My manager has higher expectations for me than I do, and it's sort of overwhelming.

Question

I came in as an E4, but I feel like I'm over-leveled. I only had ~1.5 YOE before Meta, and I was doing relatively straightforward coding work at startups. However, when I joined my team, my manager's goal was to get me at E5 ASAP.

This has led to them giving me a lot of very complex scope. Here are some of the things I've gotten/am expected to do:

Got a hard 0 to 1 project with no senior engineer to assist me
Lead 2 E3s
Work across multiple, completely separate stacks

I haven't been able to handle all of this - I'm falling behind and feeling pretty stressed out. I would much rather just take the time to build up the E4 fundamentals and stabilize at an MA initially vs. chasing E5 promo right out the gate.

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

This is a classic crucial conversation to have with your manager. Be honest with them about how you feel and that you want to set the bar lower for your first PSC, so you can take the time to just be a solid E4. Ask them what's the bare minimum for an E4 MA and work towards that instead of slogging on with the seemingly E4 EE workload you have now. Appeal to your manager's sense of empathy - This is the kind of thing that deepens relationships. Long-term, it's better for everyone for you to stabilize first before pushing for E4 EE and then E5 promo. Before you start growing, you need a great foundation first (i.e. get a solid MA without destroying your mental health + WLB). This is something you can bring up in that conversation as well. 1 step back for 2 steps forward. You have a lot of time before up-or-out kicks in. There's no need to super rush. For all future PSC conversations, align early with your EM on what rating you are targeting.  If only Zuck didn't say he was going to turn up the heat on everyone's perf, making this all harder 😭

My manager has higher expectations for me than I do, and it's sort of overwhelming.

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