Susan Li - Meta's CFO on Building a Fast Learning Culture - [Glue Guys, EP.53]

You guys are like, still making these big bets, right?

And like, as the person signing the check.

I know, yes. So can we get into capex spending, Susan?

Can we talk about it? What I have always thought is that someday Alex Smith would ask me about capex spending on a podcast. Here we are. That day has come.

All right, everyone, I am so happy that today we have an incredibly special guest, the CFO at Meta, Susan Lee. Now, Susan, when she was named CFO of Meta in 2022, was the youngest CFO of a Fortune 100 company ever. And that continued a trend of her doing things pretty early in her life. But I think that the thing that you're going to find most interesting about this episode is just her journey and her perspective and how kind and smart and interesting and reflective she is. Susan is one of my closest friends and I'm very proud that that's the case. And I will tell you, my favorite conversations are the ones. And our favorite conversations are the ones where we learn something new about people we already knew. And I think that this was no exception. So this was an incredibly fun conversation. We touched on mentorship, we touched on being different, we touched on reflecting on, you know, the role of our parents. And I can tell you that it was one of my favorite blue guys ever. And I hope it's one of yours too.

Susan, this is crazy. You help lead. We were just talking about this, the sixth largest company in the world. Even though the expertises are. Are very different and very specific, right? Like between Jim Harbaugh and you, you're still leading these like high pressure teams, right? That, that are large and you know, like again, multiple. And how do you do this? How, you know, again, it's not just the job. When you're in these leadership positions, what are the things that are important? And again, I think the cool thing, like, for us is like, obviously there is no one way to do these things, right? Like, I mean, I think that's the. Yeah, the fascinating thing. And so as, like, you know, like on paper, as different as you are, again, from, like, take Jim Harbaugh, right? Like, but that's.

Can I pitch for a moment? Should he come back to Stanford to lead the program now that Andrew Luck is back?

I think everybody would agree. I think everybody would love that.

I think everyone would love that. He, when we saw him in la, we went and did that one in person. Yeah, he seems to be extremely happy in the NFL. And he also, he seems like he has something to prove, you know, like, I feel like there's some element. I don't think he's leaving. I know we should make the pitch, but I don't think he's. I don't think he's coming back. Do you think he's gonna come?

No, no, I don't. No, I don't think that's happening.

Yeah. No. Okay, so I. I have a question for you.

Yes.

You join Face Face Facebook in what year?

2008.

Okay. What was it like in 2008? Like, make it real. Like, because people, everyone has their own opinions on, like meta and what it's like now. But it's this Incredible Company, the sixth largest company, you know, in the world. 70,000 plus employees. What was it like in 2008?

Yeah, when I. So, I mean, a funny sort of thing is that I. Right before coming to then Facebook, I. My first job out of college was at Morgan Stanley. I started on the trading floor in New York at the sort of big headquarters building on Broadway. And then my final year with Morgan Stanley, I was in Hong Kong. So I was in Hong Kong right before I came back. And you know, in Hong Kong I was working with. I speak Mandarin and I read and write Chinese. So I'd been assigned to work on all these, like, Chinese companies, these state owned enterprises that were being taken public and so on, so forth. And. And it was like a really interesting cultural experience. I had obviously never worked in. I was born in China, but came here when I was 2, so I never spent like a lot of time there. So this was actually the most extensive period of time I'd spent working in China. And I remember I was in China for a client meeting and there was a lunch. And you know, these are. You go to a restaurant and this was like a. Not very big, I can't remember, not a very big restaurant somewhere in Guangzhou. And the client CEO gets to order everything. It's family style. You're sitting at those round tables with the, like the.

The lazy Susan.

The Lazy Susans, yes. The turn turning kind of thing in the middle where all the dishes get put and everyone is served family style. And he does all the ordering. And the local specialty that he proudly orders is fried silkworm larvae.

Oh, wow.

And he's like, this is a real local delicacy. There's some saying if women eat it, they don't have to wear makeup for, you know, things like about how it. Whatever. And then he personally puts some on everyone's plate. So he is, you know, serving you.

Yes.

Um, and so it's really not a question of Whether you're going to eat it, you know, you are just going to look at this thing on your plate and you're going to eat it because he's watching you and he's the client. And this is how things happen.

Client service operation.

Exactly. And I had also. This was when I knew I was coming back to California to join Facebook. And I'd gotten kind of a email from someone from the finance team who said, hey, great news. You're going to be here in time for our first. First off site, we're going to some restaurant and doing something up in Napa. And I wanted to check. Could you specify your dietary preferences on the sheet? And there were like so many options. You know, I could be any kind of. Any combination of dietary preferences. A ovo, lacto vegetarian or whatever I wanted to be. And I was just laughing at sort of the. It like wouldn't have mattered less if I, you know, were vegan at that restaurant.

Yeah, you're gonna.

Yes.

Yeah. Um, and so it was a very sort of fun culture.

Very big stark difference.

Very stark. Um, but I came to Facebook at a time when the company was around 400 plus employees. You.

400, that's it?

Yep, around 400 some. And we were split up around all these buildings in downtown Palo Alto. So you kind of walked around between buildings. Finance was on University Avenue, and there were fewer than 100 million Facebook users in the United States. We were actually smaller than MySpace. And in the United States, when you.

Joined, you guys were still smaller than MySpace. Wow.

And we had all these competitor, you know, like the social media as. Yes, exactly. And around the world, you know, there were lots of different.

Alex still has a MySpace account to go with his Hotmail account.

Oh, what do you use it for?

No, I'm just kidding.

But easy on the.

But he does have a Hotmail account.

Okay. But I heard that you call it a Snapchat.

Yeah.

I may have referred to it as that. Yeah, I think that's what the kids call it these days.

I don't think so.

Well, before we start, can we find out, how were the. The silkworm larva.

Sorry.

They were very saucy. You just tasted sounds.

Okay.

Then you could just taste sauce and not think about it.

Sorry.

Okay, so anyway, 400 people. Less. Smaller than MySpace.

Yes.

100 million in the US or less.

Yes. And we had just raised. We had just done this round with Microsoft that valued the company at $15 billion, which at the time seemed like a eye wateringly large valuation. My parents were very concerned about the whole thing. You know, Morgan Stanley was a large international company that they had heard of. When I was trying to explain to them how to think of Facebook was private. So, you know, the shares that are part of your compensation didn't really mean anything to my parents. I was trying to explain to them with a 15 billion dollar valuation what that would mean. And my mom, you know, just ran through other companies with similar size valuations, you know, like airlines, and she was like, those are companies that own airplane.

Yeah.

Like they fly people to places. You know, it was mind boggling to them that a product they had never heard of, that as far as they could tell, was just something like kids clicked on, on the Internet could be worth the same thing. So they were very skeptical of the whole enterprise. So it was, it was a little bit of a surprising, surprising career move. But I think lucky, you know, I think a lucky thing for me was I went to school out here. And I think one of the things I reflect on now is I think there's so much path dependence, these kind of random choices. Like I think you can choose one of many great places to go to school, but the culture you get steeped in and the people you meet and what they end up doing really, I think are formative for you in a way that might not be obvious before you make that choice. Yep. And I think if I'd gone to an east coast school, I might've felt more this way about Wall street or about finance as a industry. But because I went to school out here, you know, all my friends were at tech companies of different sizes. And at the time, Google was still. I graduated in 05. So this is shockingly about to be my, my 20th college reunion. But you know, Google was still a relatively new company. It still felt startupy. If you went to something like Google and then there was a incredible landscape of obviously even Martin Ups and you know, something like Microsoft at the time felt like that was a, you know, that was a big company, you know, when you went to Microsoft. So. So I think in my mind there was a sort of draw towards coming back to a landscape that I knew was incredibly vibrant and exciting and just super high energy and full of people who felt very like minded.

