What I‘ve Learned in 1 Year at Twitter: Scaling Impact and Enjoying the Journey
A year ago, I had a tough decision to make. With offers from several leading tech companies in hand, I had to choose my next career move carefully. As I evaluated my options, a few key factors rose to the top of my priority list:
- A tight-knit, collaborative team
- Reasonable work-life balance
- Competitive pay and benefits
- Opportunities for professional growth and skill development
- A company with strong business momentum and growth prospects
After much contemplation, I decided to join Twitter as a full-stack software engineer on the Ads Measurement team. Fast forward one year, and I‘ve gained a wealth of insights and experiences that have shaped my perspective on what it means to thrive in the tech industry.
Building a Foundation of Engineering Excellence
From my first day at Twitter, it was apparent that the company places a high value on fostering a culture of engineering excellence. All new hires receive a copy of Carol Dweck‘s book "Mindset", emphasizing the importance of continual learning and growth.
This mindset manifests in many aspects of how we work. Twitter embraces the "move fast and break things" ethos, but with some important guardrails. We‘re encouraged to iterate quickly and ship code to production frequently, but always with a robust set of monitoring and alerting to catch any issues. Investing time upfront to define clear success metrics allows us to take calculated risks and measure impact.
For example, I recently worked on a project to improve the machine learning models we use to predict ad engagement. The first step was writing a detailed technical design document outlining the proposed changes, expected impact, and rollout plan. By clearly defining the success criteria upfront (a 3% increase in model accuracy), we could objectively evaluate the results and make a data-driven go/no-go decision.
This rigorous approach to engineering helps us balance speed with stability. Post-mortems are conducted after any significant bugs or outages to identify the root cause and implement fixes. But rather than placing blame, the focus is on learning and improving systems and processes. Quarterly hackathons provide a forum for experimenting with new ideas in a time-boxed, lower-stakes environment.
Investing in Quality and Sustainability
Like many fast-growing tech companies, Twitter has accrued its share of technical debt over the years. But rather than letting it fester, the engineering team dedicates significant resources to "paying down" this debt on a regular basis.
Each quarter, we participate in a "#CoreQuality" initiative, focused on refactoring code, improving documentation, and tackling engineering projects to improve system reliability and performance. While it can be tempting to de-prioritize this work in favor of shipping new user-facing features, Twitter recognizes it as a critical investment in the long-term health and velocity of the engineering organization.
A key part of this is improving the "bus factor" of our systems – ensuring that knowledge is distributed across the team rather than siloed in individual experts. To promote this, we‘ve implemented a number of best practices:
- Detailed documentation, including in-line code comments, README files, and architecture diagrams
- Regular "brown bag" sessions where team members share domain knowledge on specific tools and systems
- Cross-training and deliberate role rotation to spread knowledge
- Pair programming and code reviews to share context
Personally, I‘ve found these practices immensely valuable for ramping up on new parts of the codebase quickly. And as I‘ve taken on more senior engineering roles, I‘ve seen first-hand the importance of making time for thorough documentation and knowledge sharing. It can feel like a short-term productivity hit, but it pays massive dividends in the long run.
Leveraging Small Teams for Large-Scale Impact
One of the things that surprised me most when I joined Twitter was the scope of impact that small engineering teams can have. For a platform with such massive global reach and influence, Twitter has a relatively lean engineering org.
This means that individual engineers and small teams can own systems that generate millions in revenue or are used by hundreds of millions of people every day. It‘s not uncommon for a team of 5-10 engineers to be responsible for a critical piece of infrastructure or product area.
This ownership comes with significant autonomy and flexibility in how we work. Bureaucracy and red tape are kept to a minimum, and engineers are empowered to make decisions and drive projects forward independently. If you identify a problem or opportunity, you‘re encouraged to run with it and rally a team to solve it.
I got to experience this first-hand when I pitched an idea to apply machine learning to improve our ad pacing system. Rather than needing to navigate layers of approval and buy-in, I was able to quickly pull together a small tiger team and start hacking on a prototype. Within a few weeks, we had a working model deployed to production that drove a 4% increase in ad revenue. Seeing that direct line between my work and a concrete business impact was incredibly fulfilling.
Of course, this ownership cuts both ways – when systems you‘re responsible for have issues, you‘re on the hook to fix them. Luckily, Twitter has robust on-call processes and incident response playbooks to support engineers. And more broadly, the tight-knit, collaborative culture means you always have teammates to lean on for support and expertise.
