Career Advice About Meta

I've just accepted an offer from a crypto startup, before my Meta interview loop is completed. Even if I got an offer from Meta, I would choose the crypto startup over Meta, so I'm debating whether or not to terminate the loop. If I continue the loop there are of course two potential scenarios:

1. If I pass the loop and get an offer and decline, I have read that if I apply again within a year the process would be easier to get through -- maybe I could go directly to hiring committee/team matching? Is that true?
2. If I fail the loop, then I would not be able to interview again for 6-12 months?

I feel like scenario 2 isn't such a big risk, while there are significant benefits in case scenario 1 happens to offset the risk of 2. I'm not sure though about how true the assumptions above are.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

Got feedback from manager that my rating is just MA and on the border. I was given the context that my project complexity was not that much and it was a lower level project. I worked really hard and was expecting good ratings. What can I do to make sure that I exceeds the expectations next time?

What is the company looking for or expecting when they ask "Why do you want to work at Meta?"

Is saying something like "I have used Instagram/Facebook for a long time so it would be great to work on a product that I use daily" a good answer?

What is a good answer for this question for Meta and other companies in general?

After this past half (I joined mid-August), my manager is saying I'm working at a meets all (MA) level. Granted, I only joined in the middle of the half, but when I ask him how can I take the next level to be promoted or have an EE or above rating, I get very vague answers with not much detailed support (he's also a new manager and this will be his first PSC).

This past half, we had an expectations doc where it listed each project and the impact it should have. I hit all those expectations, but with his vague advice, I'm not able to create actionable steps for myself for this half to get the promo or higher ratings.

From Taro, I'm learning code quality, velocity, and impact are the most important at my level - which from my feedback, I'm doing well in. What are some ways to take it to the next level? Finish my projects earlier and take on more projects in the half? Feeling a little bit lost so any advice is greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone!

I just passed all my Meta interviews for E4 in infra! and now I am onto team matching!
However, my recruiter wants me to try out for the monetization/ads org, but I've heard a lot of bad rumors about that org, notably that work life balance is awful and stress is really high. (Blind seems to especially dislike it haha)

Does anyone have real experience with that org here? Are the rumors true?

I don't mind a little bit of extra stress and doing some overtime from time to time as long as it's not overtaking my personal life.
For instance at Amazon (Gen AI) there were months where I was doing 80h+ per week non stop and that's the number one reason why I would like to leave tbh.

This is only the fast track option that my recruiter is offering me tho, I might still be able to get into the normal team matching pipeline afterwards too.

Anyways, thanks in advance! :)

I'm in my early 20s and started a startup with my friend from college shortly after we graduated. We got into Y Combinator and worked on the company for about 2 years in total before shutting it down recently. I didn't go to a name-brand school, and didn't work full-time anywhere after graduating, but I did a few prestigious internships, one of which being in Deep Learning.

I've heard larger companies and recruiters in general don't like former founders, and I mostly did sales/product for our startup. We built a few web-based products and a few AI infra/AI apps, but nothing crazy and nothing with massive traction. We spent most of our time pivoting and doing user interviews/sales.

I want to get an engineering job rather than PM, because I have internalized the value of being technical when being a founder and don't want to give entrepreneurship up yet. There aren't too many entry-level positions open, and I was hoping to not have to go into an entry-level role, but simultaneously I'm not sure I have enough experience to feel confident in being self-sufficient as an engineer.

Before starting the company, I had a return offer at one FAANG company, and a New Grad SWE offer at Facebook that I let expire. I emailed my recruiter to try to reinstate it, and she implied that I would not be eligible for New Grad since I was too far from my graduation date.

Ideally, I'd like to work in AI at a larger company since that's where all my experiences in college were and where I see the most opportunity (ideally OpenAI or FB). Otherwise, probably back-end/infra at a post-IPO startup/FAANG or worst-case post-PMF startup. I have a few questions:

1. Should I only apply to entry-level engineering jobs, and am I even eligible for them? If not, what level of experience should I apply to and how do I convince them I'm qualified?
2. How should I write my resume/describe my experience+title (especially for larger, more bureaucratic companies which are less open to former entrepreneurs)? Should I even include that I was a co-founder?
3. How custom should I make my resume for each different kind of job I'm applying to (new grad swe, new grad mle, ai eng, at faang+ vs. growth stage startup)?

