The First 20 Facebook Employees: Where Are They Now?

mark zuckerberg draw build
xtof via Flickr

Facebook's earliest employees, like Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin, need no introduction.

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You may not have heard of the others, but all of them left a valuable mark.

They were responsible for everything you've come to love, like the photo app, the ability to tag friends, and even Facebook's blue/white color scheme.

Many of Facebook's first employees are no longer at the company. Some left to join reputable startups like Twitter; others started their own companies like Quora and YouTube.

Those who remained at Facebook now have executive positions.

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Out of the first 20 employees, only two were women. 

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Gilles Mischler built and designed Facebook's IT infrastructure from the ground up.

Gilles Mischler
LinkedIn

Employed by Facebook from: June 2005 - May 2010

Position at Facebook: SiteOps Engineer

Current Company/Position: Network Engineer at Nokia

Source: LinkedIn

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You can thank engineer Scott Marlette for being able to visually stalk all of your friends. He created Facebook's photo application.

Scott Marlette
Twitter

Employed by Facebook from: June 2005 - January 2010

Position at Facebook: Engineer, Product Manager

Current Company/Position: Chief Pilot at Idea Man

Source: LinkedIn, Flickr

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Dan Neff had a short, 5 month stint as one of Facebook's first employees and was responsible for rolling out new site features.

silhouette shadow
re_birf via Flickr

Employed by Facebook from: May 2005 - October 2005

Position at Facebook: Build/Release Engineer

Current Company/Position: Release/Operations Lead at Adobe Systems

Source: LinkedIn

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Aaron Sittig was brought on by Sean Parker. He created the concept of tagging friends in Facebook pictures.

Dan Neff
Rivalee via Flickr

Employed by Facebook from: May 2005 - Present

Position at Facebook: Design Strategy Lead

Current Company/Position: Still employed by Facebook

Source: LinkedIn, The Facebook Effect, Gigaom

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Nick Heyman was in charge of handling Facebook's explosive traffic and was there when the site grew from 3 million to 13 million users and beyond.

shadow
*Image not available

Employed by Facebook from: April 2005 - January 2007

Position at Facebook: Director of Operations

Current Company/Position: Manager of Operations at Twitter

Source: LinkedIn, Force10 Networks

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Naomi Gleit was tasked with making sure "literally everyone in the world was on the site."

Naomi Gleit
TechLatina

Employed by Facebook from: April 2005

Position at Facebook: Product Manager on Growth

Current Company/Position: N/A

Source: LinkedIn, Newsweek

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Steve King directed Facebook's media sales and was responsible for getting the first big advertisers on board like Panasonic and Microsoft.

Steve King
LinkedIn

Employed by Facebook from: April 2005 - July 2006

Position at Facebook: Director, Media Sales

Current Company/Position: VP Sales at LocaMedia

Source: LinkedIn, Crunchbase

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Tricia Black worked at Y2M, a firm that sold ads for college magazines. Eduardo Saverin set up a meeting with Black, who began selling ads for Facebook and eventually became the first VP of Sales.

shadow woman
*Image not available The Mirror

Employed by Facebook from: March 2005 - June 2006

Position at Facebook: VP, Advertising Sales

Current Company/Position: Self-employed consultant

Source: LinkedIn

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Steve Chen left Facebook after a few short months to start YouTube.

Steve Chen and Chad Hurley
Twettey.com

Employed by Facebook from: For a few months in 2005

Position at Facebook: Senior Software Engineer

Current Company/Position: Cofounder of YouTube

Source: LinkedIn

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Next to Zuckerberg, Kevin Colleran has been the longest-serving Facebook employee. He lived with Zuckerberg in the 2004 Palo Alto summer sublet.

Colleran

Employed by Facebook from: April 2005 - Present

Position at Facebook: Global Partnerships

Current Company/Position: Still employed by Facebook

Source: LinkedIn, HBR

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Matt Cohler was brought on by Peter Thiel and was formerly one of the founding members of LinkedIn.

Matt Cohler and Bill Gurley
Cohler, on the left

Employed by Facebook from: February 2005 - October 2008

Position at Facebook: VP Product Management

Current Company/Position: General Partner at Benchmark Capital

Source: LinkedIn, Venturebeat

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Ezra Callahan had been roommates with Sean Parker and was hired to "whittle away" at Eduardo Saverin's CFO responsibilities.

Ezra Callahan
Whoownsfacebook

Employed by Facebook from: December 2004 - July 2010

Position at Facebook: Manager of Internal Communications, Product Manager

Current Company/Position: N/A

Source: LinkedIn, The Facebook Effect

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Sean Parker was an early employee at Napster and was founding president of Facebook.

sean parker
Flickr/Andrew Mager

Employed by Facebook from: June 2004 - January 2006

Position at Facebook: President

Current Company/Position: Founder/Chairman at Causes on Facebook and Managing Partner at Founders Fund

Source: LinkedIn

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Taner Halicioglu was Facebook's first "real" employee outside of the founders. He built out the entire initial hardware infrastructure.

Taner Halicioglu
UCSD

Employed by Facebook from: October 2004 - November 2009

Position at Facebook: Senior Software/Operations Engineer

Current Company/Position: Lead Reliability Engineer, Battle.net at Blizzard Entertainment

Source: LinkedIn, UCSD

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Eduardo Saverin was a Facebook cofounder and its first CFO. He famously sued Mark Zuckerberg and the two reached a settlement.

Eduardo Saverin

Employed by Facebook from: February 2004

Position at Facebook: Cofounder

Current Company/Position: Angel investor

Source: LinkedIn

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Chris Hughes cofounded Facebook and served as the site's spokesman. He later coordinated all social networking aspects of Obama's 2008 campaign.

chris hughes

Employed by Facebook from: February 2004

Position at Facebook: Cofounder

Current Company/Position: Executive Director at Jumo

 Source: LinkedIn

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Andrew McCollum designed Facebook's first logo and worked on a side project with Zuckerberg, Wirehog.

Andrew McCollum
Wownesia

Employed by Facebook from: February 2004 - September 2006

Position at Facebook: Engineer, Cofounder

Current Company/Position: N/A

Source: LinkedIn, Facebook

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Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's first CTO, was Mark Zuckerberg's roommate. The two dropped out of Harvard together to move to California and work on Facebook.

Asana cofounder Dustin Moskovitz
Flickr, davemc500hats

Employed by Facebook from: February 2004 - November 2009

Position at Facebook: Cofounder

Current Company/Position: Cofounder at Asana

Source: LinkedIn, Forbes

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Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook. The blue design of the site is partially because of his red-green color blindness.

zuckerberg

Employed by Facebook from: February 2004 - Present

Position at Facebook: Cofounder

Current Company/Position: Facebook

Source: CNN

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BONUS: Adam D'Angelo was high school friends with Mark Zuckerberg and eventually left Facebook to found Quora.

Adam D'Angelo

Employed by Facebook from: November 2006 - June 2008. Although he technically wasn't one of the first 20 employees, D'Angleo was one of Zuckerberg's best high school friends and worked on the social network long before he was on the payroll.

Position at Facebook: CTO

Current Company/Position: Founder of Quora

Source: LinkedIn, Crunchbase

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BONUS: James Pereira was Facebook's 7th employee, but no one seems to know what has happened to him

Shadow Silhouette
*Image not available

Employed by Facebook from: July 2004 - August 2007

Position at Facebook: Engineer

Current Company/Position: N/A

Source: LinkedIn, Quora

Now see who's a Facebook billionaire:

Dustin Moskovitz

Meet Facebook's (Soon-To-Be) Billionaires >>

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