Came in over-leveled and now treading water (trending MM). Where do I go from here?

Question

I came into Meta with ~1.5 years of startup experience. I'm very good at Leetcode-type problems, so I was able to land an E4 offer. However, my prior experience mainly consisted of raw coding (E3-scope), meaning that I didn't have much experience developing E4 behaviors coming into Meta. This has led to me struggling on my current team where my manager let me know that I'm currently trending around MM. My team and manager have compounded this by being quite ambitious - I've gotten a lot of E4 EE+ scope with things like complex 0 to 1 projects (my manager is trying to get me to E5 ASAP). This is all hard to handle and has been a huge source of stress for me, so I'm currently considering other options.

Here's what's on the table:

Stay on my current team and stick it out, trying to recover to MA by the next PSC.
Switch to another team within Meta that's slower-paced.
Job hop to Google as an L3. I was able to land an offer with them during my job search, and I kept that line open. I'm exploring team matching with them now.
Go through some additional interview rounds with Google to get in as an L4.

Which of these is best for my career?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

Definitely empathize a lot with the situation, and I personally think that the best course of action is to stay on your current team at Meta and strive to improve the situation. There's 6 months until the next PSC, and that's a lot of time to recover. With a combination of good work ethic and tempering expectations, I think it's very possible to recover to MA. Switching to another team within Meta will be tricky if you're trending MM. EMs will be skeptical of taking on a low performer. Also, the PSC time math doesn't work out great: If you switch, you will have a splintered PSC. Down-leveling to L3 will erase a lot of progress. Google promotes substantially slower than Meta as well: It could take your career 4+ years to get back to L4. However, if WLB is your #1 priority by a wide margin, this is a very viable option. Your health is extremely important! Getting into Google as L4 seems like a lot of effort and thrash for relatively little gain. Google moves slower than Meta on average, but expectations there are still high. At Taro, we're more than happy to help you navigate settling in properly at Meta 😊

Came in over-leveled and now treading water (trending MM). Where do I go from here?

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