Was the decision when you went back then largely just based on like people I like and respect are working at this place or did you have a view on the business? Like what was it that made you decide to go in 2008 to Facebook?

Yeah, I mean, it was a combination, I will say. I think the People that I met, including folks I knew beforehand, but also folks I met through the process were extremely smart, focused, kind, you know, working together in a way that felt like there was a real sense of shared purpose, a very palpable level of excitement about a product that people were building that they could see people use. Yeah, they could see people use with greater.

Yes.

Reach, you know, around the world. And that felt really exciting. And I actually didn't have a strong. You know, in retrospect, of course, this feels like the most obvious thing in the world, but I didn't have a strong view at the time on. On the business, in part because we hadn't really gotten into the ad space. So. So in my mind, it just seemed like, okay, in two years, if this doesn't work out, then I go back to business school like everybody else, and, you know, and then this will have been a really fun two years doing something really exciting.

Yeah, but the culture of the building and the business, and again, this, like, purpose, because this. I mean, this stuff's important. I think, as an employee. Right. Like, you want to be a part of something bigger. You want to be part of a great team doing something important that was. That was, like, palpable. That was tangible for you at the time.

Absolutely, it is. And it is still something that I feel is quite special about the company. Just, you know, and I say this fully aware. I haven't worked anywhere else in 17 years now, so I have no basis for comparison, but I am constant. I mean, every day I basically feel very lucky to get to work with who I get to work with and on the sort of scale and magnitude of the problems that we're tackling and. And the impact they have on the world and the. You know, it's like to be able to work on. At the frontier of, for example, the AI research that is happening today, at the scale at which that is being built out with the people who we get to work on it with is just a. It feels like a real privilege. But it has felt that way for 17 years. The problem has evolved somewhat. You know, the challenges have evolved. The people have. Some of the people have changed. We also, I think, actually have extraordinary. Extraordinary longevity of employees, too. And obviously, Mark has been there the whole time. I mean, there are days where you feel like the job is frustrating and where you disagree with people, but it's never felt boring.

Yeah.

And, like, not for truly a nanosecond. Sometimes it could feel just fine. And when you disagree with people, it's not because you think they're, you might think they're wrong about the issue, but it's not because you think they're mean or mal intentioned or, you know, it's just like we see these facts in a different way or we have a different, you know, vision for how something is going to unfold or you know, whatever is the. It's a very substantive difference. It's not like, you know, it's a substantive difference between people whose opinion you respect.

Yeah, the other thing I think that's crazy is like it was so, it was happening so fast and in real time. Like the changes like Newsfeed and like all the new implementations could get implemented like immediately. Obviously, you know, obviously that was the foundation of the technology. Different than like Microsoft. It was like, hey, the new Windows products coming out in two years, we've got to ship. And you know, like it just was so it happened so fast. Like these things got implemented and could get distributed immediately and they changed people's lives.

I told this to you before. I don't know if I told this to Susan. I went to Mark's talk at the Chase center with the acquired guys.

Yeah.

You know who, or actually our guest last week. But he said in that his aspiration for Meta is that it's just an extremely fast learning company and ideally the fastest learning company out there. And I think that what you just said on the speed of implementation, that I think contributes to that, which is the more data you get in the more sort of signal you get, the faster you can learn. And I thought that that was like a very inspirational talk to me. Like I think about what I want to be myself, I think what my kids, I want them to be. I think you can't be perfect, but you can learn really fast. You can take that in. So like what are some of the things that you guys do in order to like live that in order, other than just like shipping quickly, you know, what are some things you do to like make yourself really fast learning at the company?

That's a really good question. You know, part of it is that I think we have a management team that is both very intellectually curious and often in ways that will, you know, like as you get to know people slightly surprise you. Someone who runs a very technical domain, you know, will have far ranging interests. Like outside of that, I have this very funny memory. I was sitting next to Andrew Bosworth, who is our CTO on a flight. So he runs like, I mean, first of all, he's been at the company forever for longer than I have. He's always been in engineering. Now he runs the Reality Labs portfolio. And I had just been reading about this plan to basically, if you remember the Fukushima nuclear, nuclear reactor that had the meltdown after the tsunami in Japan. So there is a plan to sort of now start very, very slowly releasing the treated water into the ocean. And I was thinking about this and it was just top of my mind and I turned around and I asked him what he thought and without missing a beat, he basically, he had thought about this problem too. And he gave me his full sort of like thinking about what the implications were. And I had no sense before that that he had any remote interest in this topic. Yeah, and that happens to me a lot. I mean, and I also, I think I'm, I'm pretty comfortable just asking people about something a little bit random but interesting and kind of seeing where the conversation goes. And I am never, I never fail to be surprised by, you know, how, how much people spend thinking about just interest time people. Time people spend thinking about interesting things that might not be what you think of as their core domain. So I think we have a team that is super curious, that cares a lot about like sort of staying on top of what's happening in the world, both in the first order, what's super relevant to your business sense, but also in a second order. Like. And you know, there are fun moments. Like right now, as I asked you and Avni, when I talked to you guys last week, I'm like, have you heard of K Pop Demon Hunters?

Who hasn't?

Well, I hadn't, I hadn't. Well, I have now, but Sloan, my.

Nine year old daughter, just. I'm just getting inundated with this.

Really?

Yes. Oh, man.

Well, tell. What did you, what do you think about it?

Have you seen it?

No, but I mean, I, it is, it is part of our daily conversation.

We need a movie night. Yeah, well, you know, did you guys watch. I don't know if you guys watch the US Open. Do you guys watch the tennis?

Yeah.

Okay, so Djokovic, after beating Fritz, he did this celebration that was completely. I was like, what is he doing? And later it turns out it's a K Pop Demon Hunter, you know, reference for his daughter. And so he was, he did like a drink like this and then he did some dance and it was like, oh, that was for my daughter because of K Pop Demon Hunter. So you have really enriched my life, you know, here by introducing it to me. But yeah, no, and you, you heard about it, I guess through One of your colleagues?

Yes.

Yeah.

And so one of my colleagues who's an AI researcher who's seen it multiple times. And so it is very funny. You know, just, I feel like we live at the intersection of lots of interesting things happening in the world, and if you kind of stay open to those things, there's a lot to think about and talk about and discuss whether it's something we should be working on or we should be preparing for. We should be thinking about maybe not for tomorrow, but maybe next year. So it is a team that I think really is intellectually curious, really cares about learning, is not afraid to correct previous mistakes. Yes, in a way. And this is something, you know, sometimes I really feel when something doesn't go the way I want it to, it will, like, weigh on me for a long time. And Mark, you know, will say, and there are plenty of, you know, things that I feel like could have been done more optimally. And Mark is always the first person to say, like, you made the best decision you could have with the information you had yesterday. And we are making now the decisions that we. The best decisions we can with the information we have today.

Yeah. And it's amazing.

The thing you did yesterday might not be. Might even be the exact opposite of the thing we're doing now today, because the information has changed and we've learned new things and we've got to. We've got to be able to always look forward. And so he's really just very, very sort of clear eyed about that and has in some ways, I think, given me better perspective also to not just let myself kind of relitigate in my head the things that I could have done better over the last.

This is why you mentioned earlier, as a joke, like, you know, you were surprised that you're in the same podcast guest list as some of the athletes or coaches we've had. What you just described is the exact message that's the most important thing that Coach K from Duke says. Literally what he has, he talks about all the time. Next play. The only play that matters is the next play. We can't do anything about the last play. All we can do is worry about the next play. And it's like the mantra that is the most important standard, I think, within Duke basketball that's been really successful for a long time. And his whole thing, and it's so crazy, I'd never made this connection before, but he's actually a lot better, Mark, in that his whole hallmark is he's really adaptable. He's like look, like I, I am good at figuring out what to do given what's happening. I also don't care about what happened yesterday other than to learn what I can do now.

Yeah.

