How to navigate through team matching with Meta?

I'd strongly recommend taking the first team that has decent alignment. Take either of the 2 teams you mentioned.

• The worst-case outcome is that you don't get team-matched, and therefore, you don't join Meta. The chance of this is likely higher for you since there's probably a long queue of other mid-level engineers who could also clear the hiring bar. (This is less true for a Staff Eng role.)
• Switching internally within Meta is quite easy if you have decent ratings. You'll also have way more data and people knowledge once you've been at the company to navigate to a better team if you'd like to do so.

The other factor in this is how much you actually care about Meta.

• If you have not worked in Big Tech before, or you're currently unemployed, or you're strapped for cash, you should take any team they give you.
• If you have other compelling offers that you'd be excited by, and you already have a tier 1 brand name on your resume, then you can be more picky.

Read the experience of another engineer who was in a similar position as you and regretted not taking the first team offered: https://www.jointaro.com/question/MrVPK10c13Rxbm1YKGIz/meta-team-match-how-to-optimize/?a=U3vrdZV5pGUIZpcc6hAr

In this market (and even before), you do not want to spend too much time in team matching. Meta is the land of efficiency (i.e. they're ruthless at pushing out low-performers), and you want to hit the ground running ASAP to get points for PSC. If I were to put a number on it, I would join the first team that is 7/10 or even 6/10.

Meta isn't what it was before, and it's become a huge bureaucracy without tons of obviously great scope, falling down the same path as all the other FAANG companies. It is near impossible to find a 10/10 or 9/10 in terms of fit. It's better to bias towards action and quickly find the 6 or 7/10 team.

From there, follow the advice in Taro to turn it into a 9/10 or 10/10 team. That was what I did at Instagram Ads: A lot of the tools, processes, and culture were pretty janky when I joined, but I built trust, created scope, and came to play a large role in evolving the organization to a 9/10+ one.

Worst case, you change teams. Changing teams is relatively easy if you are a high-performer. If you have 2+ halves getting Meets All Expectations or higher, you should be able to switch. That being said, switching teams is way easier as an E5 than an E4.

Here's another great thread on Meta team match: "Meta team match - How to optimize?"

Check out this discussion on Meta's engineering culture (and how to thrive within it) as well: "Is sprint planning and agile not a thing at Meta?"