Big Tech Q&A and Videos

After working for 5 years in startups and small companies, this is my first time in BigTech. I constantly feel that while I am able to get tasks done, I still lack in fundamentals. This sometimes leads to embarrassing situations where I am not able to answer basic questions during normal conversations.

I would really like to not only brush up but master my fundamentals of being a software engineer.

If we were to make a list of fundamentals that strong software engineers have mastered, what would that list look like?

I normally apply to companies on a warm basis, with warm contacts so I can always try to get feedback post-interview to land a job, or sometimes while I apply cold, limit these and prioritize warm ones. I've noticed a lot of new software coming out during the pandemic for mass applications, but I am not sure this will work for me as a non-traditional candidate who has mainly interviewed for positions in the non-standard way. I do realize that given layoffs, the numbers is game is one I might need to play more and could invest some money into this, but I know some software might be better than others. There seem to be so many new services out there, that the market is saturated and I'm wondering how effective this would be and if it's worth the money and that maybe I would rather spend my time (instead of just money) instead focusing on applying more thoughtfully through my warm networks and referrals, rather than mass cold applications via an AI bot or other software service.

Will I get screened/frozen out and auto-rejected for two years if my resume is crap because I hit 'apply' to a hundred companies?

Thoughts?

I’m an E5 at a Big Tech company trying to get to E6. As part of performance reviews, my skip level asked me for feedback on my manager:

• He confessed that he has concerns about my manager’s people management and execution on the team
• My manager’s EngageMe scores are very low and have not increased in the last 3 quarters
• My manager has been at this company for a little over a year

Before this, I had 5 managers in 5 months (my current one being the 5th) as we went through a reorg and a lot of leadership departures. I was hired as an E5 and have been at this company for 3+ years. Every time I get a new manager, they say they want to see consistent E5 performance before they’ll give me an E6 opportunity. I feel that this keeps getting reset due to management churn. Are there strategies to mitigate this? For what it's worth, I got Exceeds in the last performance review.

I'm an E5 iOS at a Big Tech company. There's already an E6 iOS on my team, so it's been hard for me to get enough scope to get to E6. I feel both of us have been fighting for scope. My EM got forced out due to a PIP, so my skip level's temporarily leading the team until he hires a backfill. My skip level knows that I've been frustrated about the lack of opportunities on this team, so he found me a potential E6 opportunity with a different team in our org.

When the new team's skip level found out I could do both iOS and backend, he got very excited and said I could report to the team's EM or him directly. He wants me to mentor junior mobile engineers on multiple teams. He wants me to be the voice for mobile engineers and a thought partner for multiple PMs/teams. He wants me to bridge the mobile engineers to the rest of the new team, which has mostly backend and web engineers. I feel I have better rapport with the new team's M1, but it could be that I was a bit intimidated by the M2. What are the pros and cons of reporting to an M1 vs M2? Would reporting to an M2 make it easier to get to E6?

Hey Everyone, would there be interest in a topic, on how to attract a sponsor who is invested in your growth at least 1/10 as much as we are.

Over the years, I have realized in addition to being sincere and making an impact, we need the right projects to make an impact and the right people to take notice. I feel like I cannot catch a break.

I have been able to uplevel and switch, get an upper level from tier 2 -> FAANG (L5), and stayed there for many years. Thriving. Until my project was canned, and I was laid off.

My current team is at a tier 2 company, and I have already made significant impact, but my manager is hung up on some negative feedback that was given to me early on (3 quarters ago) The current staff even insidiously tried taking away my projects from me. I stood up for myself and got the project back with my managers help.

I have good feedback, on PR, good velocity and mentoring engineers to uplevel. But my manager is still biased.

I strongly believe that actions speak louder than words. Would love to know the series of master classes that can help me with Me and your advice.

Would love to know your thoughts on this when is it time to stay and focus on growth or when is it time to move on and start afresh ?

My eventual goal is L6 at Google / Netflix / Meta - Adjacent

I am moving to a faang company in a month for a staff level position (serving my notice period).

Since I have my freetime, what should I prepare to ensure I have a good ramp up?

I want to make sure I start the job with a good note and quickly make impacts. It has been 4 years since I transferred, so my capabilities to adapt might be rusty

Any checklists or advice would be great. Thank you

Context: Working in a small startup where there are a very small number of wiser senior engineers

Everyone in the development team contributes to code reviews

Often I’m unsure about the quality of the feedback and when to act upon it

Sometimes people even change their mind after you have acted on that feedback which is frustrating and can contribute to the delay of finishing a task

Does this also happen in big tech? How do you handle these situations ?

