Facebook is regarded as the paradise for anarchies, nudists, stalkers, perverts and serial sex offenders.

However, Facebook's six bug-crunching weeks bootcamp, from day 1 any newbie no-matter-who-you-are joins the company, is a fast way to learn how to build and grow engineering culture in a big I.T. enterprise like Facebook - hard core geek, embraces the concept of "hacking," the idea that anyone can come up with innovative ways to make users happier.

• Bootcamp sets the tone for a successful career at Facebook. When engineers open their laptops the first time they should have a welcome email from the bootcamp manager or their bootcamp mentor and a bunch of work assigned to them to get started on.
• Bootcamp is different for every new engineer. Each individual is coming from a different background and likely has different interests. Once we get past a basic bar of ability to do the job, we work with the engineers to make sure we're providing them with help that will lead to long term success here.
• Bootcamp can help everyone. From the most senior director or VP to the newest college grad, incoming engineers often express concerns that bootcamp isn't right for them. Through talking with people immediately following bootcamp and also at 3 and 6 month intervals we can say quite confidently that it really does help everyone. The entire engineering organization all the way up to Zuck believes this.
• Bootcamp is not meant to make people comfortable. We should be pushing people beyond their limits and encouraging them to explore technologies outside their area of expertise.
◦ If someone is an expert at machine learning, then we shouldn't make that part of bootcamp since we already believe they are experts at it; instead we should invite them to explore technologies that surround their expertise at Facebook.
◦ People building front end software need to understand the stack upon which their software runs. People writing back end software need to understand the clients they will be supporting.
◦ Learning the core code base is important for building good software, no matter where in the stack someone ends up working, and it also improves empathy for other engineers.
• Bootcamp mentors get valuable returns for their time. The engineers get hands on technical leadership and manager experience in a controlled environment.

Read more: http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/facebook-engineering-bootcamp/177577963919