Transferring to Infra from Product as E5?

Question

Just got promoted to E5.

I'm doing well in my product team and confident I’ll keep performing, but the technical learning is shallow. The work is more about organizing SWEs/XFNs, aligning stakeholders, and wearing multiple hats (PM, design, data eng, etc.).

I’m good at this—soft skills have always been my strength. But the technical skills I’m gaining aren’t that "valuable." It’s mostly fullstack work relying on frameworks like React, which any decent developer can do.

I feel like I’m missing out by not working on infra, where I could develop harder, more foundational skills (distributed systems, scalability, performance, reliability). These seem more transferable outside of Meta.

The problem is, I struggled in infra before (short stint at a prior big tech company), while I’ve thrived in product. Not sure if I’d do well or just flop again—and now’s a bad time to underperform. Maybe I should be leaning on my strengths (soft skills) and accept the fact I don't have much of a technical edge for doing really well in Infra.

I’m confident I can hit E6 in product, but will I get stuck there? Would switching to infra give me a better shot at E7+ and better opportunities outside Meta? Am I wrong?

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

Yes, switching to infra will give you a better chance at E7+ at Meta or other technical leadership roles.

There's something called the "front-end ceiling," which refers to the challenge that front-end engineers have in getting promoted to the top brass of a company. (Most product engineers skew toward the front-end.)

In almost all Big Tech cos, the pixels on the screen are rarely the most challenging problem. Instead, the most challenging problem is the backend systems or architectures that dictate how the team will operate for years to come.

See the relevant discussion here: Between platform and product teams, what should be one's preference based on level?

I think getting to E6 (Staff Engineer) is very doable on a product team if you have enough scope and the support of your manager. So if you have the setup for that, I'd pursue that first before forecasting ahead to the next promotion.

Keep in mind that at the E6/E7 level, promotions are harder and slower to come by. If we assume you'll be up for E7 promotion in 3 years, the entire org or company as a whole may look totally different. So don't optimize for an uncertain future if you have something good in front of you on the product team.

Transferring to Infra from Product as E5?

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