When Sophie Novati landed her first job as an engineering intern at Facebook in 2011, the social media giant was firmly in its \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d era.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe energy was buzzing early Facebook,\u201d the now-tech entrepreneur recalls to Fortune. \u201cThere were so many people just trying to build and ship cool stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt honestly almost felt like it was college,\u201d she adds. \u201cPeople were literally sleeping at the office\u2026 It felt like everyone that I was there with were just all buddies and hanging out. Everyone was working very hard. But it felt like the dorm room.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years later, Novati left Facebook (now Meta) to join the platform Nextdoor as its second iOS engineer hire. The millennial helped build it from the ground up before founding her own firm, Formation, in 2019. The job placement company offers various subscription packages and programs to help engineers secure work or increase their earning potential. For a fee, job seekers can get access to resume reviews, negotiation coaching, mentoring, mock interviews, exam drills and more.<\/p>\n
Within just five years, Formation had raised over $8.5 million in funding and was working with the likes of\u00a0Netflix<\/a>,\u00a0Google<\/a>, Twitch,\u00a0Dropbox<\/a>,\u00a0Adobe<\/a>\u00a0to place thousands of workers into roles.<\/p>\n And, Novati says, Formation\u2019s success today is partly due to a late-night chess lesson from her former boss, Mark Zuckerberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s late-night advice over chess<\/p>\n It was 2 a.m. one night in 2011 when Zuckerberg was \u201changing out with all the interns,\u201d including playing a couple of chess matches with Novati (who claims she won).<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the vibe of the company at the time,\u201d Novati says, adding it was the first time she was able to ask him the million-dollar question: How\u2019s the social network going to make any money?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFacebook was growing users at a pace that no one\u2019s seen before,\u201d she adds. \u201cBut it couldn\u2019t make any money.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, today, Facebook\u2014or Meta\u2014is a $1.55 trillion social media giant with Instagram and WhatsApp under its wing. However, up until 2012<\/a>, the year Facebook went public, its mobile app didn\u2019t actually make money.\u00a0<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t feature ads and the move to incorporate them was considered risky.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the end, the company was able to turn likes and shares into profit, by turning its users into the product.<\/p>\n The \u201caggressive\u201d strategy lifted Facebook from \u201cno meaningful revenue\u201d to $153 million in mobile ads,\u00a0The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0reported at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cHis response to me was, if you can figure out a way to capture people\u2019s valuable attention, you can always figure out how to turn that into money later,\u201d Novati recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat he was really focused on building is figuring out how to deliver value to people,\u201d she adds. \u201cLater on, you can always turn that value into dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s why Novati has always been hyper-focused on promoting how Formation is adding value to engineers\u2019 lives instead of worrying about its list of clients or sign-up rates.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look at increase in compensation as our number one metric,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n \u201cCollege in the U.S. costs on average around $100k for 4 years. The average compensation for people who go through versus those who do not is about $20km. So people are paying $100k for $20k value\u2014we are the flip here, we\u2019re helping people make $127k more and we\u2019re charging $10-15k.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy that people are making over $100k more as a result of going through a program,\u201d she boasts.<\/p>\n So far, Zuckerberg\u2019s ethos has been on the money. <\/p>\n According to Formation, just a year after launching it\u00a0had already raised a $4 million Seed Round led by Andreessen Horowitz\u2014the first venture firm to hold stock in Facebook,\u00a0Groupon<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Zynga, all four of the highest-valued privately held social media companies at the time. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s still a lot more that we can do to better capture the value that we\u2019re creating,\u201d Novati concludes.<\/p>\n But for now, her attention remains \u201con getting people into these top jobs and significantly improving the trajectories of their career.\u201d <\/p>\n