Career Advice About Meta

Always been on the fence here whether an MBA helps me boost my visibility, help me learn more business skills and builds a well rounded profile than "you're just another average software engineer" which could help me get into management track and above faster than my peers?

In other industries, having an MBA is a requirement, but not so much in tech yet, apparently.

Happy to hear back thoughts form folks about this with some recommendations

Joined Meta 2 months ago as an E4 in a completely different tech stack and domain. Recently my manager informed me in a 1:1 and subsequent email with my skip and ERBP that I’m trending BE. It has areas I’m missing the bar on and ways to improve so I’m planning to work on those but is there anything else I can do to turn this around and be successful? Is it impossible to get a CME for H1 if this signal has been documented?

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

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've found other resources in Taro about and , but I was hoping I could get a more nuanced and clearer response for my situation.

Context:

• My team hasn’t identified a goal metric that it’s able to move or a way to get there.
• There are plenty of different projects, but only one that has a clear launch path from leadership. The rest of the projects are stuck in approval loops, in some cases for more than 1 year. I work on a Big Blue team with lots of external dependencies like legal, compliance, and many more.
• The project with the clear launch path has Android work built on top of one of the company’s top priorities. I'm trying to find an Android mentor, but it's hard to get one close to me on the org chart. I plan to discuss this with my manager to determine the path forward.
• There’s a great example of an , but my perception is that the pain points in my org would be solved by alignment with leadership, not engineering.

This quarter, my skip requested/ gave me an opportunity to lead an org wide efficiency initiative as we are at risk of hitting quotas for some internal services (he mentioned potential IC6 scope) and it’s quite urgent to act on it. My role is to start and lead a large team of engineers on this initiative which involves tons of direction to ensure our org isn’t over quota. I would look my role as a hybrid of TL+ TPM with following responsibilities: analyzing data to find opportunities, creating roadmaps for the program, supporting engineers for execution to reduce usage, project management, understanding and enforcing processes, building knowledge on internal services, coaching engineers, setting Eng excellence culture within the org. All that to say, given limited time and a need for someone to lead, I will be focusing on direction and delegate all of the execution work to the squad.

1. How risky is it to have low code output as an IC5? Given the year is just starting, does it make sense to explicitly discuss this with my manager and skip that my code output will be close to zero in Q1?

I did read some accounts (anon post on WP) where EM and skip aligning on low code out out but the IC5 still got MM at the end because they had only 10 diffs for a half. I don’t want to be in that position.

1. Should I deprioritize some direction work and allocate some time for coding on my timeline through P2 projects? This will increase diff count but that just seems not a great usage of my time. TIA!

My ideal plan was to reach E5 (Senior Engineer) on my current team and then leave. But I am nowhere near promo currently. I’ve been on my current team for about 1.5 years now. I have to get promoted in about a year from now, or else I’ll be fired.

I need help deciding whether I should roll the dice and switch to another team. I’ve built some strong relationships on my current team, worked with my manager for over a year now and am fully ramped up to my current team’s stack. I’m not sure how to make the decision of whether to leave or to stay.

I joined Meta but Im wondering if I really will be growing if I am just working on small features for the first year or two

For this upcoming half, I'm working in four different areas: reliability, sourcing, delivery, and datastore table. It just seems like it's too much and I'm not building any depth? Feels like I won't be able to build expertise in anything and be unable to contribute as a good team member if I'm working on everything?

My TL has also informed me they are struggling to scope out work due to a lack of senior engineers. This has resulted in me getting menial tasks such as better engineering work and refactoring in some of these projects (i.e. delivery, sourcing, and reliability). It's great for my diff stats, but I want larger scope and less narrow work to be considered for E4. I'm discussing with EM, but the EM and TL seem like they are on different pages. I'm most interested in sourcing, but seniors are struggling to scope out work.

Any suggestions on what to do here? I feel a bit lost overall and I'm struggling to understand how to get scoped and larger non-menial project work. Should I involve my skip manager here? A couple of questions in this one question but appreciate all the help in advance.

I recently joined Meta, with over a decade of experience in software product development from various companies.

Currently, I'm working as a system generalist, but I have a growing interest in transitioning into a machine learning engineer role by next year.

This interest stems from both a desire to explore that sector and the recognition of the high demand for ML skills. I'm eager to invest the necessary effort to learn and adapt.