And like the similarities between like Coach K and Mark Zuckerberg or something that I would suspect have not been discussed, you know, in very many.

And to me, I mean, again, I think it's so crazy. You've been there 17 years and to talk about this, there still is this energy there.

Right.

And this like curiosity. And I can't help but think that like, well, a lot of this, obviously Mark is at the top and has to have said a lot of this tone. And you think about some of the big bets you guys have made since.

Yeah.

Since that time. Right. Like that is just so different than we think of a lot of these big companies.

Right.

That are so big and bureaucratic and just kind of move along and status quo. And you guys are like still making these big bets.

Right. And like as the person signing the check.

I know.

Yes.

So can we get into Capex spending, Susan?

Can we talk about it? I have always thought is that someday Alex Smith would ask me about CA spending on a podcast. Here we are. That day has come.

I get a lot of talk here about free cash flow. That's right.

Let me know if you need a.

Private equity definitely needs a hat and what it means, you know, and how. Yeah. So the value of it. I'm. I listen, I agree.

I appreciate that. We also. I've been trying to tell Alex that he is. Alex has the same financial advisor that he had when he signed his big contract when he turned 20 years old.

Oh wow.

And I have shared with him that I think he is plenty capable of managing his own finances at this moment. And his needs are different than they were then. And Alex is still.

Says the professional investor.

Yeah. Well, if you can invest in Sequoia, you should. You don't need somebody to tell you. Tell you that. Okay. So you want to ask Susan about the Capex. Is that what you want to do?

No, I did. We'll save that for later. That's the deeper. That's the. We're going to.

I mean I also thought someday we'd be talking about K pop demon hunters. So it's just.

Yes, exactly. We don't normally like obviously go into backgrounds of guests all the time. But your upbringing is fascinating. Like it fascinating. Right. And some of it on paper.

You.

Know, when you just like read the resume version can read like it just isn't what it really was like, I imagine, right. Again, born in China. You don't meet your dad until you're two years old. When, you know, you move to America, to the Portland area. You're in high school at 11 years old. Stanford, Stanford. At Stanford at 15. Right. And then you're at Morgan Stanley on the floor at 19 years old. And you like, read that. And again, like prodigy, obviously so advanced. And that again, on paper doesn't really, I think, account for what that was like. And so, I don't know, can we just like, die? I mean, from your perspective. Yeah. Like your childhood, your upbringing through those, those, you know, first stages.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, there's kind of what it felt like then, and then there is kind of your ability as an adult to reflect on your childhood. When I was growing up, I felt for all of those reasons, both because I was younger than everyone else and when I was growing up, there were not a ton of first generation Chinese immigrants in Oregon. I think there are many, many more now. Um, it really felt very like, I felt very isolated sometimes in a way that I didn't love as a kid because I cared about having friends and all of those things. And it was harder to, to make friends. And I grew up in a very, really just lovely neighborhood. It was kind of an affluent suburb of Portland called, like us. We go. I went.

Sports powerhouse.

Yes, yes. Home of Kevin Love, amongst others. And actually, I have a funny connection here, which is that when I was in high school, Lake Oswego High School, I was in stats class with Mr. Cumprey and sitting.

How old were you?

I was probably this. I probably was like a junior. So I think I was probably like, you know, 14 words that have never.

Been said on this podcast before.

And there was someone sitting behind me who introduced himself immediately. And so, you know, I turned around, he was like, hey. And he was very outgoing. He was like, my name's Brett Elliott. And I looked at him and said, hi, I'm Susan. And then he explained, he was like, you know, I am the quarterback of our high school football team. And in a very nice way, to be clear, I think he was just trying to, like, introduce himself. And I looked at him like, that's cool. What does that do?

Yeah.

And so I evinced no recognition of the star quarterback of our high school football team, but he was an extremely nice guy. And he sat behind me for, you know, the year. And we had, you know, I mean, I think this was a very unusual. Like, I would not have guessed that he would be so friendly and outgoing and. But it was great. I mean he was a great person to. To get to know and we worked on some stuff together and he was super easygoing and so extroverted and kind and so if you were to ask me, in my mind, you know, like my high school quarterback who I think was a very good football player, I mostly think of as being a very nice partner on statistics.

Well, I'm. So we're going to go back to you being isolated as a kid, but I do need to interject here and Susan told me that story because I think we were talking just one time catching up and you. The story was sort of like what it was like to be in high school as a young person. And she's like, I think this guy ended up being pretty good. And so there was no connection to you. She just like set and she's like, I'm like what's his name? And she's like, well, something involving Elliot. So I'm like googling quarterback, you know, of like. Or I was using meta AI to figure out like, you know, who are quarterbacks that have the name Elliot.

No problem.

I got you, I got you, I got you. And I'm naming these different people and finally, you know, Brett Elliott is the name that she's like, yes, that's it. And then I read his Wikipedia and I'm like, oh my God. And of course I immediately text you because he is the starter at Utah when you're there.

Yep.

Right.

He hosted me on my recruiting trip.

It's crazy.

He's two years older than me. For everybody listening, Brayley was the quarterback at Utah. Again a couple years older than me. I met him on my recruiting trip, obviously decided to go there. He's starting in front of me. Yeah. Again when Urban comes in, Brett Elliott is the starter and had played well at this point. He's only a year older than me eligibility wise, so still had a bright future. I was playing really well. And again this Urban Meyer rocket ship is taking off. And in the second game of the season on the final play we were down playing at Texas A and M. We he. He throws a touchdown to. To almost tie the game. We're down two. We have to go for a two point conversion to tie them to send it to overtime. I didn't realize that they send. They run a bootleg. He goes diving for the pylon again is the last play of the game. And breaks his wrist.

Oh, okay.

Breaks his wrist and in. I mean, yeah. Incompetence my opportunity, I'm the backup quarterback, and I start from there on out, and I play really well. And Brett never got his job back. And Brett transferred to Linfield College and still to this day holds the all division record for touchdowns in a season. I think he threw like 65 touchdowns in one year. He won, I think won a national championship at Linfield. And you guys still talk.

You guys are good friends.

Still good friends.

Yeah.

He, to this day, I get a lot of credit. Sorry to be long winded about this. I get a lot about how I've handled difficult quarterback situations, you know, with Patrick and Kaepernick. And I think so much of this comes back to when Brett lost his job to me. And he could have been very bitter about it. And he was always just this amazing person and so cool about it. And he and I still close to this day.

It's amazing.

And a lot of that, I think I, you know, so much that we talk about learned behavior, you know, and people modeling it. And so Brett for me was that guy that just rose above. But I told. I reached out to Brett when you were coming on. I got to. I got to pull this up.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's funny because Brett was the star quarterback, right. At Lake Oswego, obviously goes on to play college football, wins, you know, again, still is in the record books. And so I didn't know. You know, again, you're so humble and you're like, why am I here? You know, your guest list and even to go back to high school. And I'm sure you felt isolated. You just said that, right? And Brett, when I said. When I mentioned and again that we were going to be talking to you, and he put, hey, Alex, holy smokes, that is a blast from the past. She was crazy smart, very cool to hear of her success. And then I go on to ask her more, and I was asking about, you know, anything he remembers from high school, and he put nothing specific. Just she knew she was going far in life. She had this quiet confidence and maturity that was not evident in the rest of us.

Oh, that's very kind.

I mean, how cool is that? Like someone who knew you at that age just 20, 20 years ago.

Right. He didn't know. I mean, didn't. Wasn't aware certainly of all. All you've gone on to do. And I told him, but I. I don't know, I just think sometimes, and we talk a lot about this. I've. This is crazy because, I mean, I'm a 64 white guy from San Diego, California. My name is Freaking Alex Smith. Alexander Douglas wasp. As it gets right here and have shared. So I cannot like it's hard to even imagine right at your story like again like the feelings of isolation and shared them. But like again, this idea of being seen, I don't know. And again I think, yeah, something cool. Here's the starting quarterback and still like 20 plus years later, you know, like his memory of seeing you and knowing again this like superpower, right? And again, not just the smarts but like, I don't know, it's just, it's so cool.

