Mid-level Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I am looking for some good books or detailed courses on system design which are targeted for Mobile engineers specifically.

Hello,

This platform is awesome and I've been looking at a bunch of resources for career advancement. One aspect that strikes me is to play into my strength. While I do enjoy coding (only if it's front-end or mobile -- visual stuff!), it's not my strength or something I will really do outside my job. I do love being in any conversations that involve innovative features for our customers, making our product more modern aesthetically, or questioning the features we do have. The idea of being a staff/lead/principle engineer keeping up with latest angular features or being on call outside job hours to fix some server or UI issues come up isn't really appealing. But I do want to grow. I want the chance to mentor people, influence a project, be in cahoots with people who make decisions about what we want to create, be close with customers, etc. I love the design (UX) aspect as well.

If I stay as I am, I know I will slowly grow linearly in this software engineer role. I do think I will get the senior developer role next year. But most folks who have a C-suite role in product or beyond seem to have an MBA but I am not sure if that's a valid move nowadays. I am taking a couple of tiny PM projects but outside that, what can I do to have the best chance of landing a C-suite role later in my career and making an impact beyond coding?

Looking forward to your replies!

My manager said to me in 1:1 that I take too much time to context switch from one task to the other. He said I can do a better job on my whole multi-tasking approach toward work.

Any tips on how to improve?

I am a mid-level software engineer and expecting layoff in the coming month. As the market situation is very tight right now, I am thinking to take a break to give myself enough time to prepare and land a good opportunity instead of just accepting something which is below my calibre. I have 10+ years of experience and never had a career gap in my resume. How much gap in a resume is acceptable and not questioned (or frowned upon) by recruiters or hiring managers? Blind posts tell me that it is taking some people 6 months or even 8 months to land into a new role.

One of my direct teammates is unfortunately notably under performing since joining the team - without going on too long, their output overall is very low impact, and they often need to be hand held for even simple tasks. For some context, they've been with the team less than 6 months, which does excuse some of their issues, however by this point we'd be expecting them to be far more comfortable and productive in the role, especially considering they have several YOE doing similar work.

Recently, a senior engineer on the team has brought up and discussed this issue with me in a personal discussion, and ultimately feels as though the engineer in question has been given chances/assistance, but you that it's a case of "You can bring a horse to water but can't make them drink".

Besides obviously discussing/raising this issue with our manager (which I fully plan on doing), what else can I do to help this engineer? I'm not interested in seeing them leave the team, but I also don't want to see them stay at this level of impact, and I'm not quite sure how to broach this topic with them (if I even should).

Does it make more sense to specialize in something? I feel like senior engineers focus more on a specific area, while mid-level engineers work on something that’s more generic.

If I were to specialize, how do I pick something that’s going to be on the cutting edge in 5-10 years? I want to work on something that stays relevant long into the future - Are there any specific technical spaces that you're excited about that fit this description?

I've seen advices here in Taro that seniors should make themselves very much replaceable so that when this senior is away, someone is able to cover for them and the team could do well, which makes sense.

I thought the fact that people found the advice to be helpful, shows that making yourself replaceable isn't something that's very intuitive the first time. Like if someone didn't read the advice, they probably wouldn't have optimized for that.

I'm not quite senior yet but just curious to understand the situation (and people) better - was this thinking assumes that the amount of scope is in hyper-growth phase? Are there cases where it isn't really applicable / optimal for them to do so (and so they don't make themselves replaceable, and still do well) - then wouldn't they just continue doing it and we can't really blame them? I feel it's rare that people would change their behavior unless they really understand why.

I'm a new E4, so I obviously have promotion on my mind. I have a good amount of experience coming into Meta (~5 YOE), so I want to move more aggressively with this promotion. If I work 40-45 hours per work with very good work ethic, what's a reasonable target to hit for the E5 promo?

Started at Meta London as a mid-level engineer back in 2020. Put in everything I had, but stayed stuck at the same level despite trying for promotion every cycle. Made it through several re-orgs and manager changes, always thinking "next time will be different."

Never quite found my groove there. I know I'm a solid engineer, but between team circumstances and a poor fit with the product side, I couldn't land those "exceeds expectations" ratings needed for promotion. Now they're laying me off with a "below expectations" rating, which might block me from ever working at Meta again.

This hits hard. Really hard. I poured years of my life into this job, burned through my health both mentally and physically. Now I'm watching everyone talk about this massive AI revolution coming for tech jobs, while London tech salaries are already pretty rough, and I've just lost my position at one of the few companies that paid well here.

I've landed another job to keep the lights on (again, I can code), but it's clearly not somewhere I'll grow much. Being in my 30s and having to rebuild from scratch is scary enough - add in the AI uncertainty and it feels even worse. That "below expectations" rating from Meta feels like a brand I can't shake off.

How do you bounce back when you've had a shot at the big leagues and it didn't work out? When you have to start over but you're not fresh out of college anymore? Some days it feels like everyone's judging me for not making it.

Looking for any advice from folks who've been through something similar or found their way and succeeded even better after a major career setback.

