Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, has some simple advice for aspiring technologists: Start building — now.
The executive hosted an Ask Me Anything on his Instagram account this week and answered a college freshman’s question about how to enter the industry.
“You just have to immerse yourself in it,” Bosworth said. “You should just constantly be building.”
Bosworth, or Boz as he’s commonly known, graduated from Harvard in 2004 and has been working at Meta since 2022. He suggested students try a mix of modern and old-school approaches, depending on their medium.
For students with a focus in software, he suggested honing their vibe coding skills, where developers use AI tools to generate and refine code using natural language.
For hardware students, he’s sticking with some classic tools.
He suggested students learn to use a Raspberry Pi, a low-cost single-board computer often used for DIY projects, and the Arduino, a platform for controlling electronics such as sensors and motors. For more advanced work, he said young people should play around with printed circuit boards, which serve as the nervous system of most electronic devices.
Bosworth told the student they should focus on “building and getting that experience.”
“That’s what’s going to give you the best chance of having the relevant skill set that is needed to make a difference in technology,” he said.
Bosworth and Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
His comments come as Silicon Valley executives compete for talent wherever they can find it. Several companies, including Meta, have engaged in a so-called “talent war.” Companies are spending hundreds of millions to hire the latest AI prodigies.
Some companies are already trying alternative pipelines to bring young product builders into their offices. Last year, Palantir started a fellowship program that onboarded high-achieving students straight out of high school.
‘I’ll bite’
Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Another viewer asked the Meta CTO if he had any thoughts about self-reflection.
“Trying to drag me into an internet debate — but I’ll bite,” Bosworth said.
The question comes on the heels of a viral internet debate surrounding venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who said recently on the “Founders Podcast” that he aims for “zero” introspection.
“I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past,” Andreessen said. “It’s a real problem. It’s a problem at work, and it’s a problem at home.”
A clip of the answer went viral on social media. Other tech executives called the answer anything from “absurdly wrong” to edifying: “I feel the same, but have always felt bad about it,” Untangle CEO Ryan Carson wrote on X.
Bosworth said he has gone through “short periods of very deep and profound introspection interspersed throughout my life” that changed him, but said he uses it “sparingly.”
“For years at a time, I am who I am,” he said. “I have a vision, I have a goal, I have an ethos, I have a way of working.”