Second Brain

The Design Competition That Solved an Impossible Problem

The Story

At Facebook Groups, Boris was stuck on a massive problem: merging the data models of Facebook Groups and Pages. It would take years and hundreds of engineers to do fully, touching the data model, the product layer, integrity systems, and ad systems. A senior engineer named Ysef was working on it but was struggling to make a key architectural decision.

Instead of debating endlessly, Boris tried something unconventional. He gathered all the senior tech leads across the entire org, split them into two teams (blue team and green team), gave them the same problem statement, and told them they had 3 hours on a whiteboard to each design a solution independently.

“Going into it, we had no idea how we would do this because it just seemed too crazy of a problem.”

Coming out of it, the two designs were 80% identical. The obvious overlaps became the plan. The 20% where they diverged revealed exactly where the risk was. They could start execution immediately on the 80% while doing targeted technical spikes on the risky 20%.

When asked whether people were excited about the idea, Boris said: “It was sort of crazy. With this sort of thing, you just have to kind of do it. I just told everyone ‘hey, we’re doing this’ and put it on everyone’s calendar.”

Lesson for Creators

When a problem seems too big to solve, get multiple smart people to solve it independently. Convergence reveals the path. Divergence reveals the risk. This works for content strategy, product direction, or any creative decision where the options feel overwhelming. Instead of one long brainstorm, run two parallel sessions and compare. Where they agree is your plan. Where they disagree is where you need to test.

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