Onboarding Q&A and Videos

I'm going to be joining Amazon soon and the team I'm on is going from 4/5 people a month ago to I believe 9/10 people (counting me). Our team is going to be comprised of SDE 2's and 1's (I'm an SDE 1).

I'm wondering what's the best way to have the best onboarding experience during this time.

While it will be nice that I will have a decent amount of people who will be in the same boat as me in terms of onboarding, I'm also worried that my manager and more senior teammates won't have as much time for things like 1 on 1s, answering questions, helping me onboard, etc. if they're also helping other people on our team in addition to their own work.

As I'm starting to join a team soon(and knowing this answer varies by team, level, and company), I'm wondering how long does onboarding take and what does it mean to be fully onboarded within your team

I've been struggling with onboarding at my new job.

I'm part of a new team; my only other teammate recently joined. Many related docs are not in English & the translation is weird & confusing often. This makes revamping up independently super hard for me. I try to find that concept in an English doc from any other team, and that's my way of understanding something. But it puts a lot of overhead because I basically now try to understand the work of a lot of related teams too. And often it is much more time for me.

My manager has a lot of people report to her. I had a 1-on-1, and I explained the situation. She asked me to ping her for help. I often have stupid questions, and I feel weird asking her directly. So I asked her to assign me an onboarding buddy from the related team. But from her reply, it seemed like I should talk to everyone on the team & figure it out. I think she wants me to be more independent.

Now I ping people in my team or close teams to ask for help. I have found most or nearly all people to be super-helpful, and they relate to being in the same situation once. But I feel guilty about asking people for help. I feel it doesn't do much for them. As with most, I don't have a team meeting where I could thank them & their/our manager would notice it.

How should I better navigate this situation?

I recently joined a Big Tech company. My assigned mentor is helpful when I have questions, and is also friendly.

However, apart from asking questions when I get stuck, I'm not sure how to best use their time so I can onboard and grow effectively. Does anyone have some suggestions and insight on this?

I've considered asking them to explain how some parts of the codebase work when I have issues, but it feels like unless I work on those parts of the codebase, I will forget what I learn. The domain and codebase is large so this feels low-ROI, especially since I am not working on some of these pieces.

I am moving to a faang company in a month for a staff level position (serving my notice period).

Since I have my freetime, what should I prepare to ensure I have a good ramp up?

I want to make sure I start the job with a good note and quickly make impacts. It has been 4 years since I transferred, so my capabilities to adapt might be rusty

Any checklists or advice would be great. Thank you

Context:

• There is little to no documentation
• We are extremely focused on shipping rapidly
• Everyone is occupied to the fullest with their own tasks
• The codebase and architecture is a mess to deal with
• The dev environment is unfriendly to work with

Questions:

• For our success (and survival), we need to keep shipping features and products that bring in business. How do I get onboarded quickly so that I can start shipping too?
• Is there any value in following typical processes and best practices like 1:1s, project planning etc.?

My starter project was to migrate a web service to a new API which offers similar functionality. This was intended to be a pretty straightforward migration, mostly renaming + replacing some strings. However, this project took much longer than my manager or I anticipated. How could I have predicted and prevented this?

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.

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'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?

Hi joining as a senior software engineer in a company where the tech stack is totally different. How to adopt well so that I can do well in the job as well as go to next step.

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!

I'm a little over two months in at this large (10k+ employees) org, and I work remotely in internal tools to try to automate processes. My immediate development team is fairly small and mostly junior. Most of us onboarded right before the 2023 holidays when things were winding down.

I am trying hard to fit in here and balance, but I am struggling. Our group chats are pretty dead, and it doesn't seem like group-questions are rewarded. We have daily standups, but a lot of work here seems to be conducted "behind-the-scenes" and in 1:1 conversations. I've gotten a bit of a vibe check on this scenario from folks who don't work in tech, and that seems to be normal for those environments. Things feel like they take an age.

