The Interview
We sat down with Krista Kobeski, Associate Manager of Facebook Public Policy, and Genevieve Ovalle, Project Manager for Security. For the first three years, Kobeski dealt with some of the bad things that are posted on Facebook. She then went to Ireland to expand Facebook in other places. Ovalle has also been at Facebook for almost six years. She helps people stick to the projects they’ve started and oversees the Facebook Bug Bounty Program, which is a program where ethical hackers (the good kind of hackers) are paid for the bugs they find in Facebook. They can be paid anywhere from 500 to 5,000 dollars depending on the severity.
Only 57 employees have been there longer than the two of them, yet the atmosphere was unexpectedly personable for such a large corporation, complete with jokes and smiles on both sides. We all gathered around the same conference table and discussed Facebook both as a culture and a product.
According to Kobeski, Facebook's goal is to connect 7.8 billion people safely together from around the world. Although many would never believe this possible, for Facebook employees, the mission is very much a real one, even though, she said, they are only 1% there.
At one point they humorously called themselves old, since the average age used to be 21 and now is around 30. In some ways, that observation symbolized the evolution of the company. What once was a hip social media trend is now one of the largest websites in the world. A larger user base necessitated more attorneys, advisors, and others with more experience than its original college-attending founder. With more than 655 million daily active users, spanning the age spectrum and gained in an immense explosion of popularity, the company was forced to grow up as well.