Two months ago François left startup Memolane to join Instagram as the second Belgian. Creativeskills.be was curious about his career move and scored an interview with François.

Hello François, how are you liking your new job at Instagram?

Being at Facebook is a lot of fun. The facilities are an engineering heaven, Facebook really wants happy employees. But what really strikes me is the “move fast and break things” culture which in a lot of ways is very similar to what startups do. It’s just that applying this to Facebook’s scale makes everything different and honestly, a little bit scary. From day 1, you get access to the whole code base. Wow, the impact is simply phenomenal. As a “nOOb”, as all new hires are called here, you have to learn to take risks.?? Tied together with the culture comes the team. The Instagram team that I’m joining is simply first class… If you divide the number of Instagram users per number of engineers you get: a lot. Of course, this also means that the learning curve is rather steep.

What do you do at Instagram as a Software Engineer?

When joining Facebook, you are put into a 6-week onboarding program called Bootcamp during which you learn about many different  parts of Facebook. You are typically working on tasks that are far from your comfort zone; for example, JavaScript for me. This is a great opportunity to meet different teams, and grow some empathy about what other engineers are working on (btw, the JavaScript team is fantastic).

I am part of Instagram’s quickly growing backend team, working on the invisible part of Instagram. We build technologies to make Instagram scale – support more users, more features. Most of Instagram’s other engineers work on mobile and web apps. It really feels like a startup within Facebook – I love it.

How did you find out about this vacancy at Instagram?

I was introduced to the Instagram team through one of the VC firms that backed them. Building a network is certainly very important given that the Bay Area is a small community where everyone ends up quickly knowing about each other. A proper introduction can get you a very long way. For example, the Belgian community is a great way to get introduced.

Back to my story, I got a call from Mike Krieger, then had a first set of interviews with Facebook engineers, followed by another set of interviews with the Instagram team. I got an offer within 3 days and I am now sitting a couple of desks away from another Belgian, Tim Van Damme.

Instagram is a well built-out and stable app. What’s Instagram’s current focus?

Instagram is very much a startup within Facebook. This means that there are a lot of engineering challenges lying in front of us. Being such a small team, there are a lot of opportunities for everyone to influence the product and its architecture. We iterate very fast, are tackling many exciting challenges and are actively and constantly looking for new talent.

Before joining Instagram you were working for Memolane. What did Memolane try to do?

Memolane is building dynamic social media albums. Pick different social apps you use, for e.g., Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and set up some filters such as keywords, geo location, time span, or people. You’ll get a social media album of all your posts related to the criteria. The album will keep building itself as you keep posting to your usual social networks.

We won a startup bootcamp in Copenhagen, and then received backing from 3 VC firms and moved to San Francisco. We built a strong community around original features such as Memomails.

Why did you leave Memolane?

Things move extremely fast in startups like Memolane. Sure it was at times a bumpy ride, but it was a lot of fun. I thank all my co-workers at Memolane and all our Memolaners. Special thanks to Nikolaj and Eric, cofounders of Memolane, who entrusted me to lead the development and brought me to San Francisco.

Having worked in startups, I was curious to try something where I could leverage my existing experience yet discover new challenges. Instagram, the startup within Facebook, appeared to be the perfect match.

How different is it to work for a large corporation versus a small startup?

Well, with Instagram’s team independent as it now from the rest of Facebook, there is very little different. The team remains small and very dynamic with a very short release cycle. A couple of weeks ago, we announced we passed the 100M monthly active users, hence the impact is tremendous. Mike and Kevin, the two co-founders who sit right next to me, are super accessible and encourage suggestions and initiatives.

Being part of Facebook, we enjoy countless resources. We have full access to all facebook tools, knowledge and data centers, enabling us to outreach what regular startups can do.

What made you originally move to the Bay Area?

I moved to San Francisco in October 2011 to lead the development team at Memolane. I knew already the team from a previous startup weekend and had helped them setting up their database.

Prior to joining Memolane I co-founded 3 startups but I really got tired of looking for funding in Belgium. I found it an extremely inefficient process although I had very little problem to raise 500k eur for Algorhyme, my second startup located in Denmark.

I also left because of the language. My future wife and I experienced first hand that finding a job without speaking the two national languages is extremely difficult. This heavily penalizes Belgium in many domains as I fear we are unable to attract or retain international talents.

The intellectual environment in the Bay Area is very exciting and challenging. Tons of things are happening. It’s truly an entrepreneurial heaven, although the competition is intense. The culture is also very different, risk takers are welcomed, failing is good.

Do you think you would ever return to Belgium?

I’d love to come back. My roots, family and friends remain in Belgium. However, my professional future seems much brighter in California at the moment. First, Belgium has become the kingdom of consulting, nobody seems proud of building stuff. Here engineers are cherished. Second, the density of talents in the Bay Area is fantastic and is a great opportunity to learn. This is a great motivational boost… and I forgot to mention the palm trees. More seriously, I think Belgium has great difficulties to attract and retain talents.

Here, I am actively participating to the life of our little but growing Belgian community. I am helping newcomers by sharing my modest experience and network.  For example, I’m working on having Instagram opening its doors to the Web Mission organized next June.

What’s your best piece of advice for people who want to work and live in the Bay Area?

I think your primary goal should be to find an employer willing to sponsor your visa (H1B or J1).  It’s not easy but if you have experience in IT, I think you have a solid chance. So my advice would be to get introduced to your future employer. So, reconnect with people you know that live here, come and make new friends, and last be not least, send your resume.

Thank you for the interview François. We wish you continued success at Instagram and all your future endeavors.