Productivity Q&A and Videos

Even being a Taro premium user, I'm unable to participate in all the events, though I heavily need mentorship, seems like a roadblock for me because on LinkedIn I see so many posts, it's very difficult to catch up.

As a Senior software engineer working at a mid-size tech company, I’m still learning how to properly push back when others Sr SWE & managers or Directors from Web or Mobile team tried to get me to do tasks that do not match my own priority.  As much as I like to be nice and support others, I agree that I can only do so much.  I brought this up with my direct manager and my Director (L7 Senior Manager & L8 Director), and they told me to loop them in when I face overwhelming pressures from other engineers/ cross-functional teams. My direct manager also told me they wants me to be able to focus on big project initiative, and they see that I am on track to be the Tech Lead given my current trending.

While I do appreciate that my boss gives me words of assurance and direction and offered to step in to fend off those pressures during my one-on-one call, I recognize that I would have to be the person who is good on establish priorities and be able to push back on people. I cannot really rely on my boss to do the push-back to fend off the pressure given that with the recent layoff, we are short on staff.

Wanted to get some thoughts and suggestions on "How can I push back diplomatically against an overwhelming amount of tasks"?

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.

I watched the video I am particularly interested in the point: "Great TLs sequence their project in such a way that all the highest risk things get knocked out first". Can you please give examples of doing that in a real life? What are some examples of activities that you found higher risk than others and therefore you decided to do them first to minimize the risk?

I have been working less than a year at Meta and am just unable to understand and jell with the culture. There are a few main things contributing to me feeling burnt out.

Endless number of things to do...

There is equal emphasis on contributions to all axis and there is barely any overlap in the work that I need to do in order to meet expectations on all of them (except maybe Impact and Direction)

Better engineering projects that my team has scoped out are very separate from Impact projects

For people axis, I have to drive org level impact which is a thing of its own and adds on to the BE projects and impact projects.

Our oncall is extremely tough since we have a huge number of products with code dating back to 10 years ago.

Due to all this it feels like I'm having to do 4 jobs at once.

Process is bloated...

Especially for impact projects that result in changes to the product, there are a huge number of people involved, UX, DS, DE, 2 major orgs who are our customers and their representatives, Content, PM and business leaders. I get pinged for dates and status updates by 5 different people for either the same or different things every day. It is hard to keep up with and as someone who has some ADHD traits (unofficial diagnosis) and an introverted personality, just getting pinged and keeping up with responses feels exhausting let alone the coding aspect. Meta lives by its bottom up culture but in our org it just doesn't seem like its working. In my previous job, process was barely something I had to think of, and mind you we did weekly releases to 3 environments.

Laser focussed PSC conversations...

From having performance conversations 2 times per year to now having them 2 times a month seems like an extreme overkill and adds to the stress at all times. It isn't just the frequency. PSC self reports are so heavily dissected for every single word, every single metric that doing PSC right feels like a project in itself. so now it's 4 + 1 = 5 jobs.

What should I do? PSC season is again around the corner. Practically speaking I have a few options I want to get some thoughts on.

1. Change teams (requires an exception since it hasn't been a year)
2. Leave meta (and payback some comp components and say good bye to crazy TC)
3. Take a medical leave (still risk getting dinged at PSC)
4. Stick it out until the 1 year mark and revisit above options.

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?

Can I do well at Job and interview prep simultaneously? Would be interested to hear stories from people and strategies employed.

I am a mid level engineer and I work for a manager who has micromanaging tendencies. Some of these tendencies include,

1. Going deep into implementation details of tasks that engineers are working on. I have been in meetings/discussions where proposed solutions by engineers have been ripped apart by this manager without them having enough context about why the engineer is doing it a certain way. This almost always leads into the engineer having to explain the nitty gritty implementation details to this manager to convince them that the engineer is doing the right thing. Overall, the manager shows very little trust on the decisions taken by the engineers.
2. When there arises a situation that the manager wants something from an engineer, they will want it immediately i.e. within the next few hours, eod etc. The manager is aware that the engineer is working on a bunch of things but they will not show any regard for that fact. This means that the engineer has to put everything they are working on aside to produce the thing that the manager wants. The problem is that this happens very often and it results in engineers either having to overwork to get their job done or affecting quality of their work.
3. The manager will put the engineers under extreme pressure to deliver projects on or before the deadline. This includes minor nudges in meetings, lunches, team activities etc. reminding engineers of the timeline to having 2 hour meetings to discuss where we are in terms of meeting the deadline.

I have a few questions based on the above context.

1. How to deal with such managers?
2. Is it sustainable long term to work for such a manager? I am considering getting to the next level in my role within the next 2 years, would it be advisable to continue working with this person?
3. Do most managers have more trust on their directs than described in the above situations?