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Why Facebook’s First Female Engineer Left Her Job To Face Her Fears


On an average, we check our Facebook newsfeeds 14 times a day, and per day, the website gets 1 billion returning visitors from across the world, which means the newsfeed is something that’s seen 14 billion times a day! With such a mind-boggling number today, it’s almost impossible to think of a time when our Facebook Newsfeed, or Timelines, as we call it today, didn’t even exist.

Ruchi Sanghvi, Facebook’s first female engineer, recounts this very time, when a team of college graduates sat with their 21-year-old CEO (yep, Mark Zuckerberg) and thought of a way to make the FB experience smoother. Others dismissed them as “just a fad” and “a trend that would disappear”, but this team spent most of their waking hours (till 4 a.m. on most days), at the Facebook office, building something they were passionate about. And the result? Millions of us can’t imagine our lives on the internet without it today, and it has led to massive on-ground impact too, such as being the primary tool using which the 2011 Arab Spring protests were organised.

This video is a must-watch for you, especially if you’re already an entrepreneur, starting up or have an idea you’re hesitant to execute. Ruchi’s words will help you face any fear of failure head on, and if it’s taking the first step that seems daunting, you’ll probably be inspired to take it and get the motivation you need to stand by your vision.


This post is a part of a tech and entrepreneurship series by Youth Ki Awaaz, in collaboration with INK. This series aims to highlight unheard stories of individuals who had the courage to follow their dreams, and their journeys of success and failure. Watch more videos from INK here, and if you want to share the story of an inspiring entrepreneur, submit here.

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