Career Growth, Team change and skillsets
I currently work in a FAANG company, and I joined in the 3RD quarter of 2023. I am currently a SWE, but I did my masters in AI focusing on planning, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning. (I have 4 yoe relevant to my work and I have a 2 year Ms in AI. I'm currently an L5 engineer )
I need to communicate and reorient my career at my current company.
My manager has asked me initially if I am ok with the team and the product. They also communicated that since our product launch, the team will be in operational mode and hence, it would be good to network and build connections within the company so that I can eventually get into a green field initiative of my choice. Now I have these questions:
- How do I start the conversations for the same?
- What do I need to keep in mind and how do I figure out the details of teams and orgs that are doing what I am interested in?
- Anyone who has done this before, would you mind lending mentorship?
More details on the situation: Initially, I had a couple of conversations about joining at 1 level above, but I did not go through with, it because I knew I would have to do a safe transition and that 1 level above would make it too expensive for me to transition.
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
![Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3] at Google company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fgoogle.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3D780356ef-3efc-4728-9eb4-d909b75bb4a6&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 010 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
If I'm reading this correctly, you have two options:
- Stay on the team, which is more operationally heavy
- Move teams to a green field initiative of your choice
Which do you prefer? There's not a right answer here, it depends on what kind of environment you thrive in, and where you have a more supportive manager. In general, for new grads I'd recommend going to a more structured environment for a bit (1-2 years) first. This will let you understand the work culture, build out your network, and hopefully get promoted before you do the riskier option.
One important of this is around how supportive your manager is (and how quickly are they growing)? It sounds like your manager is pretty good and well-connected, so I'd probably bias toward sticking around.
- 010 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
If the FAANG company you're at is either Google or Meta, there's a lot of good tactical advice here (a lot of the advice is general so probably worth reading anyways, even if they're not your company):
Since you're pretty early in career, the most important thing for you on a team is the availability of support. You should find teams that offer some collection of the following:
- Have L4/L5 engineers who could mentor you
- Pair you with an onboarding buddy
- Have an open culture where people ask a lot of questions and share project updates very openly
I recommend going through this playlist as well: [Taro Top 10] How To Find A Good Engineering Team And Company
And if you can make it, join my upcoming Office Hours! Group Office Hours With Alex - Career Direction (Company + Offer Evaluation)