Riding the Rocket Ship
When weighing offers, one of my top considerations was the growth trajectory of the company. I had opportunities at some of the established titans of tech – would joining a smaller, younger company like Twitter limit my upside?
Looking back, I couldn‘t be happier with my choice. Twitter‘s business has absolutely taken off over the past year, with revenue growing 37% year-over-year to $3.7 billion in 2020 [^1]. We‘ve continued to launch new products and features at a rapid clip, from Spaces and Super Follows to the Twitter Blue subscription service. And the stock price has followed suit, more than doubling since I joined.
Beyond the financials, this growth has unlocked a ton of exciting opportunities for the engineering team. We‘re hiring aggressively across the board, bringing in talented new colleagues and allowing existing team members to step into leadership and mentorship roles. The scope and sophistication of the engineering challenges we‘re tackling is growing in kind, spanning everything from massive-scale infrastructure to cutting-edge applications of machine learning.
Of course, hypergrowth also brings its challenges. Systems that worked for a smaller scale start creaking under increased load. Team structures and processes need to evolve to keep up with the growing org. Communication and alignment become trickier as the number of stakeholders balloons.
But overall, it‘s an incredibly exciting time to be an engineer at Twitter. The opportunity to have massive impact and tackle genuinely hard technical problems is greater than ever. And with the business firing on all cylinders, the sense of momentum and energy is palpable.
Designing a Sustainable Work-Life Balance
Perhaps most crucially, I‘ve been able to dive into this high-growth environment without totally sacrificing my life outside of work. Twitter‘s engineering culture places a premium on sustainable work-life balance – putting in late nights and burning the weekend oil is very much the exception rather than the expectation.
A few tactical things help with this. We have two "No Meeting Days" per week, where engineers are encouraged to block off their calendars and focus on heads-down coding time. Meetings are generally discouraged outside of core working hours, and there‘s no expectation to respond to emails or pings on evenings or weekends. The company is very supportive of taking time off and actually disconnecting – I was able to unplug for a two-week vacation this year with no issues.
More broadly, though, I‘ve found that Twitter‘s culture genuinely values and respects peoples‘ lives outside of the office. Family commitments, personal passions, and mental health needs are treated as first-class priorities, not afterthoughts. Managers regularly check in on workload and encourage time off if someone seems overstretched. And there are active employee resource groups for parents, wellness, and tons of other interests that help foster social connections and work-life integration.
This doesn‘t mean that working at Twitter is a 9-to-5 cakewalk. There are certainly times when I‘ve needed to put in extra hours to hit a critical deadline or resolve a production issue. And as I‘ve taken on more responsibility, the scope of what‘s on my plate has naturally increased.
But the key difference is that these crunch times feel like conscious choices I‘m making to navigate temporary challenges, not a systemic expectation of constant overwork. I‘m able to sustain a high level of productivity and engagement because I‘m given the space to recharge and tend to my life outside of work.
Looking Ahead: Opportunity Abounds
As I reflect on my first year at Twitter, I‘m incredibly grateful for the experiences I‘ve had and the lessons I‘ve learned. I‘ve grown immensely as an engineer and as a person, and I‘m excited for what the future holds.
Looking ahead, I see no shortage of opportunity and challenge. As Twitter‘s business continues to grow, so too will the scale and complexity of the engineering work we need to do to support it. I‘m particularly excited to dive deeper into some of the cutting-edge applications of machine learning we‘re pioneering, from deep learning models for ad ranking to advanced NLP for content understanding.
I‘m also eager to continue growing as a leader and mentor within the engineering org. One of the most fulfilling parts of the past year has been seeing newer team members that I‘ve helped onboard and train succeed and thrive. As my scope broadens, I‘m excited to pay forward the support and guidance I‘ve received and help shape the next generation of Twitter engineers.
But perhaps most importantly, I‘m excited to continue learning and growing in a culture that values curiosity, humility, and balance. I‘ve learned that sustainable success in the tech industry isn‘t about burning yourself out to hit arbitrary deadlines – it‘s about designing a career and a life that challenges and fulfills you in equal measure.
If that resonates, come join us – we‘re hiring!
[^1]: Twitter Q4 2020 Earnings Report