Approaching burnout territory

Meta is a great company that I think is financially well-positioned (I imagine your initial RSU grant has grown considerably). I do think it's worth giving it a shot across the next 2-3 months and see if you can hang in there. In terms of what to do:

1. Talk to your manager - If you have a good relationship with your manager, you should definitely have that awkward conversation and really lay this out on the table. There are things that your manager should be able to help with like optimizing processes, fine-tuning oncall load, etc.
2. Optimize your productivity - In particular, prioritize ruthlessly and see if you can stack your schedule so you can isolate focus blocks and dedicate certain time as "chaos time" where you're peppered with meetings and random pings. I highly recommend going through my entire productivity course: Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer
3. Switch teams (if all else fails) - Assuming you've gotten decent PSC ratings, you should be pretty mobile as an E5. Meta as a whole is definitely approaching what you described (both chaotic and with a lot of process), but there are certainly teams where it's more "chill". The beauty of being E5 is that "up-or-out" doesn't apply to you, so you don't need to think about promotion timelines. Most teams can support an additional E5 if they're strong (i.e. able to create scope themselves).

Here's another good thread I recommend (from another burnt out Meta engineer): "How can I have less burnout and better work-life balance?"

Worst case, you can look outwards (Meta is admittedly a terrible place for someone with ADHD), but let's not think too much about that yet. The PSC rating in particular is an important piece of info.

Best of luck and if you need more help, please share more in the forum and I'll be around to support you with more advice!

I'd like to comment specifically on the "process is bloated" point. I felt this too at some points when I was Tech Leading a re-architecture initiative on Portal. It's very draining to field questions and status requests from multiple people per day...

So I have two recommendations:

1. Can you change the process around how people receive information? The two obvious solutions that come to mind are a special view/board in the tasks tool, or just a weekly Workplace update post. So when someone asks you a question, you either say (1) I've addressed it <here> or (2) I will address in the next update.
2. Can you work on a project which has a lot less red tape or bureaucracy? I found that when I was able to write and ship code unencumbered, I was a lot happier as an engineer, and that made my other work more tolerable. In general, I think it's nice to work on at least 2 projects:
   1. One which is your main XFN effort where you'll probably get lots of pings
   2. Another which is more developer or internal focused, so there's less scrutiny and you can move faster.

I talk about the internal tool I built at Meta here: [Case Study] Building A Meta Internal Tool To Empower An Entire Org: Staff Promotion Story

(I would definitely try to stick around to the 1 year mark at Meta)

I've gone through similar struggles: it took a while for me to find what works for me. Given:

• At E5, your interactions with people are the core part of your work
• Getting pinged is generally the main way focus is shifted away/lost (from my experience)

I'll focus on tackling the people aspects of your situation. Here's the framework I had that worked for me:

1. Accept that people will always ping you & derail your focus. It's going to happen and the occurences are going to be unpredictable.
2. Find out the timing for responding to them that works for you. Having a dedicated block on your calendar for responding to these pings is one way. For me, I have a short attention span so I try to respond to pings the moment I'm pinged (if I can't then I give the person a rough ETA).
3. See if there's any themes on people pinging you. If you're noticing that people are pinging you for the same thing(s), it might be worth having a centralized communication medium for people to ask questions or see past updates. Dedicated project channels for project updates and a channel for general Q&A questions are the most common channels I've spun up. Once those mediums are pushed up, push folks to go through those mediums instead.

Once you feel like you've lowered the time distractions from other people going to you, take a step back and see what's the next thing giving you trouble (whether it's still people pinging you, on-call, better foundations around perf). Take things one step/one problem at a time.

You don't need to go through this discovery alone either: I'd talk to your manager about your stresses and work with them to help figure out a clear path forward. Keep in mind though at E5 it's when people expect you to tell them what to possibly do, so you'll need to lead the convo by:

• Stating your stress in a clean, straightforward problem statement
• Provide one or two potential ways to move forward with this stress

Else your manager might interpret your struggles as you being overleveled & underperforming.