[E5] What questions can I ask hiring managers at Meta during the team matching phase?

Question

Hi All,

Would love to get some advice on how to ask highly pointed questions during a 30 minute conversation with a hiring manager to get the maximum info out of him regarding the team culture and the product.

Regarding my preferences...

I would love to stick fully on the Backend stack. I have experience working with Python, NodeJS, Typescript and a bit of Java, I have experience working with Infra and databases as well. I get excited working with data at scale but do not have stellar industry experience with it such that I can start being impactful on day 1.

Since this will be my first time at a big tech, I want to optimize for a decent to moderate enough ramp up time, good wlb and not being super heavy with oncall at least for my first team.

Once I get used to the pace, I'll jump around to start optimizing for impact, visibility and scope.

Here is what I have in mind for my Hiring Manager meetings but feel free to add/subtract from this.

Basics, what is the product/org
What is the team size and team structure (how many E5s, E4s etc) and tech stack.
What is the code velocity like on average for an E5.
Give me a brief idea about what the first project you have in mind for me, if not tell me about a project an E5 is currently working on.

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

These are pretty good questions IMHO. #3 is a bit on-the-nose (there's a good chance they'll respond with "There's more to engineering performance than diff count"), but commit count does matter, especially at Meta where everything is measured. More context here: "Ok to have low code output for IC5?"

I think managers will understand these more pointed questions given the economic climate, as fear is PIP is very real (the bar is substantially higher now to perform).

Some other questions you can try:

"What are the major things the team has shipped in the past year?" - You are looking for stat-sig wins here.
"Are you able/willing to share Pulse results with me? No worries if not as I know it's sensitive." - Pulse is the anonymous survey Meta conducts every 6 months where employees deliver upward feedback. It is very important signal for joining a team, but it's obviously something that can be painful to share (especially if you're a bad manager with low scores). Back in my day, managers would share this, but I have heard it's much harder now (unfortunately I feel like Meta's open culture has deteriorated over the years). I think it's worth trying though - Just make sure to be super polite about it.

Some additional resources for inspiration: [Taro Top 10] How To Find A Good Engineering Team And Company

[E5] What questions can I ask hiring managers at Meta during the team matching phase?

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