I want to be an E6 SWE at Meta. How can I position myself for this?

Question

I currently have about 5 years of experience.

I plan to stay in my current role for about 2 more years before I think about a change.

The way I see it there are 2 components:

Interviewing Skills
Real Skills (I'm most curious about these - what does this look like?)

Additional Context / Questions

At what point in my role should I begin looking to focus on interviewing skills? I was thinking the 18 month mark.

I have never been at a company much longer than 2 years. Should I prioritize staying for longer before the move? The next level is Staff here, but there's no guarantee of promotion.

I don't have a 100% clear vision I want in terms of the technical domain I'd like to build focus in. My current role is giving me good experience in developing technical leadership/stewardship but the domain is not of huge interest. Would it make more sense to target E5 and join the technical domain/team of my choice and then shift into a Staff position? e.g I have always been interested in VR, but never worked in a VR role.

So what are the things I should be focusing on in order to be effective in an E6 role in the future? Accounting for culture, PSC, etc.

What real skills should I prioritize building?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

Getting into Meta as an E5 ASAP seems like the next best step: "How does the Meta interview work?"

Usually getting to Staff at your current company doesn't help too much with getting in as E6 as Meta down-levels engineers from 90%+ of other companies. But hey, if you're at Google, getting to L6 will help a lot as that's a comparable company and that sets a hard floor at what level you'll come in at for Meta.

Would it make more sense to target E5 and join the technical domain/team of my choice and then shift into a Staff position?

In order to get to Staff, you need a massive amount of domain expertise. I'm a big proponent of following your passion, but keep in mind that picking up a new area will definitely slow down your Staff promotion vs. doubling down on something where you're already very strong. If I were to throw numbers out there, it could stretch a 2 year promotion into a 4-5 year one.

The benefit of following your passion though is that longer-term (I'm thinking 5-10 years out), your career will be more sustainable as it's less susceptible to burnout. Your career is a marathon, not a race, and there's no need to race to Meta E6 (Meta E5s still get paid extremely well).

What real skills should I prioritize building?

For Big Tech Staff Engineers, it's a mix of:

System design
Leadership
Communication
Product sense (this is more for Meta though)
Mentorship

I recommend the resources here too: [Taro Top 10] Senior Engineer To Staff Engineer (L5 To L6)

I want to be an E6 SWE at Meta. How can I position myself for this?

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