Could anyone share insights on the feasibility of this transition within Meta? Additionally, what specific skill set should I focus on developing to align with the expectations for a machine learning engineer role here at Meta?

Your guidance and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am in the very fortunate position to be choosing among some great offers. My question is how to properly choose between

1. A company with an industry-leading reputation (eg Citadel, Two Sigma, DeepMind)
2. A “lower tier” company with less brand recognition/lower quality bar but is able and willing to outbid company (1) on comp.

If comp were equal going to company (1) would be a no-brainer, but how much of a premium should I place on the brand of a company? Put another way, how can I place a number on things like exit option value, social/engineering prestige and so on.

The setup on my team is pretty standard: There's an E6 tech lead that has broken up a big project into multiple pieces, and I own one of those pieces (and the rest of the pieces are owned by other E5s). I'm leading a couple engineers (<5), and I think they're E3/E4.

Zooming out, this seems like decent E5 scope, but I'm sure there's some gaps to turn it into E6 scope. The tricky part is that my org is pretty XFN heavy, so it's hard to get things added to the roadmap, and with the hiring freeze, it's hard to get more engineers onto my team to lead.

All that being said, what are some ways I can find staff scope in this situation?

In one of Rahul's videos [1], he mentions his interview journey when he had ~3 YOE and how he interviewed for a Meta E5 SWE position.

I interviewed for Meta this year w/ 3 YOE similarly and they would not consider me for E5. This is also similar to most other people I know with 3 YOE.

Was it because he had a previous internship at Meta as well as his many other internships? I know Alex also interviewed at Meta with 3 YOE and was down-leveled.

Rahul also mentioned he received an L3 offer at Google (which makes no sense btw!). I'm curious to know how there was such a large variability in the offer levels. Thanks!

[1]

I watched the masterclass on finding a new team and understanding my own priorities to lead a fulfilling career and find a new team within Meta.

Currently, I'm being put up for promotion for IC4 (hopefully, I'll know in late Feb about the outcome) and I would like to switch teams.

My priorities in order:

• Work-life balance
• Supportiveness of team + (most of team in NYC)T
• Technical space
• Growth opportunities
• Product space

My technical space interest is mostly in ML infrastructure (partially what my current team works on) and eventually would like to work towards getting to IC5, but more importantly I'm exploring another potential career (i.e. comedy and stand-up!).

I would like to prioritize my WLB, so does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about my search (considering Meta is known more for grind culture)? And what orgs/teams to look at within the company?

I'm a new engineer at Meta, and my goal is to find a team with a real product future. Because of that, I'm wondering if there's ways to evaluate if a certain project is going to pick up traction. How can I figure out during the team selection process if a team is doing its due diligence on gathering context and proving out business value before building features or if its just building them for the sake of building them?

I have 15 years of experience in the tech industry. I joined meta as an E6 engineer in July, following 7 years at Amazon and over 6 years at Microsoft. Afte joining, I quickly initiated and led small projects, progressing to a major project. I utilized my experience to guide and support other engineers, contributing to their professional growth. Our team has another E6 tech lead with deep domain knowledge and currently, he is the face of the team. We maintain a positive and respectful relationship, trusting each other.

However, I observed that our engineering manager (EM) was not effectively providing direction, hindering team productivity. Recognizing this gap, I collaborated with other tech lead to create a project tracking sheet, enabling us to monitor initiatives with timelines and ownership. This significantly improved our team's efficiency and motivation, leading to the successful completion of a major project.

Now, here's the exciting part – my skip reached out and surprised me with an offer for the EM role! While I'm honored, I'm grappling with doubts about whether I have the necessary skills for success. Despite enjoying mentoring others in technical discussions, I'm concerned about potentially losing touch with the hands-on tech work that I love.

On the bright side, my tech lead partner is supportive and believes I should take on the EM role, offering full support. However, I'm contemplating whether I should explore the possibility of a Tech Lead Manager role to strike a balance between leadership and hands-on technical involvement.

I'm at a crossroads and would love to hear your thoughts and advice based on your experiences.  One side me want to try EM path but one side says why take this hassle and stick with what you know better i.e tech. Also, I treat myself as avg communicator. I feel, I am good at empathy, task breakdown and mentoring skills.