For some reference: I get that everyone is different, but also sense a direct correlation between curiosity (to get questions answered and work done) and our team velocity. Maybe it's not something I should be worried about nor even my business, but I still am. I'm still working on disambiguating how performance reviews work, but in the meantime, it seems like we will be judged on velocity metrics, probably sometime in Q3/Q4.

I come from a space where questions were welcomed / encouraged. It doesn't feel that way here, which I feel like I need to adapt to healthily for the near future. A conversation starter model I've found helpful from a managerial relationship is "I've noticed a different communication style here. Is there any way we can discuss?"

Any additional suggestions for coping at this stage would be enormously helpful. I also definitely want to be mindful of being careful what I wish for and the impacts of "going fast" on junior devs, especially because there's a bit of trauma for me there on that side.

Joining a FAANG (Amazon) as a senior eng after being mid level at another FAANG. The team uses Go programming language which I've never used before. Should I work hard on learning this language (in the week I have before starting) or just relax and wait till I actually start?

I'm really excited about my new role as a mid-level backend engineer and have been soaking up everything on Taro about onboarding – it's been super helpful! My aim is to ramp up quickly by delivering small wins regularly and asking enough questions to move beyond the newbie phase. I've got a great onboarding buddy and plenty of support, but no one's handing out tasks. Instead, I get to pick from the todo-list. So, I'm wondering: should I focus on infrastructure tasks or feature tasks?

The infrastructure work is appealing because it's a chance to dive into microservice infrastructure, something I haven't done before (my last job was more traditional on-prem SOA). But I'm also thinking feature tasks might be better for getting a broader understanding of the system and services. I don't want to be a bottleneck for the team, and infrastructure improvements seem like they could be done in parallel without impacting critical deadlines, but it's also an easy way to get nerd-sniped I'd imagine.

Any input is appreciated!

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

Hi everyone,

I work for a company that offers online web and mobile apps for US-based customers. As part of a recent re-organization, all mobile, web, and backend engineers have been combined into a single on-call rotation. Even though most of these 20+ engineers (mobile + Web engineers) have not much context about the backend system, my director wants to alleviate the frequent on-call rotation, and he proposes having a healthy size of on-call rotation that uses the "follow the sun" model approach, which involves training engineers in different time zones to have knowledge transfer about the backend system and potential issues. I'm curious to know how I can effectively onboard and train over 20 web and mobile engineers for the on-call rotation while following this model.

The Backend team has compiled a comprehensive support run-book log for each corresponding issue/alert, which shows the severity, priority, and range of the issue. The on-call rotation involves acknowledging alerts and following the steps outlined in the run-book.

Please note that the support run-book is not a 100% comprehensive source of truth since the production system is integrated with multiple 3rd party APIs and systems, and the backend platform serves as middleware for both mobile and web applications. There may be instances where issues are caused by third-party vendors and cannot be solved by the on-call person.

I would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives on this matter. I'm also meeting with my boss for our one-on-one to talk about his idea. This is still an experiment, but would like to get people's perspective. Thank you!

What is a typical ramp up time for IC5 engineer? I joined a few months back and I was told that I am still not onboarded completely enough to land projects independently. Will this get me a Below Expectations (BE) rating for the mid-year perf cycle or is there still time to salvage the situation?

I’ve recently had my first 1:1 meeting with my manager, and we touched upon several critical points that I believe will shape my journey here. Additionally, I learned that my assigned mentor is based on the East Coast, which adds an interesting dynamic to my collaboration and learning opportunities.

After the meeting, when discussing working hours through the chat, my manager inquired about my preference. Considering the timezone difference and aiming for effective collaboration with my East Coast-based mentor, I’m contemplating proposing a work schedule from 12 PM IST to 12 AM IST. This would roughly translate to 1:30 PM EST currently and 2:30 PM EST after daylight savings adjustments.

