When to switch teams?

When it comes to team switching (especially at Meta with its PSC culture), here's what to keep in mind:

• Switch as early into the perf cycle as possible - You want >50% of the cycle left when you switch. Since PSC is every year now, switching in April seems okay. That gives you 8-9 months which should be enough to get a good rating. Recency bias is huge in PSC as well, so Q1 honestly isn't that important.
• Don't switch if you have a lot of promo progress - Let's say you are 80% of the way from E5 -> E6. Switching is just really painful as you will lose a lot of that progress. Staff promotion is so dependent on having a deep mastery of your org's business context and interpersonal relationships, and that goes away when you switch teams. If you are a relatively fresh E5, this is another reason to switch.

Should I start talking to new managers or inform my current manager first?

If you like your current manager, tell them. If you don't, probably better to coordinate the move more in secret to avoid retaliation.

Lastly, when it comes to figuring out whether you should change teams, I recommend this great discussion: "How do I know when it's time to leave a team/company?"

Will there be more jobs posted in March?

I'm not sure, but I don't think this is the right way to think about career growth if you want an exceptional career as a Senior SWE.

Let me share the pattern of the engineers/PMs who have done the best in their career. They don't wait for a job posting; they have 3-4 warm leads of managers and opportunities they think are exciting.

When an opportunity comes up, they get the call first since their reputation is known. Or if they see an opportunity to make impact, they will propose a job for themselves. A senior engineer with enough influence can do this, and you're not stuck waiting for whether jobs get posted or not.