It's hard to figure out what's going on right now; there's just a lot being said like that some Meta employees "don't belong here", it's time to "turn up the heat", and "low performers" need to be weeded out (I would have thought this was already the case at Meta?).

At the end of the day, I just want to figure out what this means when it comes to employee performance and PSC in particular. I've heard from some managers and engineers that the ratings will be upshifted (e.g. you need old EE to get MA), but I've talked to my manager and they said that this won't happen. But if that's the case, how will the performance review system change?

Any tips on what concretely could be happening and what we can do here to adjust to these changes?

Related articles:

I'm currently in bootcamp and deciding between back-end and iOS/Android. I'm pretty neutral about these stacks, but I do have a slight preference for back-end as it seems similar to topics I learned in school.

Are there any differences in growth potential in any of these focus areas?

I joined Meta as an E4. I'm coming from a company which doesn’t have as much structure around performance review.

I feel good about my coding ability and project impact, but I’m not entirely sure what are the ways to think about the people dimension as someone relatively new.

1. When to start this conversation with my manager knowing org transfer is frozen till March? It might affect psc ratings.

2. Should I start talking to new managers or inform my current manager first?

3. Not sure if I will have enough impact created for mid year signal/ratings if I start looking out for new teams in March and may be join by April?

4. Will there be more jobs posted in March?

5. Please suggest some general guidance for switching teams.

I currently have about 5 years of experience.

I plan to stay in my current role for about 2 more years before I think about a change.

The way I see it there are 2 components:

1. Interviewing Skills
2. Real Skills (I'm most curious about these - what does this look like?)

Additional Context / Questions

At what point in my role should I begin looking to focus on interviewing skills? I was thinking the 18 month mark.

I have never been at a company much longer than 2 years. Should I prioritize staying for longer before the move? The next level is Staff here, but there's no guarantee of promotion.

I don't have a 100% clear vision I want in terms of the technical domain I'd like to build focus in. My current role is giving me good experience in developing technical leadership/stewardship but the domain is not of huge interest. Would it make more sense to target E5 and join the technical domain/team of my choice and then shift into a Staff position? e.g I have always been interested in VR, but never worked in a VR role.

So what are the things I should be focusing on in order to be effective in an E6 role in the future? Accounting for culture, PSC, etc.

What real skills should I prioritize building?

I have a follow-up coding interview with Meta after the Onsite rounds. Under what circumstances is a follow-up round requested? Is it because there were some strong hire rounds and some weak hire rounds? I am looking to gather inputs/tips on how I should be preparing for this interview. Would this interview be different from the other coding interviews that have already been completed?

I have recently been put into a new project by my manager. I dont like the work in the project and would like to change that before 1 year mark. Its been close to 9 months in my current team. There are no experienced ICs in the project and I dont like the working attitude of others. However, I like my manager and have bonding with him.

Q1 Should I move to a new project?

Q2 How to bring this up to my manager and when is the right time?

I joined Meta and my team in July of last year. I got an MA for this half. I am happy I at least got that, but it looks like a lot of people got exceeds expectations. The thief is making me less happy, and slightly worried. Should I feel good about this?

Hi,

I got promoted last half to IC5 and have been leading impactful work streams within our team. I am enjoying my new role and work. In our last 1:1, my manager asked if I wanted to lead a very high priority org level initiative that has impact across multiple teams and suggested this could be a potential staff level project. While this is a great and unique opportunity for promotion, I am also nervous about taking this up because:

1. I am scared this might be more challenging than I am ready for and failing this would put our Org's key launches in risk.
2. I just got promoted and didn't want to actively pursue promotion as I wanted some time to settle in and become a solid IC5 first.

Wanted to get your thoughts on this and what you would do in my position? And if I say no, should I be worried about my manager passing me up for potential opportunities in the future? Thanks!

Will they potentially downgrade based on interview performance? Or will I get flat out rejected if it doesn’t go well?

Hi,

I just completed Meta interview last week, no results yet.

I got a request from my recruiter now asking if anyone at Meta would give feedback on working with me. What are the expectations here? Also, why post interviews?

The product I support breaks often and I've been the go to individual to resolve internal fires. Addressing them takes time away from tackling more impactful tasks, and it's beginning to affect my output. My team doesn't find such infra issues as priorities so fixing them gets little visibility and I'm concerned this will have a negative impact on my PSC. How do I balance this properly?