Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software

by Jeff Meyerson

Over the last fifteen years, every major aspect of our lives has changed because of Facebook. You may not like Facebook, but you can’t deny its success. And to a large degree, that success stems from the “move fast” ethos. The entire culture of Facebook is built for speed.

Move Fast is an exploration of modern software strategies and tactics through the lens of Facebook. Relying on in-depth interviews with more than two dozen Facebook engineers, this book explores the product strategy, cultural principles, and technologies that made Facebook the dominant social networking company. Most importantly, Move Fast investigates how you can apply those strategies to your creative projects.

It’s not easy to build a software company, but once you know how to move fast, your company will be prepared to build a strategy that benefits from the world’s rapid changes, rather than suffering from them.

192 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2021

Reviews

[Michael Dominick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting albeit very brief look into how Facebook runs their software engineering practice. I’d recommend it to anyone thinking of striking out on their own in the tech industry.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book promises some interesting stories about internal life of Facebook, and delivers some bits of it. But does not dig deep. A lot of talk and not real facts. Perhaps because the book is based on interviews.

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains an interesting collection of former (mostly) Facebook employees in 2010-14. All “meat” is actually in part 3 and mostly about switching to mobile apps vs web browser. All other “stories” are not developed in any reasonable way. Overall, too lightweight for a book.

[Ponder Stine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in a day. Pretty short and I wish it was longer and more in depth. Has a good insight into a few aspects of Facebook in a few key years.