Meta / Facebook Team Matching - How to find the best team? (E4)

Question

I'm moving forward to team matching at Meta for E4 and wanted to ask the community if they had any suggestions for teams with the strongest potential for growth, especially for the New York office.

The recruiter gave me the following survey. I stated I'd be more of a "Product - Generalist" role. Would also be curious to learn more about "Systems - Generalist" as I did the System Design interview as well.

In general from what I've seen, there's a decent amount of opportunity in Instagram, Whatsapp, and Reality Labs (from product announcements and earnings calls). I've also been told to avoid monetization as it's difficult to make an impact there.

Would appreciate any advice or suggestions! Also would appreciate tips on what questions to ask Hiring Managers to assess how they grow E4s.

What is your role? (select the one that applies)

Systems - Generalist
Product - Generalist

What type of work motivates you the most? (select all that apply)

Infra: Scaling challenges
UX: Building user experiences
Growth: Top of line impact
Integrity: Ensuring platform safety
Social Impact: Progressing positive change on key social issues

Who do you want to build products for? (select all that apply)

Consumers: External, individual users of the Meta family of apps
Businesses: External business account users of Meta family of products
Meta Employees: Users of internal tools
Developers: Internal and external engineers using Meta developer products and APIs

Please select which Meta Pillar(s) you’d be interested in joining? (select all that apply)

Family of Apps: Enable optimized enforcement and support of account integrity to foster safe and meaningful communities.
Monetization: Empower people and businesses to succeed in the global economy
Gen AI: bring the transformative potential of generative AI to people and businesses
Reality Labs: build tools that help people feel connected anytime, anywhere

How would you rank your preference in terms of products? (feel free to use numbers)

Facebook App
Monetization
Privacy
Messenger
Instagram
WhatsApp
Reality Labs (AR/VR)

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

A few thoughts:

Meta is generally biased toward product and shipping things to the end user. Infra and internal tools are still important, but product engineers get more attention.
Up until E5, product eng is slightly better for promotions, since there are more experiments and features to ship. Infra has more multiplicative impact since the tools are used by many others, but it usually takes longer to develop.
I think you can't go wrong working on Gen AI since there's so much investment there. If I had to do a rough ordering: Reality Labs, Instagram, WhatsApp, Monetization.
Finally, the other thing to consider is where the org leadership lives. If only your direct manager is in NYC, but the rest of the reporting chain is in MPK, I'd avoid that team. We talk more about this here: How important is location for software engineers? and Does not being in the Bay Area hurt your career as a SWE?

This is for after you join :) [Masterclass] How To Succeed At A New Team Or Company As A Software Engineer

Meta / Facebook Team Matching - How to find the best team? (E4)

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