Team Selection Q&A and Videos

I have realized that my current role is not aligning with my interests due to various reasons, including unsupportive teammates and limited learning opportunities. I am waiting for the right opportunity to transition to a different team and take on a completely new role. In the meantime, I’m working on building side projects with respect to my new role. This transition might take around 6 months to 1 year.

While I am here with my current team, I am trying to fulfill the minimum job requirements. My question is whether I should maintain a decent rapport with my current teammates during this time, such as having 1:1 meetings.

Additionally, I would like to know what kind of teammates are worth connecting with, and how much time and effort should be invested in maintaining those connections when I know this is not the right place for me.

I'm on a small team attached to a specific fund at a hedge fund (there are many different funds both in the main org and subsidiary orgs). Due to compliance reasons, my specific fund has been firewalled off from the main hedge fund so we don't have leaks and conflicts etc, and as a result our codebase and infra are entirely separate.

Generally, what can engineers do to grow if they've been placed on teams that operate outside the main engineering org? Is the solution just to transfer to the main org eventually?

I don't really know what I want to do in my career. I finished university one year ago, and I work as a full stack engineer right now, and I'm quite interested in ML. I'm more frontend-facing right now, but I see low returns on spending too much time learning new frontend frameworks my entire career. I'm more interested in becoming a well-rounded engineer, so I feel that there would be higher returns on digging down into the backend more. I have been looking at trying to join some big tech company as a backend engineer, but I just went on an interview for a small tech company which does quite alot of ML with the hopes that they were looking for another ML engineer. Instead they presented me with a broad-scoped data engineer role which sounded pretty cool.

My strategy up until this point has just been to find cool roles where I get to learn useful stuff as an engineer from people who are way smarter than me. Sometimes I think "If I would make a startup, would this skill come in handy?" Is that a poor framework? Should I have a plan? I don't even know if I ever want to make a startup lol. I'm interested in joining big tech, but other than that I'm not really sure. I just enjoy building stuff, and I see this as an opportunity of learning data engineering really well (which I don't know very well), but that is perhaps not a wise career choice? Any guidance on how to think as a new grad is appreciated lol.

I've noticed that my manager often doesn't acknowledge my suggestions or thoughts during team meetings, even though our one-on-one interactions are fine. I feel that high-impact opportunities are given to other team members, despite my requests for them. I am moved to support work recently (manager claims that this is also high impact and there is scope to reduce operational work). Additionally, I received the no salary increment in my team in last review.

I also feel that my manager supports a teammate at the same level as me more than they support me, even though we are both working towards promotion.

I'm not sure what to do—whether to stay and hope things improve or transfer to another team and start fresh. If I change teams, I will need to start working from scratch for my promotion.

Does working in different area - infra, developer experience, product, backend, frontend over the career period hurt in terms of becoming/staying a staff engineer or manager?

One of the questions I have is product manager same as the project manager (TPM)? It means a bit hazy between companies and has always puzzled me when looking at a job opening.

Another question was around what are the natural progressions for each of these titles in the career?

I'm a new MLE at Meta, so I'm in bootcamp. I'm trying to go for a team that’s super in-depth with regards to ML and neural architectures vs. a team that would give me more breadth. How can I find such a team and what questions can I ask to identify it?

I know for sure that one of my friends got that at OCI -> Oracle switch. What about Faangs?

Greetings, everyone,

For the past five years, I've been working as a cloud engineer, mainly focusing on major cloud providers. My tasks have revolved around provisioning instances, configuring logs, and handling various operational aspects. However, I must admit that my job's scope is quite limited, and I find it challenging to discover more engaging opportunities. Unfortunately, the team responsible for automation work, although I occasionally collaborate with them, isn't the most receptive or cooperative bunch.

In light of this situation, I've decided to explore my interests further and pursue personal projects that align with my passion for Data Engineering. I've already started working on some of these projects and find the field incredibly fascinating.

While I'm aware that the current job market is unfavorable, I am not actively seeking new opportunities at the moment. Instead, my focus is on building a robust portfolio over the next year or two, with the intention of eventually pursuing a career in Data Engineering.

I believe that having one or two years of experience through personal projects in Data Engineering will improve my chances of securing interviews, as finding data-related opportunities within my current company has proven to be a challenge.

I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter!

There is a policy in my company (Tier 2, in the likes of VMWare etc) that the managers should connect PRIOR to the interview.

I personally think this is discouraging, as the current manager can really screw you over if they want to. My relationship with my current manager is ok. Not great. However, I have been standing up for myself a lot as that is causing some under current on my team and with this manager. I found a fantastic opportunity within the company and want to interview.

How can I strategize given this company policy?

My fear is inform manager -> they tank my performance review / bonus / raise ( it is currently perf cycle now) -> interview reject -> Back on this team.

I’ve seen questions recently about people wondering whether to pursue an MBA of a CS Masters which comes at the expense of either maintaining your current tech job or searching for a new one. My question is slightly different: When is it worth taking a learning sabbatical if ever?

