Impact Expectations as E6 Staff Engineer at Meta
I’ll be starting as an E6 at Meta, working on internal tools. Currently, the headcount is really low, and people only have 60 days to match, so I decided to go with the first team I matched with, even though it’s not the most exciting option.
I’m committed to doing a great job in this role, but I’m a bit concerned about the potential impact I can have and how that might affect my performance reviews (or get me PIPd). Is this something I should be worried about? Any advice on how I can maximize my impact on a team that might not be seen as highly impactful?
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 2
2 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroCongrats on getting into Meta as an E6! That's an impressive accomplishment for sure. I highly recommend checking out this lesson from our senior -> staff course: https://www.jointaro.com/course/grow-from-senior-to-staff-engineer-l5-to-l6/own-the-goal/
The course is based on FAANG expectations, so if Meta is your first FAANG company, you should probably just go through the entire course.
In a nutshell, E6s are generally expected to own a meaningful portion of core team goals. The bar is even higher for E6s as not only are they expected to contribute to the goals, they are expected to help come up with the correct goals as well (there is a reason "Direction" is such an important Meta PSC axis). The exception to all this is if you're on a very senior infra team where there are multiple E6s and some E7s/E8s.
Lastly, I wouldn't worry about working on an internal tools team, especially at Meta. Meta has a wonderful culture around internal tools (one of the absolute best in the industry). I know for a fact that there are many E7s/E8s who work purely on internal tools. There might even be 1-2 E9s who do so too.
- 12 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
It's not easy to land a Staff role at Meta, congrats!
Meta is a huge company at this point, which means that every org/product has it's own set of priorities. The same will be true for your internal tools team, but it's quite likely that these will not be the top-most priority of the company.
And that's ok! You can still have a great career in one of these teams, and you'll probably have a better work/life balance as well! Just make sure you're working on the most important, most difficult challenges for your org.
All my advice from the onboarding course will apply here:
- Work hard to gain the respect of the other TLs in the org
- Figure out what the highest-priority projects are and start contributing to them
- As you become more tenured, you should start to influence the roadmap for your team (this is a really good way to ensure you protect yourself from a PIP)
