Career Advice About Meta

I was promoted to E5 in July 2022, and I’ve been working on a challenging and highly ambiguous project since then, where my TL and another UberTL have limited ideas on how to make it a successful project and what direction the project should go. I’ve been getting little XFN support since the beginning of the project but still was able to implement and ship the MVP design I did on my own, but I still got MA rating for this. Starting Q2, things got a little better and the direction is somehow clear for H1 with specific high-level components to implement. My questions are:

1. Given this setup, since my TL has already defined the design and different components to implement, how can I still have high impact as a senior eng on the project? Previously, my EM suggested I look at myself as the CEO of the project and my TL as a consultant, but this has already changed when he got very involved in the project. I already do regular project updates on the project and have been getting positive feedback from all stakeholders that I usually get everyone on board with my positive communication with all of them.
2. My EM and TL have been giving me feedback that I need to move faster and target small wins, as opposed to working on a large goal that takes months of implementing, as was done for the MVP solution. The problem is: my whole team work past working hours up to 12-14 hours/day and sometimes on weekends too, which is not feasible for me, so I’m seeing this issue more as a relative issue compared to my teammates as opposed to being slow in execution. How can I resolve this issue? Can I talk to my EM about this?

Thanks!

Like a lot of E5s, I'm working on a piece of my team's overall project roadmap, which is set by an E6 TL. The piece I own is less technically complex than other parts, but it is quite XFN heavy (great for people/direction contribution). I was wondering if this is still enough to get to E6 or do I need the higher technical complexity as well?

Preparation: Standard top 100 LC problems + Infra System Design Problems + Behavioral problems (STAR)

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 didn't 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: (got optimal runtime, but not optimal space)
• Second question: Multiple binary searches on an array (did not get the optimal solution, couldn't find a question to tag)
• Immediately after the round, I realized my mistakes on both questions but couldn't go back and change it 🙁

Meta onsite 2 (behavioral): No surprise questions 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

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: (LC Hard)
  • Question 2:
• 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. The questions were related to Palindrome (LC Hard) and Grid DFS
• Same day I was notified that I was rejected 🙁

Eye-opening experience overall and I know I have much more work to pass next time around. Total time: ~1.5 months

Meta recruiters request references of people you have worked with before who are current employees of Meta before submitting feedback file to review committee.

My question is what & how much impact does providing these references have on your application, candidacy and the ultimate outcome of the interview process.

Does it hurt your chances to not be able to provide these one or more of these references?

I've heard from my peers at Meta that you should post a lot on Workplace, otherwise it can reflect badly on your PSC. Is this true or more of a myth?

I have around 6.5 years experience in Android development. I joined Meta as a new grad in 2017 and never gave an interview after that. I plan to give interviews in about 6 months from now.

I see lot of resources available online for Backend System design interviews but very little information about Mobile System design interview.

Any pointers on what the interview process looks like/ how to prepare for interviews at this level?

Thanks

Hey all, as you know there’s high probability of cost cutting and lay offs by increasing bar at meta. I joined the company 2 months ago and plan to travel to another country(12 hour time difference) and work remotely for about 20 days! (Whole month of December)

In lieu of new information, should I be trying to stay in the same time zone and be seen around meetings(my team is fully remote)? It will probably also help my productivity.

I’ve already booked tickets and I’m not sure what to do.

I'm relatively new to Meta, so I'm having trouble processing things in meetings as they happen, making them a substantial waste of time for me overall. I don't want to seem dumb, so I would to avoid asking a bunch of questions during meetings to make people explain what they just said. What can I do to make meetings more productive for me?

Hi, I have my first team match call with a hiring manager this week. I am E4 level. I have compiled a list of questions to ask to try and demonstrate that I am willing to come in and work hard to contribute to the team's success. Would love some feedback:

1. What are some past projects that E4 engineers have worked on?
2. What is the team distribution, everyone's level, and how do people interact with each other?
3. What are the top 3 traits you look for in a candidate to join and be successful to contribute to your team?
4. What do you think I specifically would be working on at the start?
5. What are the specific expectations for my role/level during onboarding / ramp up? How long is ramp up? What are the expectations after ramp up?
6. How does the team celebrate success?

And please feel free to add any questions you think would be helpful to ask!

Thanks in advance!

I'm primarily on the back-end, but I've been put on a lot of other stacks. I've worked with www and Bloks and now I need to pick up native Android to debug a deep link issue.

I'm having a hard time with the Android issue. I took a long time just setting up the environment, choosing between VSCode, Android Studio, and OnDemand. I'm now working with adb, which I don't really understand as it's completely new to me. There's not a lot of documentation for my problem area, and it's been rough.

More broadly speaking, how can I do better in these situations and pick up new stacks faster?

I’ll be starting as an E6 at Meta, working on internal tools. Currently, the headcount is really low, and people only have 60 days to match, so I decided to go with the first team I matched with, even though it’s not the most exciting option.

I’m committed to doing a great job in this role, but I’m a bit concerned about the potential impact I can have and how that might affect my performance reviews (or get me PIPd). Is this something I should be worried about? Any advice on how I can maximize my impact on a team that might not be seen as highly impactful?

I got an interview call from Meta for SDE position. They asked to send over any names of references I have at Meta. Can you please suggest me any names from Meta to put as references?

Thank you.

What sort of documentations should we have for our 1 on 1s? Is there a video on having a 1 on 1 doc?

My previous manager at Workday told me to discuss
Wins, What I am focusing on, Blockers, Personal Development, Action steps

and created a shared google doc for us, but it seemed kind of status-reporty. Is there another recommended format for our 1 on 1?

Last weekend, I got some surprising news from my EM after our team's Pulse review submission was done.
Turns out, I'm getting a 'Meet Most' rating. I've been at Meta for two years now, and my EM thinks it's a good idea for me to start looking outside the company since a promotion seems tough in the next six months.

I'm not really sure what to think about this. Has anyone else been in this boat? I'd love to hear your experiences. Also, Is switching teams within Meta a viable option ?

Does my manager see how much time I’m actually working? I work offline sometimes and am worried if this may look like I’m coasting