By learning sabbatical, I mean I have seen people put on LinkedIn that they did quit their jobs to do a bootcamp in some field (Mobile, Blockchain, etc) or even just self-study on their own. I have a coworker who’s a business analyst and told me he’s quitting to do a data science bootcamp. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me, but not my decision.

I think the general rule people follow is to have a job while looking for one, particularly in this economy. Still, I’m wondering about what circumstances actually warrant quitting a job to invest in getting one in a different field. Obviously being in a toxic environment is the best reason to get out of a current job. Similarly, if you really need the money, you probably can’t leave the job.

So let’s assume that neither is the case. You don’t need the money and the environment is positive, but you’re really not doing what you’re passionate about and feel like every day you are missing learning cool stuff. Say you’re a business analyst and want to become a data scientist or backend software engineer. An obvious move is to try and switch into these roles within your current company. But if you can’t do that, how to think about taking a learning break?

Hi everyone,

I hope this message finds you well. I'm currently an SDE-II at Amazon and have developed a keen interest in advancing my career towards AI, specifically in Vision and Autonomous Systems.

I am reaching out to seek advice on how to approach this transition within Amazon. I value my current role and team, but I'm eager to align my career with my growing interest in AI technologies.

Could anyone share their experiences or advice on how to discuss this career aspiration with my manager and skip level? Additionally, I would be grateful for any guidance on mentorship programs, internal channels, or resources that were instrumental in your career transitions within Amazon, particularly into AI-focused roles.

Any insights or recommendations on how to navigate this path would be immensely appreciated. Thank you for your time and help!

I went through the interview loop at Meta, and currently in TM phase. I had initially interviewed (phone screen) for the E6 SWE role, but got down-leveled to E5. Went through the interview loop for E5. The recruiter came back with an offer for E4 (got down-leveled again). Does it make sense to take up the offer? Would it be a setback career-wise to accept an E4 role in spite of having 12 yoe?

Hey Taro community. So I saw on and Alex touched on seed startups being not really good for early careers. I wanted to ask: So I met this person at a tech meet up and we exchanged twitter names over the summer. She’s currently building in health tech now. She made a tweet asking if any engineers wanted to work at a seed stage AI devtools startup (round led by top tier technical firm) and to DM her if you were interesting.

Should I do it or just leave it? Knowing how the climate is now just thought about beggars can’t be choosers.

I have 2 years of experience in big tech product related teams (Typescript frontend and C# backend) and I want to pivot to more low level teams for better on call and team cultures. AI compiler / accelerators seem like a growing field. What are some good resources to learn?

I checked out one Microsoft Maia team that have 12 people. 10 of them are principal level. The team looks highly specialized, which makes cutting into it even harder.

Context can be found below:

I am a 32-year-old engineer with 7 years of experience. For the past 5 years, I've been working at a startup that is around 10-12 years old and recently went public, serving as a mid-level backend engineer.

Despite my time at the company, I haven't seen much career growth. I received my first promotion after a year and a half, but nothing significant has happened since then. I'm feeling lost and unsure about my next steps. The work is unmotivating, and I feel like I'm not learning or growing. I'm constantly occupied with production issues, and my manager frequently cancels 1:1 meetings. Even though I receive positive feedback, I know I'm not fully utilizing my potential, which is troubling as my years of experience increase without meaningful progress.

Currently, I'm extremely demotivated and struggle to find the drive to work each day. I wake up feeling stuck and unhappy with my job. Although I get my monthly salary and perform my duties, I'm no longer passionate about my work. I have the knowledge and skills, but I just don't feel like contributing to this company anymore.

Can you help? I'm not happy with my current situation. I used to be a curious person, staying up all night coding and learning new things. However, for the past two years, I've been merely going through the motions at work. I want to regain my curiosity and sense of empowerment, so that when I go to bed each night, I feel excited about what I can achieve the next day.

I switched jobs a few months ago. Recently, I shared with my skip during our quarterly 1:1 that I'm not feeling much of a long-term vision or impact in my current team. He hinted at a potential opportunity to work on a new project crucial for an upcoming product launch.

I'm eager for growth but hesitant about switching teams again, considering it would be my third move in a short time. Also, the details of what we'll build, how it'll integrate with other products, etc are still uncertain, as is the org structure for the new project's ownership. This raises concerns about stability. However, I'm inclined to embrace the opportunity, especially after reading about embracing ambiguity for growth from Alex's LinkedIn post.

My ultimate goal is to transition to a different org, but I know I need to demonstrate impact first. Any advice on navigating this situation would be greatly appreciated.

I had recently joined as an entry-level engineer 6 months ago, and I have been told now that I will be basically working as part of two teams, with half of my time devoted to each one. So I will essentially continue to deliver some work to my current team, while learning a new tech under the same org and delivering to them as well.

The new team I will be working with is still unsure, I have been given two options and have been told about the scope of each of them, I have to revert back with an answer in a few days. I have been told that priorities might change, and adjustments will be made accordingly. So everything is a bit dicey at the moment.

