Team Selection Q&A and Videos

I am currently working on a project where I work as a frontend developer but aim to transition into backend development. Since there are a lot of senior and mid engineers working in backend at my current organization, I have less opportunity to work in backend in my current project, I have also talked with my manger but told me to focus on frontend development as per team requirement.

Here's my questions:

• What strategies or steps would you recommend for making this transition?
• How can I effectively increase my skills in backend technologies and architecture while balancing my current workload?
• Should I concentrate on any particular projects, frameworks, or technologies in order to develop a solid backend profile?

I don't feel as interested in work as much as before after being at the current company for a little bit over a year. Is there something that I'm doing wrong? Do you have any suggestions to get better at this?

For some context, I also only stayed at my last 2 jobs for over 1 year, but less than 2 years. I think the current company, co-workers and product are great. I haven't been stressed about work for a while. But I don't feel as excited for work as I was 6 months in.

Hey all, I’ve been at Amazon for a while now and starting to think about what to look for next. I did a lot of innovative UI work on my last team but now have transitioned into fully backend/distributed systems work.

The UI work that I was doing was extremely innovative and I felt like I was starting to develop a deep specialization in that space before transitioning to backend (not voluntarily since team priorities changed).

I’m starting to casually look for new opportunities and I feel like I’m sort of at a cross roads on whether to pursue a specialized career in UI or focus on becoming a more generalist SWE.

I really enjoyed the exciting UI work I was doing but I’m worried that most tech companies do not have enough scope to grow beyond senior levels as a UI engineer. This seems to be the case at Amazon, and my guess is that it’s because the backend always grows in complexity as your user base grows but the same can’t be said for front end. Of course there are some companies like Figma, Netflix that have a lot of UI scope/ambiguity.

Im looking to eventually move to Chicago for personal reasons and am a bit concerned about the market out there (always open to remote also).

I’ve been getting a bunch of big tech/unicorn/HFT recruiters reaching out. Some would let me interview for front end but there are others that seem to only be hiring backend. I’m comfortable working in both, but I feel like I need to pick a side since that will determine what prep work I need to do.

Was wondering if I could get advice on whether it’s smarter to become more of a specialist vs generalist in today’s market. Right now im mostly interested in working at big tech/HFTs/large unicorns instead of smaller startups.

Seeking Advice on Choosing the Right Team

Hello everyone,

I’m currently at a crossroads in my career and would appreciate any insights or advice. Here’s the context:

Background:

• I work at a company that primarily deals with payroll and HR services for companies.
• I was originally on the payroll team, which has now been absorbed into a larger payroll, taxes, and payments vertical.
• Earlier this year, I was loaned out to help another team set up a new service and architecture.

Current Situation:

• Our company underwent reorganization, and my old team is now part of a different department with the same manager but a different director and VP.
• I recently spoke with my skip-level manager, who praised my work and mentioned that several teams would be happy to have me. I also have the option to stay with the team I’ve been helping recently.

Teams Available:

1. Growth Team: Works on tools for prospective customers (estimates, self-enrollment, etc.).
2. Accounting Firm Team: Services accountants who handle payrolls for multiple companies, focusing on admin ops tooling.
3. Payroll Team: My old team. Not sure how things will change post-reorganization, but I had a good relationship with my manager and team.
4. Integrations Team: Handles integrations with multiple product teams. Not too many interesting problems to solve.
5. Leave and Absence Team: Deals with leave/work schedule-related matters (PTO, holidays, work schedule, etc.). This is the team I was loaned to recently. The new manager appreciates my work, and I get along well with the team, although they tend to work slower than I’m used to.

Considerations:

• I feel a strong inclination to stay with the Leave and Absence team due to high visibility and good relationships with the current director and SVP.
• Career growth and self-fulfillment are important factors in my decision.

Question:

• For those of you who have had to make similar decisions, what type of team did you choose to join and why?
• Any advice on factors to consider in making this decision?

Thank you in advance for your insights!

I hope this helps structure your thoughts and gather valuable advice from others.

What would be the next roles/avenues to look for, after being staff engineer for a couple of years?

Does moving to a managerial role become easy after being a staff for a while, in terms of lateral/vertical hire and also managing the role once hired?

I’m looking to transition from my current role as a Data Engineer to a full-time Software Engineering (SWE) position. I have over 7 years of experience, including 5 years at Facebook/Meta and more than 2 years at a startup. While I have enjoyed certain aspects of the data engineering , I’m finding the analytics side less fulfilling and would prefer a 100% backend-focused role. I am also open to taking a pay cut if necessary to make this transition.

I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Computer Science online from Georgia Tech, where I’ve focused extensively on systems courses like Operating Systems, Compilers, Distributed Systems, Parallel Programming, and Cloud Computing, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. One standout course involves building a database from the ground up, which is further fueling my desire to shift toward software engineering.

