I'm in the team matching process for an E4 position at Meta. I've reached out to numerous friends at Meta for team recommendations, but responses have been limited, possibly because most of them are at the E4/E5 level and not really connected to hiring decisions. If someone asks me about if there's any good teams hiring in my current company, I'd have a hard time answering it.
I’ve started cold-messaging managers on LinkedIn but haven’t had much success yet. My intuition says it might not be too fruitful because 1) people don't check LinkedIn very often, 2) they might be hiring previously but not hiring now, 3) they are hiring for specialist positions but I'm generalist.
Then, are there benefits of reaching on my own? Are there any success stories from contacting managers versus going through recruiters? I'm not too worried about not having a match, but I'm just trying to optimize to get a best outcome.
edit: got some responses from my friends. I think I'll wait to see if any leads from my personal network can result in something :))
There are some initiatives at Meta in which your recruiter will connect you to employees to help you answer such questions
Of course, not everyone will have an idea about how a particular team is but they can share their views on different orgs and sentiments across the company
I’ll try all ways and try to get as much information as possible.
If you're really struggling with a team match, I recommend having a "hook." State explicitly what you want and why you're spiky in that area, e.g. you worked on a similar problem space in the past, or you have a relevant published paper.
Your goal is to be polarizing: you want at least some manager to really want you, even if you turn off some others.
At any point, there will be a set of high priority initiatives for the company, e.g. Ads or AI or a specific product like WhatsApp.
I'd check with the recruiter and your personal network about these priority hiring areas -- you're going to have a lot more success here compared to an older/stagnant part of the company.
I highly recommend checking out this other discussion, it's kind of perfect for you: "Meta / Facebook Team Matching - How to find the best team? (E4)"
Overall, Meta is a pretty well-run company with a strong engineering culture. Low-performing organizations are culled pretty fast, especially now. This means that the quality of a team almost entirely depends on the manager. Don't try to big brain and find the "best" org. In team matching conversations, do your best to reverse interview them and look for communication/body language cues. If the manager's good, you'll have a good time at Meta.