When Sophie Novati started her first job as an engineering intern at on facebook. In 2011, the social media giant was in the midst of its “move fast and break” era.
“Facebook was full of energy from the beginning,” recalls the current tech entrepreneur Assets“There were so many people just trying to build and deliver cool stuff.”
“It really felt almost like college,” she adds. “People were literally sleeping in the office… It felt like everyone I was there with were just buddies, hanging out. Everyone was working really hard. But it felt like a dorm.”
A few years later, Novati left Facebook (now Meta) to join the platform Nextdoor as a second iOS engineer. The 33-year-old helped build it from the ground up before founding her own company, Formation, in 2019.
The employment company offers various subscription packages and programs designed to help engineers find work or increase their earning potential. For a fee (ranging from $2,500 to $20,000), job seekers can access unlimited resume reviews, negotiation coaching, mentoring, mock interviews, exam practice, and more.
She says that as the de facto head of inclusion in Facebook’s engineering department, she was inspired to start Formation and help break down barriers to entry.
“On Facebook and Nextdoor, I was probably one of 15 women, and that ratio just didn’t feel right.”
More than 1,300 job seekers have now enlisted Formation’s help to get a seat at the negotiating table – securing an average raise of $127,286, the company said.
But Novati says Formation’s success today is partly thanks to a late-night chess lesson from her former boss, Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s advice on chess
It was 2 a.m. one night in 2011 when Zuckerberg was “hanging out with all the interns,” including playing a few games of chess with Novati (who claims she won).
“That was the mood in the company at the time,” says Novati, adding that it was then that she was able to ask him the million-dollar question for the first time: How was the social network supposed to make money at all?
“Facebook was able to grow its user base at an unprecedented rate,” she adds. “But it couldn’t make money.”
Of course, Facebook – or Meta – is now a $1.3 trillion social media giant that has Instagram and WhatsApp under its wing. until 2012The year Facebook went public, the mobile app actually made no money.
There was no advertising and its integration was considered risky.
In the end, the company managed to convert likes and shares into profit by turning its users into the product.
The “aggressive” strategy took Facebook from “no significant revenue” to $153 million in mobile ads. The Atlantic was reported at the time.
“His answer to me was: If you can find a way to get people’s valuable attention, you can always find a way to turn it into money later,” Novati recalls.
“He was really keen to figure out how to provide value to people,” she adds. “You can always translate that value into dollars later.”
That’s why Novati has always been very focused on highlighting how Formation creates value for engineers, rather than worrying about customer lists or sign-up rates.
“The increase in remuneration is the most important yardstick for us,” she explains.
“The average cost of a four-year college degree in the United States is around $100,000. The average compensation for people who complete the degree compared to those who don’t is around $20,000. So people are paying $100,000 for $20,000 of value – we’re the opposite here, helping people make $127,000 more and charging $10,000 to $15,000 for it.”
“It’s pretty crazy that people can earn over $100,000 more by participating in a program,” she boasts.
So far, Zuckerberg’s ethos has been spot on.
According to Novati, Formation has raised over $8.5 million in funding and is working with companies such as Netflix, Googletwitching, Dropbox, Adobe and, among others, her old employer Meta.
“We can do much more to better exploit the value we create,” Novati concluded.
But first, her focus remains on “the task of getting people into these top jobs and significantly improving their career trajectories.”