I'm an E5 iOS engineer reporting to an M2 at a Big Tech company. I am the mobile lead for a complex mobile-heavy project spanning 2 other teams. This is a high visibility project that's on the VP Eng's & VP Product's radar. This project had 4 E6s:

• E6 iOS engineer on partner team #1 delivered an onboarding guide with 70+ compilation errors and took a month to fix all the bugs blocking our integration. He did not test his code at all before delivering it to us.
• E6 iOS engineer on partner team #2 delivered a component that did not tokenize SSNs properly, resulting in raw SSNs -- this would have caused an s0 incident, but my team fortunately caught it before it went to production. He also did not test his code at all before delivering it to us. My team's E6 BE engineer spent a month fixing it for that team, resulting in delays to our project's BE.
• My team's E6 BE engineer had a falling out with my M2, so he switched teams, leaving us in a bind since our only other BE engineer (E5) on this project had resigned at the end of last year.
• We got a replacement E6 BE engineer, but he is very slow, requires a lot of handholding, and most of his PRs have serious bugs -- I feel he's performing like an E4. A junior iOS engineer joined our team at the same time as he did but delivered more complex features in the same amount of time.

I switched to BE to de-risk the project after I took care of all the iOS fires. I've already fixed more BE bugs than the replacement E6 BE engineer.

Of the 4 E6s, I feel the one who switched teams was the strongest, but my M2 said that E6 did not exhibit ideal E6 behavior because we're over a month late due to BE delays and we keep discovering more and more BE bugs. The E6 also changed the design 3x when fixing the SSN issue. The M2 told me not to use that E6 as a role model, but the other E6s are even worse!

What I've noticed is that FAANG companies don't seem to look beyond Data Structure and Algorithms (DSA) or system design in interviews, whereas medium-sized companies also consider other skills. For example, for a Python web framework, they might look at Django, Flask, or FAST. For a data engineer role, Apache Airflow might be important. ATS may not even pickup your resume unless they see very specific word like Django or Apache Airflow in your resume. It seems like it might be easier to prepare for big tech companies since they focus only on DSA, System Design, and behavioral rounds. In contrast, other companies look for such a wide range of skills that it's hard to master and work on all of them.

Let me know your views.

About Company: growing mid-size startup, great tech culture, talented people to work with, pays well

Promoted in recent appraisal cycle (2 levels above entry level, similar to L6 at Amazon) but the increment is not attractive compared to what is normally paid at that level (within company). Performance review was great but manager does not have much say in deciding increment percentage. I do see learning opportunities here in future but demotivated by this bias.

How do I renegotiate salary? How to have this discussion with skip manager?

I’m about to start applying for jobs. I’d like for my next job to be at FAANG for all the reasons that Alex and Rahul mention it’s good to begin your career at FAANG. This is my third job out of school, so I’m a little late, but better late than never :)

I believe what Alex and Rahul said about working at FAANG is that it’s good because you:

1. Get to work with really talented people and learn good fundamentals and practices.
2. Get top-of-the-market compensation.
3. Set yourself up for more 1 and 2 in the future whether or not you leave

My crude approach to getting into a FAANG/FAANG-equivalent company is to look at levels.fyi, and run down the list of companies and apply. This approach certainly satisfied point 2 above, and is also very good for getting 1 and 3 as well given that all 3 points are highly correlated.

I know that referalls are important, so I do plan on tapping my network as well.

But I wonder, am I thinking about this the right way? Is there a better approach? If I could in theory get super-amazing 1 and 3, and get less 2, I think I’d be willing to do that. But I’ll never come across such an opportunity if I’m just using levels.fyi

All thoughts are welcome 😊

• I aim to join a big tech preferably as a Software Engineer(Entry Level). I am currently working in Data Science and it has been hard juggling between data science at work and preparing for big techs.
• I prefer a Software Engineering role as I do not think that big techs prefer Entry Level Engineers with Bachelor's degrees for Data Science and ML roles.
• So how I should balance the work (Data Science) and preparation for the Job Switch to a big tech alongside DSA?

Hey guys, please guide me for the next steps in this journey.