And I really, I mean he stands out in my memory as just someone who is an extremely nice guy, you know. And it is like 20 some years later still. Like I and was so comfortable joking, you know, I wasn't a comfortable sort of joking around kind of kid. You know, I was like comfortable getting the right answer on a test. That was a very different. But he was like so comfortable in his own skin and that was a really cool thing to see in someone. And so it's a, it's a very happy memory.

That was our Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Yeah. But I do think, I mean, of all the compliments that you could get as a 13 or 14 year old to be quiet, confidence and maturity is pretty cool because I think that like you look back to what many of us feel from our younger ages and it's not that, that's not the way that many people would be remembered and so. But can we go more so. Yeah, you know, you're just like any other kid you want to be, you know, around your friends, but you're like way younger than everyone in the settings you're in. And so what does it feel like? What does it feel like? And you can say it in retrospect, but in the moment, you know, what was that like?

Yeah, I mean it was, you know, eventually towards, I think especially towards the last couple years of high school, I really, I found friends who are wonderful, who are still friends to this day. And it really felt like I had kind of found a and a, and a voice. But I would say, you know, from elementary school through early high school, high school, that those are ages when you are like two to three years younger than your peers. It's weird. You know, you're. I, One of the funniest things is like I think in fifth grade when I was, you know, like eight is when they did like the human growth and development talk and I got sent on trash duty. So I just completely Missed that whole, that whole bit. And you know, and it was, and this was like, you know, there was a show on. I've actually never seen it, but it was, you know, the Doogie Howser show. You know, then there was this sense, you know, that you were kind of a. Not in a bad way, but just that you were like a little bit weird, a little bit of an oddball. And this was sort of paired with, you know, my parents are first generation immigrants. They're super, you know, focused on just making a life for us. They're not dialed into the pop culture of, yes, American middle school and high school for, you know, obvious reasons. So. And, you know, they knew I was young. They were pretty strict parents. I hadn't seen a PG, you know, 13 movie till I turned 13. So when I went to college, I'd never seen an R rated movie. You know, there were, you know, a lot of, lot of rules that meant I, I was not really in the flow of, of what was cool. And you know, I remember I. My parents were very frugal. You know, I wore like sweatshirts from China that, you know, had like random letters on them, right? They would say like H, Z, X, Q, A. Like not a word. Just I had shoes that said N, I, E, K. And I really wanted blue jeans. I just wanted like normal jeans like you are both wearing to wear to school like everybody else. And one year, I think I dropped enough hints that I was really hoping for a pair of jeans that my dad decided to get me a pair of jeans at Christmas and he went to Costco, which is not, I think, where, you know, people go to. People go to Costco for a great many wonderful reasons. I love going to Costco and loved going as a kid, but not where they go to be at the forefront of fashion per se. And my dad bought. I don't even know what exactly motivated him, but a pair of purple jeans. And I unwrapped them on Christmas and they are purple. And I couldn't, you know, it was like. And I felt like I couldn't even be.

Of course, you know, I didn't want.

To be disappointed because my dad had cared so much.

Yes.

And, you know, I will pause here to say it is, I think it is something. This is one of the places where when you look back and when, you know, when you're a kid, in that moment, you're like, how can my dad have thought that purple was the right color for jeans? Like, everybody knows they're supposed to be blue, but when you look Back now. And when I think about what my parents did, you know, and they were born in the late 50s in China, they grew up through food rations, through constant relocation of themselves or their parents. They, you know, came to the United States in their late 20s. And just if you were to put in front of me the question of, could I, in my late 20s with an infant, have, you know, in my mother's case, I was six month old, six months old when she came, said goodbye to my six month old, or in my dad's case, not seen my infant, and gone to a completely different country where I didn't speak the language, didn't know anything about the culture, was starting from scratch, was, you know, working menial jobs while in my PhD program, that is like a harder thing than any choice that has ever been put in front of me. I don't even know if you put that choice in front of me, whether I think I could do it. But it changed the course of our lives forever in a way that I am so grateful for. And I think about this in the back of my mind someday when my kids are going to make the choice to go to Mars or something like that, I need to be able to support them wholeheartedly. But it is when I reflect on what my parents did for me, you know, and my sister, it is, I think there's nothing that I will ever do that will come close to that in terms of the sacrifice that they made and the impact that it had on, you know, all of their future generations.

When you talk about path dependency earlier, I think about that all the time. Like, the paths that we get to be on based on choices that people made, it's crazy. It's crazy. And it's crazy that they did them without any sort of fanfare. They weren't like, posting on social media, you know what I'm saying? Like, in order to say, like, hey, here's what I did, like, you know, give me credit. They just did it quietly.

Yeah.

And they just like went through it and did it every day. And it's one of those things where you can't properly thank somebody. Like, how do I thank my mom for every day being there for my childhood and coming here when she couldn't drive. Right. And coming here not knowing the language and wearing a sari every day and living in a place where she doesn't know anybody? You think about the things that I wonder about. Like, you know, she left her family and, like, wasn't sure when she was ever going to see them. And it's like, this is all done for me and my brother and you can't thank people for that. But I agree with you of like, I've had nothing that resembles that.

Not to belabor the point, but the similarities going back to Jim Harbaugh and he has his team wear blue collar shirts.

Yeah.

And you think of it on the outside is like, oh, it's because we have this blue collar like lunch pill mentality.

And like this was a cool story.

And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like this is to honor somebody in our family before us worked one of these jobs, these really hard jobs, did something way harder than we're doing.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. So that we can be here. And it was like this form of gratitude, which again was not what, like.

Yes.

You initially take it as.

Yeah.

Oh, it's this mindset thing. And it's like, no, no, it's this gratitude thing that, that somebody. And he, and he directly quoted his grandpa, like, my grandpa, he has a shirt that said.

Yeah, exactly.

It was like Joe.

Yeah.

Right. And it was like, that was like he remembered that as a train operator or something.

Yeah.

And anyway, it was just way more to pay tribute to him actually.

Right.

And to like keep that kind of that, I think that gratefulness.

And you know what's. So it's interesting, you know, again, when I was a kid growing up, it felt hard for all those reasons. There's a. Some pockets of the Internet where they're like these memes where people post about these incredible childhoods their kids have today. And you know, they post like, I, you know, envious of my kids childhood and then like the pictures of their kids doing every conceivable adventure and, and my kids have a wonderful, you know, like a wonderful childhood by any measure. But I don't know if I envy them.

I agree with you. I totally agree with this.

I can't reproduce my childhood for my kids for lots of reasons, but it was a wonderful one, even when it was hard. And I think that gift that my parents gave me, like, I'm not sure I can give that to my kids.

Actually, Brother Baddieta to give him a shout out today. He always talks about how he has a great quote of, like, the lessons we learn from our parents are the ones when they're not trying to teach us something. Right. And it's like what you saw.

Yeah.

You know, is something that shapes you. Right. And you have an inspiration for hard work and for sacrifice and for the other thing that it gave you was this Confidence of like, look, I can figure it out, you know, and Avni and I talk about this all the time. Like, are our kids going to be given enough opportunities to earn that confidence so that they're like, yeah, I got it. You know, and I think that. I don't know, I mean, like, we have to do it. We have to find a way to do that. Because, like, I think what you, what I think about when you talk like this is this quote from Arthur Brooks that I think about all the time, which is I believe it all my heart. Earned success is the key to happiness. Like, it's not money, it's not. It's not even joy. It's like all these other things. But the fundamental thing that makes somebody happy is this idea of like earned success.

Yeah.

And I think what you had in your childhood like, allowed you to feel. It allowed you to observe and feel earned success.

Yeah.

