Career Advice About Meta

Currently, I'm on a 10 person team, but we only have 3 senior engineers and the remaining 7 are E4s (5 people) and E3s (me and one other new grad). For our upcoming half, they want E4s leading some of the projects for their development. However, I would like guidance, mentorship, and feedback from an E5 or above ideally since they are more experienced. Also, from one of the Taro videos on feedback, one of the points made was to find a way to get feedback from senior engineers at the end of the half who will bolster your PSC packet versus a mid-level engineer who might not hold as much weight (Correct me if I'm wrong)?

Anyway to navigate this the right way? Should I avoid certain projects that are led by E4s? Does this even matter?

Hi Everyone,

I recently received a call from Meta for an interview for the Enterprise Systems Engineer (E4) role. So far, I’ve been focusing solely on the Software Engineer - Infrastructure position at Meta.

I had a few questions:

1. How does the Enterprise Systems Engineer role differ from Software Engineer - Infrastructure?
2. What is the typical career trajectory for an Enterprise Systems Engineer at Meta, or in the industry overall?
3. If I plan to transition to a Software Engineer or Machine Learning Engineer role at Meta after a few years, is that possible internally?
4. Is the Enterprise Systems Engineer role less hands-on with coding compared to the Software Engineer - Infrastructure role?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

Hi, I recently joined Meta and this is my first job out of college. I'm a bit unsure about how performance is categorized and what initial signs to look for. Is it considered a negative if it takes longer to onboard? What is the normal period of onboarding? Is it normal to have a mentor assigned for an extended period if onboarding is slower, or does this reflect poorly? What should I keep in mind and avoid to get an MA (Meets All) or EE (Exceeds Expectation) rating?

Also, how can I avoid receiving a BE (Below Expectation) rating as an E3? The stack ranking is confusing and I don’t understand the baseline expectations.

I've been at Meta for a while and have thought about outside opportunities. I feel like it can be frustrating getting things done at Meta a lot of the time - Too many processes and people to align to ship projects. I want to work somewhere where I can just write code and ship cool products. Any thoughts on next steps for someone who's been at Big Tech for a while?

I'm a mid-level engineer who's struggling with some performance issues at work. A staff engineer on my team has taken notice and has been very generous with offering help and advice, to the extent of basically handholding me through my projects. While I truly appreciate the help, I'm wondering if this will be seen as a negative signal during performance evaluation since I'm supposed to be operating 'independently' at this level.

The Hack language is indeed associated with PHP but it's not exactly a new version of PHP. Instead, Hack is a programming language developed by Meta (formerly Facebook) that operates within the same ecosystem as PHP and is designed to interoperate with PHP code. Hack extends PHP by adding additional features such as static typing, type inference, generics, nullable types, and async programming, among others.

Hack aims to maintain the fast development cycle of PHP while offering the added reliability of static typing, enhancing both performance and safety. It was developed to address some of the shortcomings and challenges of working with large PHP codebases, especially in a fast-paced development environment. Hack and PHP codes can coexist, allowing developers to gradually migrate PHP codebases to Hack, providing a smooth transition pathway without requiring a full rewrite. Meta originally developed Hack to run on the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), which is used to execute both Hack and PHP code, significantly improving execution times compared to the standard PHP interpreter.

I kind of unexpectedly got a new grad swe interview at Meta. I know there are already discussions on Taro about Meta interview, but I wanted to seek advice on my specific situation.

I am sort of new to Leetcode. I mostly interned at startups before so LC wasn't the focus (ik I still should have done LC - my bad). So here are few questions I have:

1. How much can I delay the interview? I am thinking doing it with 4 week breaks - the first round after 4 weeks from today, next round after another 4 weeks, and so on. Is that ok?

2. How many hours should i dedicate per day to leetcode, to get good at it FAST? Asking because I am also a full-time student so I am willing to sacrifice my grades if it requires putting more time into leetcode.

3. What are the HIGHEST bang for buck activities I can do? Time is extremely limited so I want to make sure I am spending it right.

FYI - I do have access to algomonster () - I am thinking of doing my LC prep there cause it's pattern based + has AI coach.

I would really appreciate some advice here. Have never interviewed for a FAANG so this opportunity means a lot. Thanks!!

(Also if you know of good resources, suggest them too! I am willing to invest in resources/mentors.)

I'm in bootcamp right now, and many teams are telling me that they have all 3 of these things. My bootcamp mentor says that's not really feasible - There are trade-offs. Am I gullible if I believe these teams at face value?

I joined this June. Our team has two chunks, one is doing project M and the other doing project H. For the first three month, project M was my ramp up project and manager said I did well. In the mid of October, my mentor told manager that I have code quality problem, writing too fast with bugs in diff. Manager talked to me once and pointed out, which I appreciate. Then the last quarter began, I was assigned both project M and project H work, project H is very coding heavy because of the design pattern and for project M, the tl didn't give any input, I would have to basically guess in the doc, according to the previous pattern, we can present the doc, let people comment, at the same time, start to work(it's building a dashboard), but my manager insist that I need to get a signoff from the project M tl, which I previously actively ask for input, no response, after the dashboard was drafted, the tl was not satisfied and told manager, manager told me he will let other people take over this. That's part one.

