Interviewed for Meta and got rejected for E4, but there's no open E3 roles - What to do?

The internal numbers for distribution of Meta engineers came out recently. The number of E3s at Meta dropped dramatically the past several years.

Passing a Meta interview in this economy (even for an E3 level) is very hard, so congratulations on that first of all! 👏 I know it's a crappy situation, but you should still be proud to some extent regardless.

Unfortunately, there isn't much that you can do. 😢 Even when Meta was doing well, there was very little E3 headcount as E3s are massive loss-makers for the company (they make ~$200k but require a ton of hand-holding) and Meta heavily prefers to have E3s be returning interns.

One Hail Mary you can try is to make your stack more flexible. E3s aren't expected to have deep domain expertise, just basic overall coding ability. Let's say you applied for back-end positions: If there's open front-end positions across mobile or web, you can tell your recruiter that you're open to switching into mobile/web. Ideally you have some full-stack experience as well that you can point to so the pivot doesn't look so risky.

In the meantime, keep interviewing with other places - You can also use this Meta interview pass as leverage (don't mention that they don't have open headcount obviously). Here's some great Taro job searching resources if you haven't already checked them out:

• [Taro Top 10] Finding A Tech Job
• [Taro Top 10] Breaking Into FAANG
• [Taro Top 10] Pay Negotiation

Unfortunately, this is quite common in Big Tech when there are so many recruiters and so many engineers. This job may be life-changing for you, but you're simply one of many candidates for Meta. I mention this so you're prepared for this dynamic -- it sucks but it's normal.

There's a huge gap between how much they care vs how much you care. If moving through the process feels like you're pulling teeth, you should assume you're rejected.

Practically, here's the amount of effort I'd recommend you put in:

• Follow up 3-4 times with the recruiter, with a gap of a few days between each one. Make sure you message more than one person, in case the recruiter you worked with left the company or is on vacation.
• If you still don't get a reply, ask someone trusted internally (e.g. an engineer) to ping on your behalf. They may have more visibility in your application, or at least the chance of them getting a reply is higher.

Beyond that, there's not much you can do. I'd spend your time on more promising companies. The best situation is when the recruiter reaches out to you, as discussed here.

Thank you so much! This is really helpful to know. I appreciate all the help and advice :)