Right now, I’m weighing a few options:

1. Leave my job and join an interview prep company like Formation to improve my chances of landing a SWE role.
2. Continue my studies at Georgia Tech, where I can further develop my SWE skills.

Balancing my current job with a master’s program has been challenging, especially since I’m working toward skills that align with my true career interests.

I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to best navigate this transition.

Recently had my performance review and received meets expectations with the baseline raise. I feel like I'm firing on all cylinders and outperforming my peers but it all seems to not mean much which is pretty demotivating. My manager is thankful for my contributions, says he's learning alot from me, and I'm on the higher end of the meets expectations end. Looking around me I feel my work ethic, contributions, and team impact outweights the majority engineers around me.

I have a generally pretty good relationship with my manager so he was very transparent that I'm the highest paid engineer on the team and shared that the engineers in our org that received exceeds do work with more visability and participate in activities outside the team like a volunteer oncall rotation, interviewing, new hiring trainings, etc. Basically makes me think excelling at the team level has little value and I need to seek org level problems to own which seems like an antipattern to me.

My plan going forward is to schedule a call with my VP and try to take ownership of upcoming org level problems and try to start doing not engineering activities like interviewing. I'm also thinking about setting up a followup call with my manager to express frustration about my rating and press him further about the work that will lead me to get higher ratings.

Overall, I think I'm positioned pretty well to excel at this company in the future but is there any other recommendations that can help ensure I'm successful?

Some context:

• I've been at the company 1.5 yrs
• I led our 3 biggest projects last year. Two requiring multiple engineers and cross-team planning and coordination. Delivered high quality solutions on time.
• My manager says I know the systems better than anyone on the team and has called me his righthand man.
• I'm the engineer who hops on any fires, diagnose the root cause quickly and push up the fix.
• I revamped how we do project discovery, grooming, and planning. This has led to big impact in how we deliver and has increased team confidence in what we're building. This was evident in a recent engineering survey which my team scored the highest on in this category in our org.
• I went out of my way to improve team processes, knowledge sharing, and I'm usually the engineer that jumps into a new internal framework for an upcoming project
• I've made significant impact on reliability and monitoring of our system which is my org's #1 goal.

I will be interning at Meta as a Software Engineer. However, it seems the team I'll be joining is more focused on compliance and regulatory issues, which I would think is probably more politically-driven compared to teams that are more consumer-focused.

While I’m confident the team will be great to work with, I'm uncertain if this is an area I would be interested in working in moving forward. What would be the typical process for team matching during the transition from intern to full-time engineer?

I’ve noticed sometimes that companies will ask something like ‘what do you want to work on?’ Or ‘what do you think you’ll be working on?’ I often struggle with these questions because I don’t really know what teams exist within the org so it’s hard for me to l tell the interviewer what I want when I don’t even know the options. In fact, I don’t really mind what I get assigned to, and sometimes I know what I don’t want to do better than what I do want to do (for example, I definitely don’t want to do front end, but other than that I don’t really mind which part of the backend I get put into)

I’ve thought of answering back with something like ‘I don’t have a huge preference, but I’d like to work on whatever will be most impactful for the companies based on my skillsets. If you really have to make me choose, then I’d do …’, but I don’t know if that makes me sound unconfident.

so how do you go about answering these questions?

What are some of the red flags one should look for when talking to potential managers during the Team Match at Meta?

I have 15+ years of experience working on fullstack/frontend. I have never done a really deep backend work. I just built CRUD APIs, using message queue, cron jobs, etc.

I'm interested in going into the backend to learn more. However, given my experience, it's really hard to find a job even one with a lower level.

Is it too late for me to switch? Has anyone done this before?

I'm a 30-year-old SDE-2 looking to shift my career towards data and machine learning. I’ve started as an Android Engineer and also have experience with React and Node.js. However, I no longer find these areas satisfying. Now, I understand the importance of staying consistent within a domain. For the next decade, I want to focus on a technology that will remain relevant for the next twenty years, without being affected by frequent framework changes.

I've noticed that people around 25 years old are able to build impressive projects thanks to good courses and tutorials. Although they make mistakes, it seems likely that within the next two or three years, they will have overcome these challenges. I find data and machine learning more rewarding because they involve answering meaningful questions. Recently, there was an internal opening in my company for a data and ML role, but I didn’t apply because I clearly lacked the necessary skills. However, I believe it’s time to switch and commit to this new direction. Any advice on making this transition smoothly and choosing the right path would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I've seen the term "maintenance projects" (basically, projects where you do bug fixing most of the time) and green field projects (projects where you write code from scratch).

I've been told that the maintenance projects are generally the ones that you want to avoid since you won't learn much.

