Anxious about IC5 -> IC6

First, I just want to say that I'm really happy that you're getting good ratings and Taro has been helpful. In the post-layoffs Meta of today, getting E5 EE/GE is no easy feat. Well done!

E6 is hard. You are 100% correct in that there will be more pressure and you will by definition have a higher chance of PIP due to the higher bar. Assuming no crazy outside factors (e.g. insane re-org), it should get easier over time as you solidify the E6 behaviors, deepen your understanding of the org, and become more productive overall. However, "stabilizing" as an E6 also takes time, generally 1-2 halves. My definition of a stable E6 here is that you put in 80-90% effort and still get E6 MA, i.e. you don't need to be firing on all cylinders all the time just to survive.

It might be hard to find, but there was an extremely strong Instagram engineer named Peter Cottle who shared his E5 -> E6 story in Workplace (he was E7 back when I was at Instagram). He took an insanely conservative route and kept telling his manager to delay his promotion due to a similar safety-first attitude and some confidence issues. Eventually he was already performing so high above the base E6 bar (E6 EE+/GE), that the calibration committee was forced to promote him (it's a risk to the company to under-level someone for so long, even if they want it). If you really want to be safe, you can take a similar approach - Just keep in mind that the E6 promo will take a long time in this case.

My advice is to just work 40 hour weeks and do your best. If you can get E6 working 40 hour weeks (which is incredibly reasonable by Meta standards), I'm sure you'll be 100% fine as an E6 with good buffer. If things go wrong, you can always crank up to 50 hour weeks to save yourself.

Finally my manager tells me that promos are lagging and no major changes are needed (except additional org contributions).

This is not entirely true. Meta is generally good at identifying "fake" productivity gains that come from additional hours worked instead of deeper behavioral evolutions, but it's not perfect. I know engineers who were mostly at E6 but still had some gaps, so they needed to work 50-60 hour weeks to cover them. This is a precarious promotion because if you hit a bad patch for whatever reason, you could drop below MA.

Your manager is only correct if you are able to get to E6 working 40-45 hour weeks. This means that your impact gains are coming from behavior change, not overworking.

Congrats on the great ratings at E5! I remember this being a common discussion internally at Facebook. The two options were:

1. Stay at E5 (Senior Eng) and consistently get EE or GE ratings
2. Take the promotion to E6 (Staff Eng) and struggle for an MA rating

Given the bonus structure at Meta, there wasn't too much of a compensation delta between the two options.

Here's why I was clear about wanting the promotion:

• E6 opens up more options for transitioning to management
• E6 will get larger stock refreshes. So if you believe in Meta stock going up, E6 will end up paying a lot more.
• Locking in the promotion to E6 sets a floor to your career if you decide to leave Meta.

For me, I had no regrets at all with the promotion. I will say that when I switched teams as a Staff Engineer, my work/life balance struggled quite a bit. But the confounding variable there was that I was also working closely with Alex on trying to explore startup ideas. So I was very happy to leave the company.

Since you are more risk averse, and cannot easily find a comparable tech job, it makes sense to be more cautious. However, if you are ok staying on the same team for a few more years (so you can fully grow into a Staff role), then I'd strongly encourage you to go for the promotion.

(Plus, you have the Senior to Staff course to help you!)