I am currently L5 at social media company (not Meta) and have done Android dev for most of my career. I was a manager for a brief amount of time as well but layoffs took that away. I am on a H1B visa and family is dependent on me (single earner).

From last 4 years or so I haven't done much dev work and have been working with developers/customers/partners to help them in integrating our solution to their Android apps. I can crack LC any day though but might not be able to pass Android round easily. I don't enjoy Android dev too much now but it's a different ask if it becomes a necessity to survive at this level. I used to be really good at it and if I put 3-4 months to it I can pick it up again. I am interested in AI/ML given the popularity, high TC, etc. but also interested because I genuinely believe that it can transform people's lives + it will broader my skillset beyond tech companies and gives me a long run. But I have almost 0 experience in it.

I fear another layoff at my company and it may impact me in next 6 months, or it might not happen either if market or company situation improves.

Question now is: Should I get back to my Android roots OR try to dip my toe into AI/ML? If latter then does Certification course from Standford/Berkley,etc. helps?

Hi all,

Due to recent changes in the company (Big Tech), my current manager is moving to a new org and a new manager is brought to manage the team. I really respect my manager and they were amazing at supporting me (helped me grow from E3 to E5 in 2 years).

They mentioned the new team has an opening and mentioned that I'd be welcome to join if I wanted to. The new team is our company's top priority and based on initial understanding, their work sounds very interesting to me. Here are some pros and cons I could think of:

Not Changing Team:

• Pro- I have great relationships with IC6s on the team and also junior engineers.
• Pro- I know the codebase well and scope is well defined.
• Con- Been working in this space for 2+ years and feel slightly bored sometimes. Skillset also becomes stagnant.
• Con- Manager mentioned hard to find IC6 scope in the org moving forward.

Changing Team:

• Pro- Will continue the same manager, who I have a great relationship with.
• Pro- Exciting new space and top company priority.
• Pro- Manager considers me as high IC5 and mentioned potential IC6 growth opportunities-(although since manager hasn't joined the new team yet- so I should take this with a grain of salt).
• Con- Having to ramp up to a new team as an IC5 (seems a little risky considering layoffs).
• Con- Unknowns like work life balance, team friendliness, team success etc.

Considering these, I am planning to talk to the senior manager in the new org to evaluate their team and vision. Since this is a unique situation, how should I approach choosing between the two? What kind of questions should I ask? Thanks a lot!

Does having a PhD in an engineering field such as electrical engineering give you an advantage in terms of salary or level in big tech companies?

age: 55

experience: 30 year of on/off programming. 7 years of managing SWEs

After joining Taro, I am motivated to reset my career and not live in depression any more. Also, I think, due to side effects of Taro, my sleep has improved a lot and I am not consuming cheap dopamine any more.

My next tasks are

1. fix my resume and get it to near-perfect.
2. apply at Microsoft
3. while I wait for interview from MS, start programming in Angular / Typescript, .net services c# etc. This will at least help in healthy dopamine and mind set. and help me for future non-FAANG-interviews.
4. if I get interview call from MS, start studying DSA, else continue to do side project in Angular / C# / .net

But I was thinking, at this stage, given AI popularity, should I pivot and start learning AI because even if I get real good at side projects and programming, is it a better career move to be good at programming at this stage of my life? AI is going to get better and better and just being a good programmer is not going to cut it even in near-future?

Thanks for reading.

My friend just introduced me to his friend who works at this big tech company that I would love to join. I'll meet this friend in a couple of days, and I wonder how I can make the best use of this opportunity. How would I handle this in the best way possible?

(I'm a software engineer with 2 years of experience and a computer science degree)

I feel like I'm doing this wrong. When I want to see what jobs are available, I go on LinkedIn, hit the "jobs" tab, type in "frontend jobs", and scroll through the search results. But that's often unproductive because nothing looks enticing. I scroll past companies that I don't know (because I assume the pay or the benefits will be mediocre), past companies that I've heard negative things about (which is a lot of them), and then I'm left with no options at all.

I wanted to work for a FAANG company, but after all the layoffs and hearing stories from my friends who have boring work and teams, constantly feel anxiety around their jobs, and feel like code monkeys, I am a bit turned off from applying to FAANG-type companies. I work for a well-known fintech company now but I don't have a good manager and the upcoming changes in upper management don't look promising. Plus, I've been here for 3+ years and I want to know how other companies operate, know more people, and just learn more within software engineering too.

