I watched the masterclass on finding a new team and understanding my own priorities to lead a fulfilling career and find a new team within Meta. Currently, I'm being put up for promotion for IC4 (hopefully, I'll know in late Feb about the outcome) and I would like to switch teams. My priorities in order: Work-life balance Supportiveness of team + (most of team in NYC)T Technical space Growth opportunities Product space My technical space interest is mostly in ML infrastructure (partially what my current team works on) and eventually would like to work towards getting to IC5, but more importantly I'm exploring another potential career (i.e. comedy and stand-up!). I would like to prioritize my WLB, so does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about my search (considering Meta is known more for grind culture)? And what orgs/teams to look at within the company?

The #1 indicator of how people will behave in the future is how they behaved in the past. In Meta's case, WLB information shouldn't be that hard to find as the company is so transparent: Look at when engineers are publishing diffs and Workplace posts Ask for Pulse results and look at the work-life balance score Go through their meetings and see how late/early they go and whether they do meetings over lunch. Teams that book over lunch tend to be extremely grindy Here's another good thread from a Meta engineer about team switching as well: What's the best way to think about a team switch? Best of luck with your promotion and career exploration! That's a super cool path to think about!

How to navigate finding a new team at Meta based on my priorities?

Entry-Level Software Engineer [E3] at Meta10 months ago

I watched the masterclass on finding a new team and understanding my own priorities to lead a fulfilling career and find a new team within Meta.

Currently, I'm being put up for promotion for IC4 (hopefully, I'll know in late Feb about the outcome) and I would like to switch teams.

My priorities in order:

Work-life balance
Supportiveness of team + (most of team in NYC)T
Technical space
Growth opportunities
Product space

My technical space interest is mostly in ML infrastructure (partially what my current team works on) and eventually would like to work towards getting to IC5, but more importantly I'm exploring another potential career (i.e. comedy and stand-up!).

I would like to prioritize my WLB, so does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about my search (considering Meta is known more for grind culture)? And what orgs/teams to look at within the company?

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Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns 3 of top 4 social networks in the world: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. More than 3.5 billion people use at least one of the company's core products every month.

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Discussion

(4 comments)

4
Alex Chiou
•Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
10 months ago
The #1 indicator of how people will behave in the future is how they behaved in the past. In Meta's case, WLB information shouldn't be that hard to find as the company is so transparent:

Look at when engineers are publishing diffs and Workplace posts

Ask for Pulse results and look at the work-life balance score

Go through their meetings and see how late/early they go and whether they do meetings over lunch. Teams that book over lunch tend to be extremely grindy

Here's another good thread from a Meta engineer about team switching as well: "What's the best way to think about a team switch?"

Best of luck with your promotion and career exploration! That's a super cool path to think about!
4
Rahul Pandey
•Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
10 months ago
Many internal tools are known to have better work/life balance. e.g. a friend who joined the Recruiting Products org at Meta said it was the most chill job he ever took
- 1
  Entry-Level Software Engineer [E3] [OP]
  •Meta
  5 months ago
  I actually moved from IG to Ads (which has been much better WLB wise for right now), but I do see Ads is still an area with a little more heavy workload.
  
  I'm wondering if it's possible to tell my manager about my interest in comedy and my interest in slower growth to L5 so I can create more realistic expectations per half? And my TL and senior engineers I work with? Is this a good idea?
  
  Another option is to wait for PIDs to open up in spaces like Recruiting Products?
- 2
  Alex Chiou
  •Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
  5 months ago
  The elephant in the room here is Meta's up-or-out policy: Those 3 years will go faster than you think.
  
  I assume you're a new E4 now, so you have the full clock, but managers generally want to see a path like this:
  
  1st half: E4 MA
  
  2nd half: E4 EE
  
  3rd half: E4 EE+/GE-
  
  4th half: Promotion to E5
  
  Once you get to 5th half and 6th half, you get into yellow zone and then red zone which is really stressful.
  
  Overall though, I'm a big fan of transparency (it is part of Meta's culture after all). If you and your manager have a good relationship, you should definitely bring this up and see if your manager can put something together for you.