Part two, the tl from project H provided detailed guideline and I raised diff in time, but the person was really busy, I can't get my diff reviewed, for a whole week, I only got one review, even though the work has a target date, but that seems not to be meaningful with the sluggish review process, I also asked other team members involved in project H to take a look at my diff, only one person responded after three days. The feedback from this tl is that he can't approve my diff fast. Then the manager think it's still my code quality issue, which I paid extra attention after last feedback, so I was really confused with what he said. The diff review process is always an issue, it was brought again and again during team meeting, but nothing was done to really solve it

The PSC is looming, good part is that I don't need to participate it since I'm TNTE. But I still sense the atmosphere has changed from manager. I thinks the work assigning has some issue as I have never worked on project H before and because of this heavy coding task, I needed extra time for it, hence having no time for project M's dashboard.

Should I be worried at this team? I am not eligible to transfer now, what should I expect next year?

I'm pushing for the E4 promotion in the next PSC cycle, and I've gotten some feedback that I could shore up my people axis contribution. Given that, I was wondering how important people is for this promo and how I can get points on this axis as a growing E3. People axis contribution seems harder given the hiring freezes (e.g. it's harder to be a bootcamp mentor) and the fact that the main intern season is over.

Preparation: Standard top 100 most freq LC problems + Infra System Design Problems + Behavioral problems in STAR format

Interviews

Meta phone screen: Asked two questions directly from the top 50 LC tagged (Array Sum and Tree BFS categories). Aced both questions and was notified the next day that I had moved on to onsite.

Onsite prep: This would be my first system design interview and I did not want to mess it up. I booked multiple mocks and though they weren't cheap, I was satisfied with the overall quality, feedback, and accurate grading.

Meta onsite 1 (coding): This round tripped me up and I was disappointed given how much I had prepared :(

• First question: Tree BFS (was able to get optimal runtime but not optimal space)
• Second question: Multiple binary searches on an array (did not get the optimal solution) (also did not find a similarly tagged question to this)
• Immediately after the interview, I realized the mistake I made on both questions but could not go back and change it :(

Meta onsite 2 (behavioral): None of the questions were a surprise and I answered them to the best of my capacity stressing my ability to work with other people specifically

Meta onsite 3 (system design): The question is similar to

• I had trouble understanding the interviewer and threw all my system design knowledge out there. There wasn't much discussion but I did mention concepts such as inverted index, sharding, replication, hot partitions, cache invalidations, etc

Meta onsite 4 (coding)

• This was my strongest performance and I was proud of myself after this round. I solved both questions optimally
  • Question 1: Number Verification (LC Hard)
  • Question 2: Tree BFS
• Surprisingly (given my other rounds) I received a call the next day saying that they wanted to give me a follow-up coding round

Meta onsite 5 (follow-up coding)

• I fumbled this round, which was especially heartbreaking considering how close I had made it. The questions were related to Palindrome (LC Hard) and Grid DFS
• Same day I was notified after the follow-up I was rejected :(

Eye-opening experience overall and I know I have much more work to pass next time around. The total time to interview was a little over ~1.5 months.

Been on my current team for a half now and working with a teammate on an XFN heavy project. Both of us are E5. While we have split the work into different areas and are owning each area, my teammate is more tenured and has more context on certain common parts of the system, and therefore ends up participating more in the conversations in meetings. As a result, many XFN partners are now seeing my teammate as the lead for this project and independently reaching out rather than communicating with both of us. Skip is also pinging my teammate separately and in XFN groups. How can I take charge and establish myself as an equal owner of the project? Have tried to ramp up as much as possible on the common components and haven’t brought it up to my manager yet, but want to make sure I don’t get dinged in performance review for not driving enough direction. Many times, I’ll message my teammate to discuss an aspect of the project and my teammate will ping my idea immediately to XFN. I’ve brought up establishing clear areas of ownership with my teammate which we seemed to be on the same page about, but things haven’t improved. I have also written most of the docs for the project so hoping to leverage those for direction but want to make sure I don’t get dinged for this dynamic.

I got offers from Meta, several top hedge funds (Citadel, Millennium, etc.), Series E unicorn and a series C robotics startup and I want opinions on who to move forward with.

From a SWE’s perspective, Meta wins, but 10 years down the line, I don’t see myself as a SWE. I see myself doing (1) a startup, (2) going into VC or working in (3) product management or a more business-focused role. For the first 3-4 years of my career I want to get engineering training, position myself to do interesting and impactful work, networking with a talented team and building the skills that’ll set me up for the 3 career paths that I’ve discussed. I’ve listed companies in order of preference :