You know, and so I think there's something very real there.

And there's also. I struggle now a little bit to think about how do you help your kids have that perspective? I've been. So one of our traditions is I read to my kids every morning over breakfast and they are right now 6, 8 and 10. So I'm always trying to pick things that are kind of in the right window so that all three of them can understand and participate. And so right now we're reading a book called Big Ideas from History. Before this, we read the kid version of sapiens called the Unstoppable S. Oh, wow. I didn't know there was a kid version of that.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, the Unstoppable S, volumes one and two. And so actually one of the.

You read the whole book at breakfast? Like, meaning, like read it out loud as a family. How long did it take? Just the sapiens.

Each Sapiens book took me about two months over breakfast.

That's awesome. But it's cool to have like the connectivity of the. Yeah, okay. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah.

And so. No, no, not at all. We're reading this book called Big Ideas from History. And one of the. So two days ago, it introduced the concept of first world problems.

Oh, nice.

And the book did a really nice job of laying out sort of in a very even, kind of even handed, factual way. But we started talking about, you know, I was talking to my. One of my kids who is joining a soccer team where she doesn't know anyone. And that's kind of a feeling a little bit of, you know, just nerves about that. Very natural. And, and I talk about how, I think about how now as a parent when we think about like the experiences our kids are having, we think a lot about those social dynamics. Will they know anyone on the team, you know, will, etc, all of those types of things. And then I think back one generation ago, my parents didn't think twice about moving. You know, like even if you were gonna leave the school, you had been for years to go to a different school. That did not seem to them like an undue hardship. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable amount of hardship for a 10 year old. And because one generation before that, you know, when my parents were growing up in the 60s in China, like they and their parents frequently got relocated away from each other totally. And the things that with every subsequent generation we find ourselves like agonizing over like, man, should I put my, should I sign my kid up for the team where they have more friends, fewer friends, you know, like it just, it is so. It's such a reflection of how much our lives have actually improved.

Yes.

You know, over these decades. And I was just reading about this first world problems chapter with my kids and we were talking about this and reflecting on that and you know, I was trying to describe to them what their grandparents lives were like, which is just like unthinkable to them now. I was relatively sheltered and I spent and not having that many friends in elementary school and middle school. I spent all my time in the library. I wish I could remember my librarian's name because she was so, you know, patiently letting me hit the max book checkout every day. And, and books were my window to understanding what like other people's lives were like. And I have these funny memories where when I was working in New York for Morgan Stanley, our managing director held a team off site at like a country club in Dobbs Ferry, New York. And I had never been to a country club before, but I'd read books about people going to country clubs. I knew you were supposed to dress differently, you know, like there was a collared shirt involved and like it was going no purple jeans and it was going to be a little fancy and, and like in my mind I was actually super curious to go and see if country clubs in real life were the same as, you know, they had been written about in books. And so books were just such a big part of, for me as a kid, connecting me to other people's lives and experiences. And now I hope to give my kids that sort of same love of books for the same reason.

Were there any in the. It's okay if there isn't an answer, but were there any specific ones that stand out from your childhood that like had a, had a bigger impact?

Oh, great question. Gosh, I read probably everything Roald Dahl had ever written. I love reading those to my kid. Now my kids now. I just read Phantom tollbooth to my 8 year old and he really enjoyed that. As I got older, there was sort of a deep fantasy Tolkien phase which now my older daughter has read all of the Tolkien books, actually more of them than I. So she's really taken that to new heights. I read lots of biographies. Biographies were probably one of my favorite things to read as a kid. And those were really. Because those were about real people. Those were really eye opening. I remember I read about Madeleine Albright when I was a senior in high school and she actually also graduated from high school when she was 15, really. And then she ended up becoming the first foreign born Secretary of state. And I thought that was so cool, you know, I thought, gosh, like, what an incredible sort of path and story.

Shout out to Cheryl. You can't, you cannot be what you cannot see, you know. Exactly.

As an adult reading biographies, especially when you read biographies of people who lived a long time ago, you kind of understand that there's a lot more nuance and you know, especially if you go back further in history, the like documentation's not totally amazing. People are really interpreting and like Thomas Moore, you know, like was he a sort of, you know, just true sort of intellectual purist, you know, or, and you know, who just principles and integrity above all, that's kind of one historical interpretation. I think that's been very popular. Or you know, when you kind of think about, I mean, they're just different lenses that you now look at people from centuries ago. And I think it's more things that when you're a kid you read about people in sort of very black and white terms. But as an adult you go back and you're like, oh, that's interesting, you know. Yes, I think he was very, very principled probably, but did that also take him to some conclusions that were also very unfortunate? And, and so I, I actually, I don't know, I really, really, I really love biographies for that reason.

Yeah, you're so ahead of the schedule all the time. Right. Like again, Stanford at 15, you're on Morgan Stanley, your trading floor at 19. This continuum hasn't really changed. I mean, only a few years ago you were the youngest CFO of a Fortune 100 company ever. When, and I'm So because it happened for me so much later in life, like, I don't know if you always had it. When did you get comfortable in your own skin? Like, was there, was there a time like when it kind of clicked and you were like, it became a, you know, no, this is who I am. I'm proud, you know.

Well, actually, I think it had a funny shape for me because when I was in school it was always in the back of my mind that being identified as being young was going to be a fleeting identity, right? And then I was going to be in my 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s and hopefully I aspire to live many more years and it was not going to matter in the least. And so I knew that that was, it was a big part of my identity in middle school, in high school, but I knew it was gonna go away now in college, there was a very brief moment where I didn't tell people how old I was. And then my dorm staff threw a sweet 16 party for me when I turned 16. So the jig was up. But, and I have this funny memory from the first week of college. The Stanford Daily had put out a welcome to the class of 2005. And you know, they come from all 50 states and they range in age from 15 to 34 and so on so forth. And there was a kid sitting across from me at the dining hall table and goes, gosh, can you imagine? Like, it'd be so weird if There was a 15 year old here. We would all know and, but I knew that, you know, and it was true. I merged into the workforce and it was a little bit unusual before you were 21 to be in like a banking style industry. But then eventually, you know, you're 28 and whatever, it doesn't, there's an age distribution around you and it doesn't matter really. And so when, you know, I took on this job and there was a little bit of that, I laughed in my head because I actually never thought that that identity would ever come back and you know, here for a very fleeting moment again. But the primary thing for me is, I think feeling like an outsider really really pushed me to figure out like I wanted to make friends, you know, I wasn't happy not having friends and how it really pushed me to think about how do you connect with people, right? Like, how do you, how do you try to find something in common with people who do not seem like they, on surface, you know, have that much in common with you? And in high school, I think one of the Reasons I remember Brett Elliott Wells because it didn't seem like we had anything in common on the surface, but I remember him being so easy to talk to and to get to know and that. And there was actually nothing that prevented us from being friends, if that makes sense. Like, that's in your head. You know what I mean? Yes, totally.

Totally.

And so I think for me, the growing up bit has been about pushing yourself to figure out how you connect with people. And there is, like, always going to be something more similar than different. And you kind of just have to, like, find what it is. And sometimes that, you know, with people who are really extroverted, that's fast. They make the process easy for you, too. But it can happen, I think, almost universally and is one of the things I think about a lot when I. You know, I still sometimes feel a little bit nervous when I'm kind of in a setting where I don't know anybody, you know, and I'm. And I always think of myself as, like, not. Small talk is sort of one of my. One of my real fears in life.

You and me both.

It's not good.

Anxiety kicks in.

You know, you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be the person walking in this room who doesn't know a single other person. And like, how do you enter a conversation? How do you exit a conversation? All those things are weighing in my head in that moment, and then it actually happens. And you. You discover whatever it is, something you read, your kids, your work, a sports team that you follow. Whatever. It. Like, there are just so many threads, and people love to talk about what interests them.