I’m eager to hear your insights on these matters, especially regarding the proposed working hours. Do you think this schedule is effective for cross-timezone collaboration? How would you recommend navigating these initial discussions and action points in a new role, considering the timezone alignment needs?

Your advice and shared experiences would be incredibly valuable to me.

Hey everyone,

I'm new to Meta, and while I’ve enjoyed the onboarding experience and the sheer scale of the work here, I’ve found myself navigating through this incentive-induced rivalry culture.

On one hand, the competitive atmosphere can be motivating, but I also sense it might lead to employees chasing artificial metrics or competing for scope in ways that don’t always align with the bigger picture. Everyone talks about this, and I’ve caught myself wondering if I’m slipping into this mindset and whether it’s making me feel jaded.

There had been a few instance where a coworker would ship something that is half working, claim impact and then move off to a different thing, where I am left to fix and get it actually working.

Have any of you felt this way before? It feels less like I'm playing regular chess and more like I'm trying to navigate 5D chess—or maybe even alien chess! If so, how did you approach it without losing sight of the impact you truly want to make?

Looking for some candid advice or strategies to stay grounded and authentic while thriving in this environment!

I just had my last date at my (now former) job. I'm set to start at Instacart next week. Whoot!

I'm wondering if I can/should ask to push back my start date by a week. The reasons to do so are:

1. I get 2 weeks of vacation to relax before I start my job. I'd like to do a bit of travel before I start and the extra week would be huge. I won't have 2 weeks of vacation for a long time, so it's a lot.
2. I get more time to beef up on stuff I should know coming into my job.

While I would very much like to ask, I'm inclined not to. Here's why:

1. I'm starting on contract with a fellow contractor and I believe that peer just started today. One week behind him is prob better than 2
2. The contract I signed goes until late December, so I'm not sure they can push back that date even if my start date is pushed back.
3. I kinda already agreed to the start date.

When it comes to negotiating pay, the rule is it doesn't hurt to ask. I know that and benefited from it! But in this case, I'm concerned it does hurt to ask as I don't want to seem unenthusiastic about the job or not looking forward to starting or someone whose word is unreliable.

What do people think? Should I ask or just chin up and bear it?

Thanks!

I joined a new startup, and I am in a my third month. On the surface, I feel things have been going pretty well. I'm earning more than I did before and my mentor & manager have gave me good feedback on my first month. I followed some good practices I learned in Taro - like having videos in every PR and asking many questions.

But then the next 2 months life has been bit busier for me and I've been running behind on other projects I committed to finishing by the end of Q4. I have been managing to work just under 40 hours a week, but feeling like I should do much more given it's a startup and especially now that I am earning more than I did in my last job. I feel like if I worked more than 40 hours I would easily meet or exceed expectations, but just haven't been finding the time.

I haven't gotten any negative feedback yet, but since it's a startup and there isn't really a clear performance review standard I am trying to understand how worried should I be as my 90 day mark is approaching. I know the company previously parted ways with someone after 3 months.

Currently I am planning to make up for this and spend some extra time in Christmas, but I am wondering for now would companies generally give me a notice in advance if I am underperforming?

My manager gave his 2 week notice today for personal reasons. The company is working on backfilling his role which in the meantime will be handled by his manager. I recently started this job a few months ago, so while I have worked closely with my manager, I haven't yet worked with his manager or other managers in the org yet.

Here are my questions around making this transition smooth:

• What can I do in the next 2 weeks to ensure that the work I've done with my manager is captured well for other people in the org to notice?
• How do I best approach the last one-on-one with my manager?
• And how can I make a good impression with my new interim manager?

I've been 2 years in my team and I'm the only person working on the front end side. The other 5 engineers in the team are all in backend. Last month, there's a new college grad joining the team and my manager has asked me to onboard the new hire to frontend side. I have concerns that after onboarding a new hire, I won't be as critical to the team. How should I approach it?