Here's what I'm looking for

• great team (a team I can learn lots from, I get along with, and have folks who care for me as a person). I've had this before so I know this is not an impossible ask
• innovative work
• great manager
• good health insurance/benefits (such as vacation)
• good work-life balance

Location doesn't matter and I'm ok with a remote job too. One tactic I thought of was to look up "great places to work" and apply to companies from that list.

But in general, how should I look for jobs and companies to apply to when I'm not targeting a specific company? Plus, is applying to FAANG level companies worth it for the resume boost and the experience?

Appreciate any insight into this! Thanks!

I have worked at two larger companies and two small startups (currently at one). I'm quite content with my current company and role, as I have ample opportunities for growth and a great work-life balance. However, the only factor that makes me contemplate leaving my current position is that I'm earning less than some of my peers. I'm not comparing myself to the exceptionally high-earning individuals; rather, I'm looking at other senior software engineers who are making around $400K in total compensation. Currently, I'm earning around $250K. It's important to note that I recognize my experience level is relatively young compared to those with 20-30 years of experience, as I have only 6 years of experience.

I want to think about the bigger picture and position myself in the best possible way for the future. When I discuss this with some of my peers, they suggest that I should work at a FAANG company at least once to attract recruiters from better companies. While I've always been drawn to roles with high visibility and a need for velocity, I've found that at larger companies, I tend to work at a slower pace with less visibility. However, if transitioning to a FAANG role is indeed the key to opening up new career opportunities, I'm willing to consider it.

Has anyone else faced a similar dilemma in their career? I would appreciate any insights or advice from individuals who have gone through a similar experience.

I am a self taught developer and have primarily focused only on Android. I'm not a genius and I know I lack in many of the lower level foundation areas. Examples would be I've been doing Android development and really do not know much about the JVM or ART for the matter and how they work. I have never had to learn algorithms at all with my 7 years in the industry. The list goes on.

I do see myself as a solid Android developer and can churn out work but the goals I am striving for I won't hit at my current knowledge level. In my opinion.

However I am a process person and for me I basically need to put together a personal step by step plan on what to learn in order.

What are some suggestions?!

Hi! I'm an L5 in a big tech company, tasked with leading a big org-level project that span multiple engineering teams, with lots of cross functional collaboration w/ UX and PM as well.

I'm new to my own team and I'm not the subject matter expert in the area of our work, which is around 8-ish people with about 2 other L5s. In order for me to successfully manage this project for our team, I am already involved in a lot of meetings and I have yet to set up recurring 1:1s. I believe I should set up some more of these 1:1s, but I can't imagine I would be setting one up w/ everyone I come across.

Which 1-on-1s / relationship should I prioritize, how frequently should they happen, and how do I ensure these meetings are good use of both my time and the other person's time?

I received offer from Bytedance where the HR asked if garden leave will be applied since I am working at their competitor (a FAANG company).

I am keen to this contract as it is for a higher seniority and the job scope seems to be more impactful than what I am currently working in.

I checked my employment contract and there seems to be no mention of garden leave or anything similar to .

But at the same time, I am hesitant to confirm with HR at the risk of revealing my intent to leave before signing Bytedance contract.

Any thoughts on moving jobs from FAANG companies to competitors?

I am based in Singapore. But would like to get your perspective on this.

At my startup I was asked to deliver feature after feature + bug fixes by PMs as fast as possible without much time for proper refactoring work or engineering initiatives. Also it was pretty individualistic where you get assigned a task and only work with other engineers during a tech spec review meeting, code review, and syncing with a backend engineer (as an Android dev).

From Alex’s video on getting promoted to tech lead, I saw how you can 1) drive projects as an L5 engineer (vs a PM putting that together with designers) 2) Not have to know how to implement everything yourself for a project, but work with many others and facilitate the team. This sounds 100x more engineering driven and collaborative than at my start up with few developers. Is this common to many people’s experience of the norm in FAANG?

What I liked about Alex's story is also how he had the time and space to do things like document the differences between iOS and Android, as well as go all the way through to making a data analytics plan for monitoring it himself. Seems like a lot of freedom and ownership which I didn't feel I always had the time for personally. Being able to not have to spend 80% of your time coding but rather doing deep work thinking, planing, designing holistically sounds extremely satisfying and rewarding as an engineer. Maybe this also comes with experience at startups as well?