This is why sports and television are actually much more important than I think people give them credit for sometimes because they are like, between those two things, there is often something.

Yeah.

With anyone that you can talk about. You know what I'm saying?

Totally. But the crazy thing is you walk into these rooms and this is. I mean, I'm. I can just guess. Like, anybody listening? Like, they all have these same feelings.

Yeah. I have.

When you walk into a room, like, we all have the same, like, anxiety.

Totally.

You know, again, especially. Especially with strangers. And, like, are we.

You know, I was an event last night. Okay. Literally last night with another guy who was on Good Guys, Brian Halligan, who's the founder of HubSpot. It was a HubSpot event. He's the. He's the co founder. Okay. And I was interviewing him and we were talking about imposter syndrome. And Brian's like, I have it Right now I'm like, sorry, Brian, you have imposter syndrome at an event for a company you founded, you know, 20 years ago with just people that you guys invited. And he's like, oh, yeah, definitely. And I'm just like, okay. It tells you it doesn't go away. It's not like something that's like, you know, gone all of a sudden. But anyway, no, it's.

But to your point, I think, Susan, you hit the nail on the head. It's like the ability to move past it. Yeah, right. And like, there is connection. Everybody's feeling the same way. Like, go and like that vulnerability of reaching out and making a connection. There's like, there's power in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Susan, can I ask you a question about mentorship real quick?

Yeah.

So I was pretty surprised when you and I first met that you talked to me about kind of multi year succession planning at Meta. Right. Like you have ideas for who can fill roles earlier than what I had known was normal. Right. And you told me that, you know, you were somebody who was sort of identified early on as somebody who could be the CFO of Meta or I guess Facebook back then. Can you like, talk about that? Like, how does it work? How does succession planning work and how does that fit into mentorship? Because I think you've told some cool stuff to me about people that saw something in you that you didn't necessarily know professionally was there, and I think that I'd like to learn about that.

Yeah. It is one of the, I mean, many, many lucky breaks that I've had, including having joined then Facebook in the first place, is I have had extraordinary managers. I mean, just like the best luck of the draw and managers I think that you could possibly imagine. And the, you know, two folks that I have talked about a lot as having a real sort of influence on shaping my career are David Ebersman, who was one of our earlier CFOs. He, you know, he went on to.

Found a mental health company afterwards.

Lira.

It's really cool. Anyway, he's like an amazing guy.

He's extraordinary. He is just a deeply, deeply kind, principled, very smart person. I was telling Ravi that when I watched Band of Brothers. He reminds me of Dick Winter's character in Band of Brothers. And he was so sort of, I mean, really set the model in my mind for what a CFO looked like and how they conducted themselves in the job and how they could shape the path that a company had. I'd been in finance for a number of years now and thought I had done sort of many interesting things in finance and it was time to go do something new. And I was looking at going into sort of feed ranking to. To be a PM there. You know, David Ebersman is the one who sat me down and said, I think you could be a CFO of this company, you know, someday. And it was a really profound moment for me, both because coming from someone I respected so much, it meant a lot. And also, if I could be anything like him, that would be, like, what a path to be on, you know, that would be extraordinary.

I mean, that. But that's so cool, right? That was many years in advance of you getting the job.

Yes, that was many, many years in advance of probably anyone thinking.

But I'm just saying, like, I think, like, you take this Tyler Cowan idea of, like, elevate ambition. You take this idea we've talked about, about people saying, like, no, you're actually good, like, yep. You know, there's. There's a path for you. If you go and earn it. That. That's pretty cool. Like, you think about the career you have now, and you can look back at this moment.

Yeah.

And, like, it's, like, seminal. And, like, credit to him. Credit to you for being so good, but credit to him for identifying that.

And, you know, and I think. So the sort of CFO after him, David Wehner, because David Ebersman left in 2014. David Wehner is I. If you ever have a, you know, the chance to spend time with him. He is one of the sort of just sharpest, most wry sense of humor, very incisive, just really, really wonderful guy. And, you know, I think he was kind of probably handed me, like, by the way, here's someone who has a lot of potential. You might think about her, you know, as a succession plan for you someday. And I'm sure he's like, okay. But he was really thoughtful about just, you know, pushing me to take on things in finance that I hadn't thought I would do, taking on sort of more budgeting responsibilities, taking on treasury, getting in front of investors. He was the one who. When Alaska Airlines came looking for a board member in California right after their acquisition of Virgin America, who, you know, he asked me what I thought and I thought, you know, I said, look, I've. I know nothing about commercial airlines. I. This is so far out of my wheelhouse. And he said, well, why don't you just let them make that decision? Yeah, right. You just go talk to them and they can decide if, you know, nothing about airlines and, you know, so on, so forth.

Great advice.

It is funny because we often put these problems in our heads that, you know, should be other people's problems.

Yes.

And, and, and not again, I, I don't know that anyone who knows Dave would say, oh my gosh, Dave is like a warm and fuzzy take you out to lunch every month type. And I think there's often this misconception and, you know, that that's what mentorship looks like.

Yes.

And that has like never, you know, been what I have found effective at least. And typically we've had plenty of lunches together just working through stuff, but it's like you're in the trenches together. They give you opportunities that help you learn what you are capable of, that push the envelope. They rotate you through a variety of things. And I think about that often when I think about, you know, the future and what I, what, you know, what I want to do someday for, you know, passing the torch to the right next person is, I think, going to be the last, best thing that I, you know, can do for this company someday. And I want to be that to someone. And, and I'll say also just across David and David and now my, my current manager, Mark, all three of them. I've said this before, you know, in other forums. I really feel like in addition to sort of being mentored in a very thoughtful way, all three of them are very good at giving feedback and in different ways. And I think Mark is really world class about this. But I'll say that across all three of them, I've never been confused about whether something was sort of going well or not. And I've never been like, surprised that something was regarded as, you know, you know, I've never been confused about whether they were disappointed.

Yeah.

Like they, I think being clear about whether things are going well or not well, being clear about what the desired outcome is instead. And as you get more senior in your career, that comes with fewer how to instructions. Right. Earlier on, it's like this. You made this error in the spreadsheet and the way you fix it is by doing these things right now, 20 years later, it's like this thing didn't go well. I don't know how to fix it because that's in your domain. But like, the next time it happens, this shouldn't happen again, right?

Yes.

So over the course of your career, you go from receiving the feedback and the instructions for how to fix it to getting the feedback and you have to figure out how to fix it and ultimately you often, as you grow in your career, get hired by people who don't do your job. And you have to hire people whose jobs you can't do. Right. Like, I've. I've hired a wonderful, you know, chief accounting officer, and I could never be a chief. I'm not remotely qualified for that job.

You might be. I'm certainly. Yeah, I was, I was nodding vigorously.

Also realizing, like, there's so many things here real quick. But the two. The two CFOs that don't have like the secondary degree, to my knowledge.

Right, sorry. Like, I just.

I really less educated than Ravi. I've only gone to, you know, 15 years of school.

No, that's. No, you finished it quickly. You are definitely more educated than me. I also think it is not an appropriate grouping to say that we're like the two. I just. And that, like Susan, like, is the CFO of this giant company. I was the CFO for a few years. A little private company.

You know, two things on the. I. I couldn't agree more on the mentorship piece. Like, I think people twist mentorship as, like, is it the arm around the shoulder and like giving advice? And in so much it is. And it come back. I come back to what like, Doug McMillan talks about and this like, modeling behavior. You got to see up close in proximity. Two CFOs. Do it at a high level and do it differently. Do it differently.

Yes.

Yep.