1. Series E Unicorn
   1. Company is customer-focused (engineers always talk to customers) and engineers wear many hats. These are skills for building startups.
   2. Getting startup experience is great for going into VC.
   3. I’m working on one of their core products, so there’s a lot of chances for growth. High performers become PMs in 2-3 years
   4. 30-40% ex-FAANG and lots of MIT, Berkeley and Stanford alum
2. Meta
   1. Meta trains you to become a great SWE, and you need to be a great builder for startups
   2. Meta doesn’t seem to prep me for the VC world, but the brand name alone will help get your feet in the door
   3. I have the optionality to climb the corporate ladder to do product management
3. Hedge funds
   1. Hedge funds don’t really train you to be a great SWE or a great VC, but the brand definitely helps
   2. I work really close to PnL for a division that is undergoing hypergrowth, so lots of interesting things to be done
   3. Can also break into management relatively quickly
4. Series C robotics startup
   1. I’m a SWE and the place that makes the money are the robotics engineers, so not really positioned to make a huge change

Unicorn > Meta/HF > robotics startup

I want to join the unicorn since it aligns well with what I want to do in the future, but the brand of Meta is really hard to pass on (only brands I have is MS from T5 CS and BS from T10 CS). On one hand I have a long career down the line, and this is one of many decisions I'll make, and if the unicorn doesn't work out, then it's not a big deal. On the other hand, I feel like if I don't choose prestige and the unicorn fails, I'd have a much harder time in life. It's like messing up an RPG build.

I’m curious what people’s thoughts are and what things I’m not considering?

I joined Meta as an E5, and now I'm looking to get to E6. I want to stay on the IC track, so my goal is concretely to get to E6 and stay there, not become an M1. I know that leadership is crucial for EMs, but is it the same for staff engineers at Meta? I'm currently leading <5 engineers who are probably E3/E4, and I'm wondering if I need to expand my leadership scope there.

I've grown to be more of a "tech lead"-style E5, which leads to a lot of time spent roadmapping and talking to people instead of actually executing on the project and being more hands-on. My team is heavier on the E3/E4 side, so I'm able to delegate a lot of the coding work away. I was wondering if this was normal for Meta and whether this is an okay way to operate as an E5?

What are the best practices for onboarding and being successful at meta MLE ads rankings team (E4)? Please share your thoughts on office culture/how to go along well with manager? tips for successful E4-->E5 track? how to ensure getting projects with Impact (team dominated by members from 1 country)?

Note, I will go through the on-boarding course by Rahul, but was looking for some tailored suggestions, thanks

I just got my first project, and I have no idea where to start from and I have 2 weeks to complete the project. I have code pointers. How do I understand the codebase better to even start my project? I need the best actionable advice I can get right now

Hello folks,
I have an upcoming Staff ML Eng. interview with Meta. Could someone please suggest some good resources for behavioral preparation? I have finished the join taro course.

Hi Taro. I worked at Amazon as an SDE for a couple of years before I was laid off. Recently, I signed an offer for a 6 month contract at Amazon. I might get a one year contract at Meta soon though. I never worked at Meta before. I wonder if it is worth burning the bridge with Amazon to take the role at Meta.

I have a few reasons for wanting to take Meta.

• Amazon is only 6 months and it may not get renewed. I don't want to put a short role on my resume and be looking for a job again in 6 months.
• Long term, I don't want to be at Amazon. Amazon really hurt my mental health.
• I would like to join Meta as a full time a lot more than I want to for Amazon. Their culture reputation is not great either, but I really believe it's better than Amazon.

I have one reason for wanting to stick with Amazon:

• It's not like jobs fall out of the sky. I am returning to Amazon now and I may return there one day for a full time role even though I prefer not to.

I'm in the initial stages of a job hunt right now and recruiters seem to have the perception that I'm more qualified than I actually am (especially at non-FAANG companies). I'm E4 at Meta (mid-level) and not performing exceptionally well at this level, but recruiters are trying to push me for 'Senior' roles. Should I just go along or push back?

I know this is a bit of an unorthodox question since most people have problems with downleveling, not the other way around. I'm somewhat confident of passing the coding/systems design rounds for Senior/E5 positions at these companies, but I really want to avoid a situation where I join and immediately start getting overwhelmed by the actual job responsibilities.

Context: ~2.5 YoE

Under what circumstances is a candidate typically down-leveled after the onsite interviews at Meta? The interview was for an E5 SWE role. The recruiter mentioned that the coding interview was not at E5 level (this was even after acing both the medium level coding questions with the correct Time & Space complexities). I am looking for guidance on what could be the reason here. Also, the feedback for the System Design and Behavioral rounds were good. Thanks in advance!

I'm new to Meta, so I'm currently in team selection. My goal is to choose a team that maintains more critical pieces and are more stable with respect to layoffs/reorganizations vs. (slightly) more moonshotty teams with higher risk/reward. An example of the latter would be a team working on maintaining an ads pipeline while one for the former would be a team experimenting with new UI features.

How can I find a team that meets that bill, and what questions can I ask to help identify this?

Hello everyone! I am really excited to be joining Meta soon as a partner engineer. I would love some advice on how to get the ground running, making sure I'd make a good impression and start contributing quickly and effectively.

I have checked out the amazing questions the community have asked on Taro, and have started looking into the , and also the .

I am wondering if there are any Meta specific tips or tips on other things I might have missed coming from a non-big tech background? Thanks in advance!

My brother is very worried about getting a return offer at Meta - he'll be interning there this summer. He reviewed the videos on , but is still confused on who he would assign to review diffs/vouch for his performance other than his EM.