At Facebook, our engineers collaborate to create an open environment where ideas win and are executed quickly. Each week, our engineers will give you a look into what it's like to ideate and build at Facebook in our new "Meet a Facebook Engineer" Q&A series. Check back weekly to hear from different engineers about what problems they're passionate about solving right now, what they're up to at Facebook and what advice they have for you.
Q: What problem are you most proud of solving at Facebook?
A: During my first year at Facebook, I was the main engineer building video calling into the site. Though there were many challenges both technical and design-related, I am most proud of our focus on making video calling as easy as possible. Our solution does not require people to have separate accounts with separate logins in order to make a call; we integrated the feature directly into the site in a way that’s natural and intuitive; we reduced the number of clicks required for installation down to a bare minimum; we insisted on and delivered a tiny binary several times smaller than other solutions, in collaboration with Skype; and we simplified the calling UI down to the bare minimum needed to make calls.
While many hard engineering problems are indeed technical, I feel it’s most important to focus on resolving the challenges involved in designing usable products. I was fortunate to work with talented designers and engineers who were committed to making Facebook's video calling technology accessible to everyone. This, more than any particular technology or clever algorithm, made the feature great