And then you, you hit the opportunities. The second piece. Right. Like, you have to have these opportunities to grow and giving them. And it's interesting because like a. It's so easy to say and it just doesn't happen in a lot of places. And I think egos have a lot to do with this. Right. Like, no one wants to train their replacement. Right. Like, everybody wants to feel like nobody irreplaceable. No one could do my job. Like I do it. You know, like, there's this idea of that. And so I, I think it's these places that have culture where. And again, to identify them early. And for you to even mention this, right. Like, to think about, you're already right. Like, this may not be front of mind, but, like, it's there. Like, this is. This is. This is part of the culture there. And like, part of my responsibility to kind of pass this along, I think is so cool.

And you have to look to, you know, what the company is going to need in five years or 10 years or whenever this, you know, whenever the baton passes is going to be different than what it needs. Today. Right. And that's in part, like, you have to think about not actually how you would prepare someone to do your job exactly as you do it, but what a sort of more AI native version of the company looks like. Like. Right. Or what a more AR heavy version of the company looks like. You know, they didn't. They don't have to have grown up in the digital ad space, you know, in the exact same way. And so it's actually a little bit challenging in some ways because I know the things that were, like my subject matter totally, you know, areas might not be that relevant to the future of where the company is going and I have to find someone for that time.

But this is why I also like the, like, Mark's language of the. We try to have people that learn really fast.

Yeah.

Because, like, I don't know what meta could have predicted 10 years ago about what skill sets somebody would need to be in your job. I'd presume that you couldn't have predicted exactly what some of the things are that you need. Right. Some of the size checks that you're writing. I don't know if that was like in the forecast from 10 years ago and the decisions that you have to make and the dynamicism. And so some of it's also just like the adaptability of that next person.

Yeah.

One thing, you know, Susan, I was thinking about, like, you talked about being really good at taking feedback in addition to these people giving feedback in our worlds, like, they were different. Like, Alex tells this story of when he was. I don't know what year player you were, but what year was it when the whole crowd was chanting Derek Carr at you?

Oh, yeah, that was here, the Niners. That was like my fifth, fifth, sixth year.

So, like, he's like 25. And how many people sit in Candlestick?

80,000, 75,000.

80,000 people chanting the backup's name. Yeah.

On national TV.

Yeah. While. While he's like, you know, nose to nose with his coach who's, you know, screaming at you. And so, like, I think about that because I, like, take pride. I look whenever I get feedback, it pisses me off first. My first reaction is not like, thank you for the feedback. You know what I'm saying? Like, I, I actually think I'm good at it later. Of like, I've been given feedback that I'm good at taking feedback, you know, which is great. But the first reaction is like, you, you know, like, like, it's not. It's not. You don't understand, blah, blah, blah. And Then later you go and you process it and you're kind of like, okay, I will deal with it. And I don't want to have that happen. They were probably right. They're more right than wrong. I'm responsible, so you go and fix it. But a lot of it that happens is the embarrassment you have from the moment is just you and that person, and you kind of get to go and deal with it. So I did want to ask you about that because I reminded me and Susan talked about one of the reasons she's been good in her job is she's been good at taking feedback when it happens the way you had it. You know, when it's so public, how do you get over the. How do you get over the public element of it? Or, like, I would imagine the embarrassing aspect of that to just, like, then go and work on the problem. You know what I'm saying? And, like, actually improve it, whatever it was. Because I do think that's different than the world. That.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I would be honest. Like, there was nothing productive about the situation. Like, when I think back to that, like, this is honestly one of the situations that, like, is imprinted on me forever.

Yeah.

The one you're talking about. And it wasn't necessarily the fans chanting, but it was Mike Singletary in my face.

Yeah. So, like, that was just the wrong way to do it.

And berating me on national tv, he clear. I didn't have any understanding of what was going on on offense.

Yeah.

And what I was dealing with. And this was literally like, I. I felt. I felt like I was suffocating. Like, I felt like the world was falling on top of me. And, like.

Yeah. So it is much more human.

There was nothing productive about that. But I love. Because I do come back because I was very fortunate, obviously, after that to have some amazing coaches, and one of them was Andy Reid. And when you talk about Mark and his, like, ability with the feedback and how he gives it, I think it reminds me so much of Andy. Like, Andy's. I think one of his greatest strengths is this ability that there again, it is very clear how he feels about whatever happened, good or bad. It is very clear. However, it is, like, delivered in a way. It's not personal.

Yeah.

You don't take offense to it. Like, he still has this. There is just, like, this part to it that it is this combination of what we talk about all the time, like, demanding and supportive. Like.

Yeah.

He just walks this line that, like, you still feel like he's on your Side. Yeah, right. Like he's on your side.

Yeah.

But he gave, like, again, it was very clear about expectations and what happened. And it's so interesting to hear it from Mark because from the outside perspective, Mark's greatest strength is like this visionary thing. Right. Like again, he's, this was ahead of his, you know, the programmer ahead of his time and saw these things and he has made these big bets. But it's so cool that like. Well, no, maybe the thing that actually also plays into this is this like very human thing.

Yeah, right.

Like his team of 75,000 people.

Totally.

And it's this very human thing.

And actually I'll say a thing on that is I think that sort of he has two what I'll just call like leadership superpowers that are different from being a tech visionary and sort of the, the product side.

Yeah.

But one of them is, again, I think he is the best at giving feedback of anyone I've ever seen. The second is that he's really good at working with very different types of people and getting the best out of them. And the net of that is he can have a leadership team where people feel very different, they've got very different strengths. You know, he could have Brett Elliott and I on the same team, you know, and, and we would hope, you know, each hope to do the best at the thing we were there to do. And I'm on both of these dimensions. I really look up to him because I am not good at giving feedback and dread it. Actually, you know what? I dread giving feedback even more than small talk. I'm going to put that.

Do you dread giving feedback more than you dread receiving feedback?

Oh, absolutely. Giving feedback's way harder. Way harder. That moment when you've disappointed someone is so, so tough. And then I, you know, I am not as good at, you know, I, I love working with people who think similarly to myself. You know what I mean? I'm like, you're a clear linear thinker. This is great. Let's, you know, it is much harder for me and I am in one domain, so I have the good fortune of, you know, finance, I think kind of selects for people who are a little bit like minded in this way. But if I had to run as many different functions that had very different properties as Mark, I don't know that I would be close to being able to get the right person for each very different domain that has very different characteristics. And that's a thing that I think he does unusually well.

I think. I don't know Mark at all. But I've now gotten to know a few people who know him pretty well. And I've literally never in a public or private setting ever heard somebody who knows him well say something negative about him. It's crazy. And I say that in that. And you look around at the real data on this, of the people that are around on the leadership team have been around for 50, 15 years and they vote with their feet of like, exactly right. They are there. And so it is one of these things where I think it's quite valuable to look at the real information that exists rather than what people who don't know somebody talk about, because it's amazing. There's respect, there's kindness, there's belief, and then there's also this humanity that comes along that I think is not really well understood.

So I was like everybody making outside judgments that don't actually, when you look at the things. How about that? Three of the most amazing female guests we've had have all come from.

Oh yeah, that's right. We have Cheryl Fiji, you know, Susan.

Just, you know, it's one of the things I, I so Cheryl, you know, joined eight weeks before I did. And so we, I did not know that. Yeah, so we overlapped for a long time. But for much of the time, you know, like, I was nice before and she was the, the coo. And so I didn't work, I didn't ever sort of. Because I was in finance the whole time, I didn't work with her directly as much. I wasn't in her, her chain and. But I'll say that one of the things, you know, and Cheryl is extraordinary at many, many things, but one of the things I feel really grateful to her for is, and I think the company in its entirety has really been shaped by her in this way. You know, she joined when the rest of the company, like we were all like 23. I hadn't given any thought to. I mean, when she joined was an era where, like when we ran our sort of vote on benefits thing, people chose free laundry over 401k matching, which is very distressing to me, but we can set that aside. But that's the era she joined in. Right. So she was like able to look ahead of the rest of us and say, like, your lives are not going to be this way always and forever. And she helped shape it in a way that made the company, I think, an extraordinary place to grow your career and also have a family. And my husband has also been at the company for similar time. And you Know, we have three kids and I would, I cannot imagine kind of a workplace that, you know, she sort of, I think, really helped shape this culture. And now Mark, you know, carries it forward and continues to foster a culture where you can do both of those things at a very high level.

