Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth spoke about the struggles of early startup culture in a new podcast interview. JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that startup culture is often portrayed romantically, but in reality it is not glamorous.
The CTO said he woke up every four hours for two years to ensure an anti-spam system was intact.
Although he was successful in the end, he said many others invest in the journey and it doesn’t work out.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, has clarified what startup culture really looks like. In an interview on Lennys Podcast Bosworth spoke about the beginnings of Facebook, when he worked there as one of the first engineers.
Back then, Bosworth explained, there was a “tremendous camaraderie” among the early Facebook employees and many memories were made. Employees ate most meals together and often lived within a mile of the office, he said.
But as fun as it sounds looking back, the time was not glamorous.
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“Something like that isn’t told in the films”
Bosworth said most people hear romantic success stories about working at a startup. People are hearing less about how much someone sacrifices to work in this type of job, the CTO said.
Bosworth said he had to miss out on being social or doing anything fun for much of his 20s. He noted that it was probably even tougher for Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company two years before Bosworth at age 19.
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth joined Facebook in its early days. Facebook
The CTO said that during his time at the startup he did not eat healthily, had no hobbies, gained weight and drank a lot. He also worked 120 hours a week and didn’t sleep more than four hours a day in a row for two years.
Bosworth said when he was working on an anti-spam system, he had to check the site every four hours to make sure there were no attacks. If there were any, he had to stay up and fix the problem. If not, he could go back to sleep for the next four hours, Bosworth said.
“It’s not something that’s told in the movies,” Bosworth told the podcast’s host, Lenny Rachitsky.
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As an early engineer at Facebook, there were no experts to help him, he said. “It was like you and your car and what you wanted to do with your time,” Bosworth said in the interview.
If there was a problem, he couldn’t rely on payroll, IT, or a human resources department. He had to find the solution himself, as he did with the anti-spam system, Bosworth said. He now recommends that anyone interested in a startup culture involve their managers as much as possible.
Bosworth survived his time at the startup
It worked for Bosworth because he is now a top executive at one of the largest tech companies in the world. But that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone, the CTO said.
“There are other people doing the exact same thing, maybe they worked harder, maybe they were smarter, maybe they did it better,” Bosworth said on the podcast. “And it didn’t pay off for them and that’s a big sacrifice.”
While the CTO said he loves the enthusiasm for startups and thinks it’s healthy for people to take risks, he reiterated that it definitely wasn’t glamorous when he went through it.
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