"Facebook's culture is really unique," Deng said. "If you have an idea, you have every opportunity to build it."
That's actually how she came to enter the field of applied machine learning.
"When I was an outsider, before I joined the group, I actually was really intimidated by AI and what applied machine learning meant," Deng said. At the same time, she was interested in what the technology could do.
So during one of Facebook's famous hackathons, Deng ended up forming a team with some of her old engineering colleagues and a number of people she works with today. Their project focused on how AI could be used to recognize people in videos, and thus ensure that Facebook users always see videos that align with their interests.
The team ended up getting the opportunity to present to a mini-prototype forum as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Mike "Schrep" Schroepfer.
"Having that type of audience is amazing," Deng said. "And getting to interact with other people in the company really superpowers your career and your ability to learn."
After the hackathon, she applied for Facebook's applied learning group and landed a role. She said that, since she joined the company, Facebook has increasingly taken on more and more ambitious projects, like AI.
"Facebook is still very much the rocket ship that it was five years ago," Deng said. "It moves extremely fast. We're thinking about how can we build a community for even more billions of people and how can we invest in state-of-the-art technology to get us there."