I didn't see this view against software projects on TARO, like to divide the projects in to these categories from a high level view and I was wondering if you guys can tell me more about this business view of the software projects.

Are there other categories besides maintenance and greenfield? How can I avoid maintenance ones or recognize them?

When researching a company to find out:

1. The kind of work they do there
2. The culture

... the best thing I can think of to do is find former employees on LinkedIn and ask them. This helps me do well in the interviews (because I know what the company does and often what role I'm filling) and know whether I should accept a job (if the company is not toxic).

My question is, is there some kind of limit to the number of people I reach out to? Right now, I reach out to 5 people, and usually at least 3 get back to me pretty quickly. I find 3 is usually enough to get the info I'm looking for, particularly if they were on the team/department I'm interviewing with.

I feel like the answer to this depends on the size of the company. If it's a small startup, there might be more risk involved in asking folks because it can get back to people in the company. And even if it's not a startup, asking 20 former employees for their thoughts doesn't seem smart or reasonable, even if it does involve sending the same message to each.

Curious to get people's thoughts.

Thanks!

For the record, I’m not personally interested in game development - I’m just quite curious.

Everyone hears the following complaints across the gaming industry in general:

• Crunch time

• Lower TCs

I find this quite curious, because I imagine there’s a lot of technical complexity in building games and the numerous tools and engines needed to make them. 

Games are interdisciplinary, combining art, music, sound design, acting, writing, and game design, to create interactive entertainment software - so I would imagine this presents a unique world of challenges that make it just as complex as “regular” software. 

Plus, MMOs and games like Fortnite or Counter-Strike have to deal with all the technical complexity of ensuring a good player experience while having millions of players (clients) playing concurrently.

In fact, Gergely Orosz has on the subject that I found fascinating.

Yet, game developers typically complain of lots of crunch time and being underpaid - and, subjectively, the game dev industry is less “prestigious” than SWE.

Also, I’ve almost always seen devs listed as “game programmer” or “UI programmer” in the credits, as if their primary job is to just write code (and not build good, complex software at scale).

What might be the reason for the differences between game development and regular software engineering?

I was laid off but used to work in big tech and with stock appreciation as well as living with my parents for the past few years, I have a sizable chunk of savings.

I'm living with my parents now and am very grateful that they don't charge me for living at home.

Now I'm debating what to do with my life. I could try to get back into big tech again, but it will be much of the same thing as what I already know. I want to try and maximize my career experiences since I don't need to worry about savings (provided I'm not reckless).

I'm thinking about joining a top startup to maximize my learning and experiences I have in life. Does anyone know how I can find these startups and what stage I should shoot for (ex -> Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, etc)

I'm ok with making an average/below average salary as well as long as I maximize my learning and experiences.

For context, I was a mid-level SWE at FAANG with ~4.5 YOE working towards senior promo.

I'm 30 from Mumbai, India. At the moment I don't have any dependencies as such, though I need to plan well, as an Software Development Engineer - 2 India I think I perform well enough in solving problems for a digital products.

Now my parents wants me to settle down, own a house, etc etc. I've evaluated my current city and commute the state government etc and got in the conclusion that I don't want to live in this place for the next decades of my life. My parents are supporting me for this and I feel I can choose any city + country to minimum learn for an year or start working there straight away.

I have two thoughts in my mind; after doing 6 years of SWE, I think I understand the digital realm. I was thinking of leadership roles or being part of the startups, but I'm not sure how to connect to them. Maybe I can relocate first and then join them? I feel competent that I can crack interviews.

Also a major setback at this moment is my current org has been a bit insecure, that they have made us all sign a 3 months notice period.

Please ask me more and give me some ideas.

My manager is letting me choose between a couple options which project I want to work. What kinds of things should I look for to choose which project would be better for me in terms of becoming a better engineer and resume impact?

I'm currently considering switching jobs. My goal is to grow to staff eventually. Because staff-level engineers are required to have a deep understanding of the business and create scope based on business goals, having a good understanding of the industry seems to be a good skill to have.

All of my experience is in e-commerce. I have owned products that range from consumer-facing to the internal admin and management side. Therefore if I continue with the e-commerce industry, I will be able to take advantage of my existing experience. One company I can think of would be a good fit is Instacart. However, I believe coming up with creative business ideas and having the focus to dive deeper into the business require curiosity and interest. I've never had an interest in e-commerce and I also came to find the e-commerce industry not exciting. I also have concerns that e-commerce tech companies usually only can provide opportunities and compensation on the lower end of the spectrum, due to the nature of the industry still relying on the unit economy of physical goods, and is usually subject to lower margins. But on the flip side, I also understand that interest sometimes comes after you are good at something, so maybe my existing knowledge will help me to be good at coming up with business ideas, and I could grow interest from there.

