Career Advice About Tesla

Hi all,

I am a newly hired Senior Software Engineer. I worked at FAANG before but have never been in a senior role. I am currently in week 3 of my new role. My manager gave me expectation to ramp up in 3 months but with very little further guidance. The codebase is huge with very little and mostly outdated documentation.

What do I need to do to ramp up as fast as possible and position myself for promotion to Staff within next 1-2 years? I read that there are people ramped up within 1 month into their jobs on Taro. Hope you can share your tips and tricks.

I got an interview call for SE position at Tesla and am considering to interview at Tesla. Is Tesla considered a good tech company to work for?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently interning at a top-tier company (think small size, FAANG-level in terms of engineering prestige) and fortunate to have offers from multiple top companies. I’m trying to decide between two software engineering roles: Meta (Menlo Park) and Tesla (Autopilot team, Palo Alto).

Just to clarify, this is a software engineering position on the Tesla Autopilot team, not a machine learning or research role.

Meta

• Tons of publicly available data points.
• Top-of-market pay.
• Opportunity to work with some of the smartest engineers around.
• Fast promotions and clear growth opportunities.
• Amazing perks: free food, fancy office spaces.
• Overall, a safe and reliable choice where I know what to expect.

Tesla Autopilot

• This is where I’m a bit confused. There isn’t much information available online about Tesla’s engineering roles, likely because their teams are smaller.
• Surprisingly, their New Grad compensation is an outlier, double that of Meta, which already pays very well.
• However, I have no idea how compensation at Tesla evolves over time (e.g., after promotions) compared to Meta.

My Dilemma

With Meta, I feel confident about what I’m getting into, as there’s a wealth of information online. I can reasonably predict my total compensation (TC) over the next 1, 2, or 5 years. On the other hand, Tesla’s Autopilot team is appealing, especially with the high starting pay, but I’m uncertain about their pay scale for higher-level roles or how career progression looks at Tesla.

The perks at Meta like free food, a fancy office, and great benefits are definitely tempting, but Tesla’s compensation makes it hard to ignore.

Does anyone have insights into Tesla’s Autopilot team or their long-term compensation structure for software engineers? Any advice or data points would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!