do
for me there wasn't a good answer so i
think the consumer utility was
extraordinarily low and then the sort of
the side effect factor was really high
as you say um and i i think we're just
not there yet but if i told you look you
know these glasses that i'm wearing now
they allow me to live caption the world
so if i'm in a noisy room i can get like
subtitles and oh by the way it'll live
translate so if i'm traveling around the
world someone could be speaking at me
and i can get a live translation people
are going to like that
they're going to want to use that um and
the more that the ai develops the more
as i'm walking around and like oh where
did i put you know i gotta be my phone
it's like you just say like hey where's
my phone like you left it on your desk
and here's a photo of it like people are
gonna like that so so i think we haven't
delivered the the utility sort of
compromise trade-off to like get product
market fit yet for ar that's why you
don't see those products even today in
2012 years and years after google glass
because they're still too bulky and the
ai needed to provide the real awesome
experiences isn't there yet but we're
making advances like i always look at
the slope not not not the intercept so
like where are we making progress and
we're making progress along all
dimensions lighter better displays that
are brighter and wider wider field of
view
ai technology that will deliver amazing
experiences i don't exactly know when
they'll intersect but they will
eventually intersect and i think that it
will be amazing
on vr i'm of the belief that outside of
gaming vr is going to be an enterprise
tool for a long time i think facebook
has done this build some of the rooms
where you can speak with your colleagues
it makes a lot of sense most people
actually don't live very far from the
friends and the family members that
they'd want to be
in presence with do you think there's
anything to that is it going to go
enterprise first and then consumer and
if so
is it going to be like a weird position
for facebook to be like an enterprise
technology provider whereas like the
social network might come sometime in
the future
well i mean i think you've nailed one
thing here which is which is the
enterprise use case is definitely
product market fit like right now we
have people doing meetings i do meetings
in vr right now and there are attributes
of it that are way better than a video
conference and we have a lot of
technology coming down the pipeline to
make that even better um less friction
you know more value so like i i think
that like meetings are going to be there
i think what we saw with zoom is like
virtual meetings aren't just for work
anymore so like i don't think there's
this massive distinction between
consumer and enterprise anymore and so i
think if it's like meeting with other
humans remotely is like better in vr i
think you're going to see consumer
applications of that today i mean if you
look at how people are using vr social
applications are a huge part of it
already like so i think we're already
seeing that sort of desire to use new
technology for connection which we've
seen throughout humanity yeah well with
the zoom you know not just for
enterprise it was if you were in a
lockdown you might want to zoom with
your friends thank goodness most of us
are not in that situation anymore i
never want to look at a friend through a
zoom window again
yeah well i have family that lives on
the other coast like you know i i face
time with them like yes i would rather
meet them in person but that's not
practical um and so i'm not saying it's
a replacement but it is an option
yeah
um okay we're uh we're coming in for a
landing here two more questions um if
you could change anything over the
course of your let's see 14 years at
meta facebook what would it be one thing
oh can you give me the second question
so i can think on that one because
that's a that's a hard one second
question is what do we have to look
forward to
technology yes at meadow or in the world
yeah just put on your technology hat
what technology do we have to look
forward to that we're most excited i
mean i think so i'm gonna answer that
one while i think about the other one i
think we have a ton to look forward to i
think we're going to have
you know new ways to travel so
not just electric vehicles but you know
boats that are flying over the water on
hydro foils with electric power trains
that are smooth and fast and carpet-free
i think we'll have electric vehicles
that'll fly you from destination so a
bit of a transport around i think we
will see robotics actually enter you
know more and more applications over the
coming decades i think we'll see ai um
move into realms that will be more
obvious to the average consumer in the
coming decades i think this idea of arvr
as a
as a commonplace way for people to
communicate will be very clear in the in
the next decade or so especially as you
look at advances in technology and
avatars uh and others so um i think we
have a lot to look forward to um and all
of those things are i'm i'm what i care
about is like what makes people's lives
better and i think all of those all of
those things do
and i could go on for a long time but
those are the ones that i'm i'm
particularly excited about because
they're just like better with no
compromise and that's what technology
can do uniquely i think um
in terms of
you know um
what to do different i mean
you know i'm i'm and i know this may not
resonate with people it's like we
i we poured our health and soul and i
took our our you know the world's best
ai team and concentrated them on this
this content management problem from the
very early days and this is why most of
our work you see in those results and
not in other splashy demos um
you know and i you know i guess i wish
we could have done that even earlier
because there's just a ton of work to do
and you know every bad experience people
have on the product i i feel
terrible about and personally
responsible for so i think you know the
more we could do to stop those bad
experiences so people can just connect
and communicate and have fun which is
what they're supposed to do
the better i feel
sharp it's really always great to talk i
appreciate you uh spending time with me
again and um sharing so much of your
perspective being candid about you know
the good and the bad so thank you for
being here yeah it's always fun thanks
for taking the time yeah we'll do it
again soon hopefully um
well thanks again for joining us thank
you nick gwattney for doing the editing
and mastering the sounds uh here we are
back on the horse again after the davos
uh chats um thank you linkedin for
having me as part of your podcast
network and thanks to all of you
listeners for being here once again
joining us on a wednesday or whenever
you listen on the big technology podcast
uh we will be back next week with
another show with a tech insider or an
outside agitator until then take care