Working at Meta Reality Labs on Health & Fitness

Late in September I began working as a tech lead at Meta’s Reality Labs, i.e. the org that designs the RayBan Meta glasses and the Oculus VR lineup. Specifically, I’m working on the data infrastructure for the health & wearables group. The day-to-day looks like the software plumbing and collaboration I’m used to, though the stack is something else.

This is my first software engineering job at a large company – my prior experience was way down the food chain as an early startup hire / founder or a freelance engineer. While that smaller-scale work has challenged and satisfied me, some part of me has yearned to contribute to some tech cathedral, i.e. a project of such complexity that it takes years if not decades to build an MVP, something that pushes the bounds of what’s currently possible. Products like the Meta Display glasses and EMG watch, while perhaps not as romantic or awe-inspiring as a cathedral, are certainly at the edge of an AI / hardware fontier.

I’ll admit, the people have been great to work with. Despite the pressure to hit hardware schedules (hardware is hard), the old work-life-balance is respected and good attitudes maintained.

On the downside, despite the scale of Meta my job feels more unstable than when I worked at a startup: there I felt like the risks were existential to the company as a whole, but with decent leadership you at least saw the runway draining and the end coming. With Reality Labs being traditionally cross-subsidized by the ads business there’s always the risk of Meta cutting it loose tightening down on resources. Decisions like these seem to come without warning.

I’ll jot down some updated reflections in a few months as I get fully ramped up.