Hi all,

I was put on PIP today. The PIP period is from 01/2024 till end of 01/2024. He said unsatisfactory performance & had to do this to be fair to others in the team. I think I was being benchmarked against others who work on weekends as outlined in my previous question: .

Yesterday I asked my manager for a 1-week remote and 3 weeks PTO (the company has unlimited PTO) from end of January to 3rd week of February. Do you think this was one of the reasons leading to me being PIP during the month of January?

What should I do now? Should I strive to overcome the PIP or should I find a new job? Anyone successfully overcame the PIP? How do I balance PIP and finding new job?

For more information, my 1st-year stock won't be vested till 06/2024 (so 25% of my RSUs won't be vested till end of the 1st year working for them). I think I'm out looking for a new job, but don't want to lose the RSUs.

For the sake of extreme ownership what could I have done better? If you need more info from me I can definitely provide in the threads below.

My style is to admit mistakes when I do them and provide a list of things of what I should have done and the plan moving forward, I always blame myself and always tell others that I’ve done their mistake before and that it’s confusing and easy to fall for it. I have a teammate who when something fails due to a mistake we’ve both contributed to, they don’t like to admit their share and starts to blame others. This teammate is senior to me and they’re knowledgeable and smart but we’re humans and mistakes do happen! How can I handle this situation? Nothing is coming from my manager so far but I’m not sure how to handle the conversations with this teammate and my manager if they mention any mistakes that happened moving forward.

I've always had a fair share of projects, some of which are high priorities for the team and some of which are less so.

How do I show my impact on the team/org when I'm assigned projects that are low on priority?

Less-priority projects often receive less effort from Product, Design, and other functions. Things get delayed because of other higher-priority projects. Do you have any pointers on navigating such scenarios?

Hey folks,

I’ve been on my current team for almost 1.5 years now. My hope is to get a promotion sometime this year which might require a higher performance review (Exceeds Expectations). But if I get an average performance review (Meets All), does it make sense for me to roll the dice and switch to a different team in the hopes of faster growth there?

I know there are significant costs to switching teams, and I want to make a well-informed decision if I do decide to switch teams internally.

I know to refactor my commits only based on previous review comments. I code and test it thoroughly most of the time, but it's hard for me to identify places to refactor. How to get good at refactoring or even identifying places to refactor?

I think I could get an L5 offer now if I pushed for it, but is it fine to level myself at L4 to make things easier on myself? Then I'll try to perform at L5 anyway but it will be a-ok to not quite make it.

I received a verbal offer from Meta for the Android role and I'm in a team matching phase. Recently team matching has been a lot of struggle and could take weeks or maybe months. Last year a lot of hiring managers posted on LinkedIn about hiring for roles and I did exchange a conversation with them. Is it wise to ask the hiring manager on LinkedIn about open roles in their org and then telling my recruiter about it or I should go with a team that the recruiter helps me to connect with?

Should I be focusing initially on quick wins or higher-impact, high-priority projects that could potentially take longer?

At Microsoft, basic criteria for promotion is to deliver at next level consistently. Example: At L62, i need to work and deliver at L63s work level standards.

I was hired as a mid-level engineer, but I'm performing at the level below it. I had about a year and a half of experience coming into my company but didn't get much from it due to multiple re-orgs. In hindsight, I was a poor hire for my role and have felt this way the entire time. I am not interested in the niche and motivation is a struggle at times. I stayed because the team was really strong and I thought I could focus on the coding and grow technically. That was a mistake.

Fast forward a year and a half later (now), my manager tells me informally that my delivery is ok, but the way I go about my work needs improvement and I'm not growing, so I am performing at a level below. I need a lot of help from other engineers. And that I need fewer comments on my diffs and to do more research on problems because I'm not problem-solving well enough to be at my level. He's completely right. The team is full of high-performers and I know that I'm doing poorly by comparison. But I'm already consistently overworking into the evening and weekends.

I'm also hitting the limit with my mental health. I am putting in effort, but am being told it's not enough. For example, I spend some time understanding X and think I understand it, but teammate questions me in a way that makes me apply that knowledge and I realize my understanding is not so good or I did not think about it that way, so I am ashamed because I have spent a lot of time working on the task, but have failed to deep dive into this part. Or my teammate asks me for my thoughts on how to make something better, but nothing really comes to mind. How do I work on this behavior?

Some other questions:

• Is this a sign to leave my team or company? And the profession? Despite my best efforts, I'm disappointing my team and it's taking a toll.
• I haven't been served a PIP yet, but is this a sign that it's coming?
• Naive take, but is it a bad idea/even possible to ask for a downlevel? The reasoning was that I'd rather keep my job than lose it.
• Any advice?

I'm trying to figure out the proper level of fidelity here: Should I have very granular estimates or something that's not super structured - Just a high-level idea of projects with some buffer built in.

I'm curious to know how to structure this plan to ensure that one doesn't take on too much and get overwhelmed, but is also full enough so that in case of blockers on core projects, there's a pipeline of projects to switch into. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!