How can I start behaving as Senior within a couple of months of joining?

Question

I am soon going to join Meta (Monetisation org) as a mid-SWE.

Before this, I spent <5 years at my previous company. The last 1.5 years weren’t that great for me. I didn’t have much opportunity to grow or learn. I had a medical emergency and also lost interest in my role due to the company's deteriorating culture and benefits. So, I mostly stayed there for the RSUs.

Now I want to start fresh and start with the same zeal of a student out of college. I aim to become a Sr at Meta in a year. I know monetisation is a rough org for a SWE but I want to see it as the next stepping stone.

I wanted your advice on how to:

Start showing impact in a month
What initiatives can I take to start behaving as E5 within 2-3 months of joining?

PS: I have already gone through the onboarding course and it was super helpful. With this post, I want to get something more specific to Meta and(or) monetization org. For eg:

How to deal with Meta's internal team politics?
How to approach the "1 year" target with the manager?
What things should I focus on? (like being proactive in the team's operation excellence meetings, focussing more on doc and code reviews, or building strong relationships with existing E5/E6 and getting help from them) - I am sure it will be a combination of multiple stuff.

Jonathan C · Accepted Answer

For showing more impact: get to landing diffs as quickly as possible.

For 2-3 months in towards E5:

Be in the 80th percentile for diffs landed
Start reviewing code
Start answering questions for your team

For dealing with politics: get good at writing code. You're likely fighting other mid levels for scope due to up-or-out and they're all asking for scope to get promo'd. Asking is not enough (since every other mid level engineer is doing this): you need to stand out. At mid-level, the main bar is execution. So the focus on standing out should be on execution first.

For the 1 year target with your manager: I'd bring it up early on in your 1:1s to set the pace (after you're done onboarding is a good time), but I wouldn't expect much in terms of having the E5 promo in a year secured. Most likely, your manager will do their best to set you up and you end up with "Exceeds Expectation" (no promo) if you meet your manager's expectations.

For what to focus on: write more code. In this economy, the efficiency expectations are much higher for senior. Strong foundations are needed to more quickly break problems down into systems and code. The simplest way to get better with code is to write more code. The more time you spend thinking about code, the less time you have for impact.

How can I start behaving as Senior within a couple of months of joining?

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