Team Selection Q&A and Videos

Can you please share some overview about the company, benefits, projects. I have an offer with the company.

I've been a software engineer in India for 8 years, working with reputed companies. My previous company (A) was an Indian startup that grew significantly during my 5-year tenure there. I learned quickly as a junior and mid-level engineer, often handling urgent issues. Despite frequent deployment failures, it never hindered our release pace. However, after 5 years, I felt burned out due to poor work-life balance, especially after getting married, and the pay wasn't competitive.

I moved to my current company (B) about 2.5 years ago, drawn by a 100% salary hike, better work-life balance, and excellent perks. But I soon noticed a strong cultural shift. The engineering quality at B is not on par with A, and their systems are less mature despite being in the same domain. I saw this as a chance to improve B's systems using my experience, but progress was slow. The company seemed more focused on appearing as tech leaders rather than actual tech innovation.

Initially, I had a supportive manager, but my feedback on engineering practices and processes led to tension. Over time, my manager avoided interactions with me. Now, the team dynamics are strained. Juniors respect me, but peers and seniors, even recent joiners, view me negatively, questioning my teamwork. Bureaucratic politics from new tech leads and senior managers, who came from the same previous team, add to the problem. My manager, caught in this new dynamic, no longer supports me and avoids our 1:1s due to their negative nature, although she now wants to rebuild our relationship as she claims that she has reflected over it after she got a break from everything after few weeks' of leaves.

The toxic environment has pushed me to prepare for other opportunities, though it's made me wary of company cultures. I don't want to join startups due to their poor work-life balance, but I seek a role where I can spend 60% of my day learning valuable tech skills without unnecessary politics. The office environment has turned very hostile for me where anything I try to say gets taken in negative light. This is affecting my mental health, but I'm trying to stay here until July for my stock vesting.

I'm struggling to stay hopeful about the software industry and would appreciate any encouragement. Thanks!

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?

Hi, I have joined Goldman Sachs recently (4 months back) and almost close to deliver my first major project (end of week). My main work is in creating data pipelines or using in house sql tools to gather data in various lakes and warehouse for other tools to use them. The Tech part of the whole firm seems super unorganised (they never use agile or change management in past 6 years for tracking work) having so many in house legacy tools, never having generic view of the problem to create generic solution and half the time doing manual reconciliation or data search for expected data fields with super high learning curve.

I feel I should go for switch. What are some of the points I should use to analyse the team and the firm for switching so early? My team is supportive to help me but they are always under pump. In my last company, we were about to be laid off, so I didn't need to evaluate company for switch.

Put on an exciting Staff level project for the last 6 months. Now, asked to make a tough choice - move out of Org or stay in current Org and give up scope.

Pros of moving:

• Scope: getting multiple jr level engineers to carry out the scope I created.
• Exciting product.

Cons of moving:

• Current manager turned down the scope expansion.
• Have built relationships within current team. Enjoy working with them (more familiar)
• Less depth AI/ML work but more product heavy (which is high impact as well but slightly less interesting from ML standpoint)
• Lots of unknowns with new team - unknowns beyond staff scope IMO

TLDR; What would others in the same situation recommend? From taro courses, Option 1 seems better. But there are unknowns especially with current manager refusing the offer.

BookMyShow is India's biggest online movie and events ticketing brand.
Now in movie streaming as well.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, they laid off 96% of the staff.
Post-COVID, record with highest-ever ticket bookings.

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.

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 work as a contractor for a big fintech in the USA. This fintech does not allow contractors to lead new feature development regardless of seniority (not explicitly, FTEs have separate sprint planning and meetings).

We (contractors) only work on research tickets and bugs.

This is frustrating. Should I change company?

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.

I was a former startup founder and companies like FAANGMULA (Meta, Google, Apple in particular) have reached out to interview me for senior SWE positions, how should I chose any one company (these options or others), that I think might want me to recreate the type of IP that was in my startup paying me a salary instead of acquiring me (if I were to do my company again), which they can cheap out on? If my goal is to have my own company again someday, should I work somewhere else less related to my expertise (just need it to pay the bills for a few years before trying again)? Or do I go somewhere, think I can learn, won’t necessarily get promoted or get paid more and sacrifice my IP that these companies (or other smaller startups), could actually end up owning?

I got a P40 offer from Adobe working on some ML-related problems in AEP. The pay is decent. However, I do wonder how it will be seen on my resume.

I am from a mid-size social media company (think of Reddit, Pinterest, Snap, LinkedIn, etc.), so I can shoot for FAANG if I'd like. However, I wonder if I decide to go to Adobe first and then FAANG a few years later, will a stint at Adobe on my resume hurt the optics? I don't care about "prestige" per se but I do wonder how it will be seen from a recruiter or HM's perspective. Worry about potential bias. Thank you!

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?

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?

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!

How much of ML experience is needed/looked at during Team Match, if particulary interested in joining a team doing ML? Are Hiring Managers particular about this requirement during TM? This is for a E5 and E4 levels.

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'm deciding between two companies, ie think FAANG and a pre-IPO startup.

The big difference is that

FAANG

• mid level engineering role
• work on high scalability systems in a cloud infrastructure division

Pre-IPO startup

• Senior full stack engineering role
• Work on building new products/features from scratch and continuing to evolve them

The Pre-IPO startup pay is certainly higher, and I think the company's prospects for earnings are higher. However, the FAANG role offers work on highly scalable systems, which I don't quite have much experience on. I'm a product engineering/full stack role.

I worry about there's not that many product engineering/full stack roles across FAANGs and for future job security, it might be worth building up the skillset for highly scalable systems?

I'm optimizing for compensation over the next 3-5 years.

What makes the most sense to target next?

Context:

Currently a senior software engineer at Big Tech in the US.

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?

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 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.

I'm in the team matching process for an E4 position at Meta. I've reached out to numerous friends at Meta for team recommendations, but responses have been limited, possibly because most of them are at the E4/E5 level and not really connected to hiring decisions. If someone asks me about if there's any good teams hiring in my current company, I'd have a hard time answering it.

I’ve started cold-messaging managers on LinkedIn but haven’t had much success yet. My intuition says it might not be too fruitful because 1) people don't check LinkedIn very often, 2) they might be hiring previously but not hiring now, 3) they are hiring for specialist positions but I'm generalist.

Then, are there benefits of reaching on my own? Are there any success stories from contacting managers versus going through recruiters? I'm not too worried about not having a match, but I'm just trying to optimize to get a best outcome.

edit: got some responses from my friends. I think I'll wait to see if any leads from my personal network can result in something :))

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?