Alternatively, the industry I'm interested in the most is fintech. I am into finance, for example, I once built a budgeting tool (similar to Mint) over a weekend for my personal use. However, I've also heard fintech can be pretty tedious. Fintech companies usually integrate with banks, and banks have generally older tech. Outside of finance, I cannot think of any industry I'm particularly interested in. However, I have a general interest in working for tech companies where the product is the software, not using software to sell something physical.

May I get some advice on how I should go about considering the industry as part of my job search journey?

Interview Prep Question

Has anyone ever asked about solutions engineer vs. SWE?

I have heard so many different things about interviews here - that you do NOT need to do whiteboarding and DSA (AI startup series B) for a TPM/solutions architect type of role, vs. you DO need to do DSA for a TPM role at an YC-backed early stage AI company.

Type of Role

Lots of my friends are also solutions architects/engineers and PM types and have recommended I try that as a role instead of TPM (product has too many politics they say), or SWE (too boring being just a regular IC if you have business/PM skills that doesn't let you utilize other soft skill strengths I may have).

Comp

I know that it tends to have a bad rap bc of lower pay, customer success or client facing etc. I also have heard the opposite (that it pays more). Thoughts?

I'm a senior software engineer in big tech and onboarded into my company and role as a team lead for the past 6 months.

The project is almost complete, but work is not technically interesting and does not fit into my long term career goals.

My manager is getting promoted as director to another org, and I wish to join him. He said he fought hard to bring me along with him, but my current director would not allow it due to product/engineering resourcing requirements.

I expressed to my manager this was extremely disappointing news, and it's hard to see a future on this project/org. He said to talk to my director and we can follow up afterwards, because he didn't know just how much I wanted out.

I can't leave the company due to the current job market, my short tenure and golden handcuffs. But I'm afraid if I keep chugging along, I'm just going to burn out.

Any advice is much deeply appreciated.

I've been at my current company for about a year and a half, the team I was hired for hasn't worked together until the last two months. because of some organizational decisions all the engineers on that team have been lent to other teams during the period I'm describing. My team didn't have a manager until three months ago, and this manager hasn't been doing a good job either, his onboarding feels slow and he's just started to get closer to the team.

Despite the fact that I don't really "own" anything as I've been working across the org in different initiatives, I'm a top performer in the company. And if things keep going like they are going, I'd hope to get a promotion to Staff in the upcoming 6-12 months (I've gotten meeting expectations once, and exceeding expectations twice).

All that said, I have the chance to join another team with a manager I really like that I've known for about six months, I really like him and I feel that our work styles are quite similar. I worked with his team for about two weeks and it was overall positive, nice, kind talented people.

I'm 90% sure this is the right move for me, but I have a few doubts:

1. Do you think that is going to hurt my momentum to get to Staff?
2. I'll be doing back-end work in this new team, I'm mostly a front-end engineer, but I've done some lightweight backend work in the past, and I'm really excited about working on something different (I'll be writing Kotlin/Ruby), the only downside of this is that I won't be as effective with this new language as I am with my current stack. Should I be worried about this?
3. What key questions you think I should ask this new manager before making the final call?

What do you think about this situation?

Appreciate your insight, thanks!

I joined as a senior engineer and have been mostly working on ops, and I feel like I'm losing my edge as a developer. It's getting incredibly hard to find place in the core teams where actual work is being done. Tech and leadership skills expectations are off the charts. Also it's incredibly hard to find jobs in the AI driven market and the interview process of competitive coding.

Is it time to pivot the roles? I love building applications and problem solving but am unable to influence in the current org.

I'm part of a product squad at our company composed of 2 Senior SWEs (1 of which joined less than 6 months ago), and 4 mid-level SWE (including me, who also joined 6 months ago). The other 2 mid-level SWE also joined in the last 1 year. Last quarter, our PM went on sabbatical. As a result, there was much unstability in our team. I'm particularly product-minded and was able to make product decisions on the initiatives I was working on, making sure to work with stakeholders. But overall in my estimation, our team is in a delicate state and in need of a strong product strategy and direction, which can only be fulfilled by a PM (in my perspective, I could be wrong though).

Someone who knows the PM for much longer have talked to her outside work (while she was in sabbatical), and this person have told me that she is planning to come back only for a month and then leave the org. I realized that the instability is going to hurt our team and so on our next 1:1, carefully and without revealing my teammate who shared that info to me, I asked my manager if there's a plan B in the scenario that our PM leaves. The answer I got back, which my manager got from his manager, is that there is no plan B and that our team will have to adapt to the situation if this happens. To me this answer is a red flag and I interpret it as the org not investing in our team.

My questions now, is my interpretation correct? If not, what else could be happening here? If yes, please advice on what would be a good step for me to take, as my goal is to continue growing in the company.