Yeah, I mean, well, Alex, unless you want to go deep on capex, you.

Know, I have, I have one more.

No, go, go, go, go, go, go.

Because again, I like there's, I would love to hear this story from you because again, it's so crazy to me. Like, you come to Sanford and you decide to be a finance major and you get hired at Morgan Stanley investment banking, which is stereotypically the most male dominated, like frat guy culture there is. You are 19 years old and is, I believe, is it your first day on the date floor? You're on the floor and you get called out, like, I cannot help, like what this experience, what this was like. If you could just tell us this story. I think it's fascinating. I don't know, I, I.

I was on the trading floor for my first day and our sort of HR business partner got the attention of the entire floor to let everyone know that I was 19 and therefore no one, it was my first day and no one should serve me alcohol at any company gathering. And that is, as you can imagine, exactly how you want to be introduced to everyone else on the trading floor when you start at a new job. But you know, one of the funniest things, and this is again, I feel like this was a period when I did a lot of growing up in a great way. So that was a little mortifying when it happened. And you're right, I think banking does have that energy. But one of the funniest things is like, I made incredibly good friends through my banking years with people who I don't know that I would have crossed paths with in college for sure. And again, I think in college it's not that we would have been not, you know, not friends, just our paths didn't cross for lots of reasons, namely that I didn't go to, you know, parties or things like that very often. But I, you're, when you're in, when you're on a trading floor, when you're in a bullpen together, when you are doing a page swap, you know, helping someone out at 2am, rip all of the page 59s out of a spiral bound binder and then rebind in the new reprinted page 59 that has the comma in the correct place. You really get to know people and you get to, you have a lot of hours, you're doing something hard together, you have to fill time, you got to talk to them about something.

Frequency and vulnerability, the equation for friendship.

Exactly.

That is, that's, that's true.

And so I've got lots of great friends from this period who again, I'm not certain that in college we would have been friends, but I've really always been of the opinion that like, and again, it is kind of mind boggling to me now as someone who was really thought of herself, as someone who struggled to make friends in elementary school and in middle school. So much so that I'd rather go to the library during all my recesses than have to go to the playground and feel like I had nobody to play with. That actually almost all people are, you know, you can get to know.

It's so funny you mentioned this because I, you know, I don't know. How long have we known each other now? A few years, five years, Something like that. I've always experienced you as this like, gifted conversationalist. Right. Like, we never not don't have something to talk about.

Right.

Like, you know, it's not just when we see each other, we like WhatsApp a lot. And so it's so interesting to hear you say it because I guess intellectually I think I've heard you say that before, but it's never really clicked that that was some way that you experienced the world because literally the entire time I've ever known you, we've never been short of something to talk about. In fact, look for new moments to talk. And so it's just kind of interesting to hear that that was ever how you felt.

Yeah, it is. And I think that's a, it's a thing about your own identity, you know, like all of us have different parts of ourselves, right. From different parts of our lives. And as you continue the sort of march forward in time, like those things evolve and shape themselves. And now, I mean, right now I think a lot about the fact that so much of my identity is wrapped up in a job that's I love, that's very consuming and in being a very active parent. And there will come a day when I am not actively doing either of those things.

Yes, totally.

And that day will probably come faster than I think. And when I am standing there, I will look back, you know, both on just this period of my life, which I think has been extraordinarily special, but then also, like, what is that identity going to be totally you know, like, it's so easy to get wrapped up in what we're doing now, you know, and so I. That's a. It's a sort of always kind of a question in the back of my mind, which is like, there will always be, you know, what did the previous chapters look like? What did you learn from them? And what do you want the next chapters?

That will be our next episode with you.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I agree. I agree. All right, well, our traditional closing question. Okay, you know the podcast is called Glue Guys, right? And we might need to define the term for you, but maybe we don't. But, you know, who are the glue people in your life? Glue gals. Glue people. Glue guys.

Gosh, I'm. The reason I'm hesitating is because my, it's funny, my visceral reaction is to want to, is to want to thank the people who. I feel like a lot of gratitude towards my parents sort of most and above all for making everything possible, you know, in every sort of way. But then I, I feel, I don't know, just. I have had so many real. I've been lucky to have so many really extraordinary, extraordinary people, a lot of whom we've talked about in this conversation, who have really, really shaped, you know, who I, you know, who I've become and then my kids, you know, who really shaped me today and who I think are, you know, someday I, I am really. It will be interesting someday to go back and catalog all the things that I've learned from them.

That's awesome.

And, and what a sort of privilege it is to be, you know, their mom. And then I, I don't know, I've got extraordinary friends who kind of help, you know, hold everything together. And, you know, I am married to someone who is obviously very, very important in making everything happen at work and at home. And sort of, that has been a very sort of unique and, and happy partnership in that way. So it's really hard to narrow this down. And that's why I'm struggling. I feel like that's a great answer.

And, and you are. Listen, you are the first one. I think you might be our 52nd episode to our one year anniversary. I think you were the first person to mention their kids as Glue Guys, which is awesome. That's like, really cool. So true. So true.

Think about getting pushed 100%.

Like, and for sure, like, the people, like the idea of, like, who turns a group of people into a team, like a real team. It's like the kids like that. So that's that was awesome. Well, Susan, I want to say thank you. I really appreciate this. And I think that I was thinking about, like, how I'd want to describe you, and I was sort of like, you know, if someone gets judged by the quality of their friends, I really hope that someone knows that we're friends when they're evaluating me, because I'm very proud that you are my friend. And I really am deeply grateful that you're here. I'm deeply grateful that you choose to spend time with me, and I really admire you. So I'm really grateful and I'm looking forward to many years of friendship.

I am too. And I, I, I know you're trying to wrap up, but now I have to interject something.

Oh, yes, please.

We're not trying to wrap. We're trying to wrap because you have a real job. And so, you know, we are very happy to have you interject part of.

Well, to be clear, the reason I'm here in the most direct way is that Ravi asked me if I would come on the podcast on stage in front of 1,000 finance employees. So I said yes. Yeah, so this is a very direct result of that. But I brought Ravi to my finance sort of all finance conference earlier this year, which was the first time since the pandemic that we had done that, which is bringing all of the finance employees at Meta from all the offices because we have big presences in Dublin and Singapore and Sao Paulo, you know, around the world to Menlo park for just one and a half day gathering. And it was, it was really just very, very, very fun to have everyone together. And I was sort of trying to figure out, I was putting the programming together, you know, we had all these internal speakers and there was a kind of a placeholder for should we bring in an external speaker? And I was kind of racking my brain, like, should we, you know, who is someone that we should bring into, you know, that that'll be like, interesting and engaging for a thousand finance employees. Right. Like, we've at times brought in sort of like more what you would think of as a classic motivational speaker. And I think a lot of them are incredible speakers, but, like, don't have as much connection to the job that like this group of, of people are doing. And so I, I thought of Ravi and invited him and he graciously accepted. And I think Ravi was by far the sort of most popular and well received speaker we've ever had. Of course, I read through the comments afterwards and, and the comments not, not only were sort of glowing, but a lot of them had a little bit of this flavor of, like, I had no idea who he was or when I saw him on the program. I wasn't sure why Susan had brought in a random Sequoia.

You know, there's another person named Ravi Gupta, who was a comedian.

Who's a comedian? Yes. They were like, I Googled him, and I wasn't sure if we were getting the comedian or the Sequoia partner, but I was blown away. And in some ways, it's like being able to share that with your friends or your team or people you care about. Someone who is almost like, you know, is going to be a discovery for them because they don't know you and that you that they're going to so enjoy listening to you was really, really fun and really special.