My concern relating to this is:

• Is this an indication of my current team not having sufficient work for an entry-level software engineer like me? It is a database-ops team, already having 2 senior-level developers. Furthermore, is it an indication that I am not delivering at the level they expected and hence my abilities are not of use in the current scenario?
• I haven't explicitly received any negative feedback from my manager or my peers so far, and have been overworking sometimes. However the current change is a bit overwhelming given it is still not sure where I would be used as a resource, or if my work is actually making an impact. Also even though there is no negative feedback, there has also not been a lot of positive encouragement, it is like a neutral situation where I have been told I am meeting expectations, but it feels like I might not be exceeding them, or might just be an average performer.

Just wanted to know if anyone here has faced this before, or have any insights on this. Also since the market is bad, I am a bit concerned that this change might not be an excuse for a future layoff or something like that.

Hey Folks,

I have the famous question here : Big tech -> startup : Should I do it?

Context:

I have a pretty toxic leadership. I have even got offers internally, but the leadership played political and I didn't end up switching teams. Also to note, I was told that I have been given "meets most" or the lowest rating a person can get.

This was a pretty horrible, as I was in exceeds in my mid year. I am not sure why they are being nasty.

And rumor is that they will be letting folks with this rating go this month. ( All on blind, and some managers from other teams also confirmed, but I have not been given a last day yet)

Given this a context, I just want to see if I should take up a startup offer.

I have 10+ YOE, and I see that I am not getting as many calls as I used to just 2 years back. And the interviews are much more random. This makes me concerned.

I am not on visa. But moving from big tech -> start up is a huge paycut.

What do you suggest I do?

I'm taking the first steps to leave my current job and need some help figuring out where I should go next.

For context, I've worked a couple of jobs across the private and public sectors, with my current job being at a consultancy. I like the work-life balance, my colleagues and openness to personal development at my current role but don't like how inconsistent the workload can be. It's often peaks and valleys when it comes to how much work needs to be done on a weekly or sometimes monthly basis. It usually means as employees, we sometimes have several days of little to no work, which to me feels like a waste of time that I could be using to develop my skills through actual projects. Also, the pay is lower than the average in my city. (Not a massive issue, but times are tough with inflation.) The other issue is that I'm often jumping around many different tools and languages, which has been good for building general skills, but I want to build more of an expertise in something.

Here's where I'm stuck. I'm looking at a ton of jobs and I find it difficult to know what is appropriate for me. I often second guess things like the job title, seniority level (This one especially. I never feel like I'm good enough.), type of company and pay, just to name a few.

I know there isn't a "perfect company" and at some point I need to bite the bullet.

What I'm hoping some people can answer is some questions to ask myself, or even a checklist to work through to overcome the overthinking and just start applying for things. I'm hoping that this sort of process can get myself to a point of applying once I've added some extra details to the resume.

What are your thoughts? What steps do you take to deciding on a company/role to apply for?

I have been impacted by the recent layoffs. Let’s call it Company A. After that, I got an offer from company B. Since I’m on H1B visa, I had to sign the offer and join the company as soon as the visa transfer is completed. Let’s say a short time (less than 2 months) after joining company B, I got an offer from other companies - company C that I have interviewed in the past which offer better level, scope (project) and TC and if I decide to move to company C.

Questions:

1. How should I notify the manager at company B and explain them the situation?
2. How and when do I notify company C that I had to join company B to maintain my visa status?
3. I’m afraid that company C would think bad as I’m leaving a recently joined company B (what if the company C’s recruiter think if I will do same with them in future)
4. What if the company C does layoffs after joining them?
5. Is there a possibility to make sure anything(s) with company B to burn as less bridges as possible?
6. Communication tips are much appreciated
7. Any other inputs/questions I need to keep in mind

Thank you so much.

I was reached out to by a recruiter from a non-American, overseas company (1000+ employees, multi-billion). The company is doing cool tech work, but the division that I'd be working with has 3.4 on Glassdoor with people complaining about culture and WLB.

Based on that alone, I'm inclined to pass. I'm thinking that I want my next role to have 4+ on Glassdoor.

Is that reasonable? I know this depends on what you want in career, but good WLB and nice people are top 4 for me.

I'm in a dilemma of wanting to change my career from a Data Engineering background to a SWE one.

My dilemma is about me not having too much of a coding background (too much SQL) and not wanting to do badly, alongside with probably having to accept less pay.

I am working in a product, it has been 4 years, started from level 59. Now I am at level 61 for 1 year now. I am reporting to the same manager in these 4 years. I am not excited in the current team and want some change but these factor is holding me:

Pros:

1. The product team is expanding, this time they have taken work from US and hiring in India.
2. They are promising for new challenges this year with the product with AI features.
3. Last year, this product was having visibility from CVP, now they are claiming it will be having visibility from EVP.

Cons:

1. Last year, the head of UX left the team to join outside firm and recently the head of PM has taken internal transfer.
2. Overall team culture score(known as Thriving Score) is lower than the average score of Microsoft.
3. To be honest, I don't use this product in my day-to-day life, neither my friend does, even my team mates doesn't use. But it has good number of downloads.
4. WLB is sometimes worse for a specific period.

Note: Not considering switching to other company as stocks are doubling every year here.

Should I switch in-org or outside org or switch to other company?