Career Advice About Uber

I didn't interact much with people during my school and college years. Now that I'm stepping into a new phase of my life (my first job), I want to improve myself.

I'll have obvious reasons to interact with my teammates, so I'll try my best to socialize as much as possible (any suggestions are welcome). But how should I go about networking with people outside my team? Should I just randomly approach someone to introduce myself? When should I do it? When they are working they would be busy, so should I catch up with people during lunch (and what can I do if my whole team generally eats lunch together)? Will it be okay to go and sit or talk with a bunch of people having some conversation, or should I try to talk with individuals first?

Also, I'll be the juniormost folk there (other than maybe interns), how fine will it be to approach anyone random (since they can be very senior, which I don't know yet)? Even if I know someone senior to me previously (like the people I met during my internship), I find it hard to start a chat and find the right balance between disturbing them and having a conversation. And in general, I won't have much context to talk about the majority of the topics.

I know I'm really clueless, so any answers or resources would be highly appreciated!

Android and mobile development as a whole is something I'm very interested in. For example, I see the Taro Android app, and it's pretty smooth and performant while being built quickly. What can I do to get to this level?

As a followup to the talk I gave 2 weeks ago, , I'd like to give y'all the chance to ask me any question. Whether that is about interviews, engineering, career, or general interest.

Work History

• Apple Music Android (2016-2020): Worked on migrating code from the legacy Beats to a new app, creating the tablet version, constructed the general platform level code, and initiated the migration to Kotlin and other general app modernization.
• Uber (2020-Present): Lead the construction of the donation feature () that got run during the Super Bowl. Currently migrating our codebase from Buck to Bazel. Frequent complainer on Google's Github repo.

General Interest

• Spend too much time studying investing. Returns are pretty okay.
• I have 2 cats: Lina and Shadow
• Represented the US in France and Poland for fencing in 2009 for the Cadet World Cup.
• Dota 2 burnout (last ranked Divine 2). Watching TI though.

This half I've been assigned to a new greenfield project and I'm having a tough time believing in the product idea and I think the product team is being overly optimistic.

I'm concerned the problem the product solves isn't important enough, that the solution won't be adopted and that the business value isn't clear. They're also pushing for rushed timelines even before we've decided on what will be delivered.

I'm worried if this thing doesn't get traction and we end up having layoffs that it would make our team a target.

How should I think about this situation? Try to make the best out of it? Try to get out of it?

Here are some thoughts from me:

1. Freshly promoted to Staff - This means they are very close to the same path that I'm on.
2. Not within my org - To remove bias
3. Smooth conversation - So it's easy to talk with them

Do these make sense or is there something I'm missing?

I joined a new team a week back and will soon have my first 1:1 with the skip-level manager.

Given that I haven't spent much time to have any feedback on my manager or the org culture and process, what should I discuss to get the most value out of the time?

P.S. I have gone through this question: , and I did found some great insights, but wanted to ask if there's anything more I can do given my position and experience is different.

Thank you

Additional questions:

1. What tactics can I use to get buy-in?
2. Who do I need to win over? Do I need to convince the director?

I am trying to start a conversation to get across my technical proficiency so that the manager is likely to recommend me for an interview at the big tech company. The company has an engineering blog that I have read, but not sure what I should ask. This is for a mid-level (ideally senior) backend role. The manager has said that if I send them a list of questions they would be open to a call to discuss said questions.

Also the company is Uber ->

I'm grateful to have received a return offer as a backend engineer. However, my long-term career goal is to transition into a machine learning engineering role within the company.

• As a recent graduate, what are the most effective strategies to prepare for this transition?
• While I understand that my immediate focus should be on excelling in my backend engineering role, I'm keen to explore how I can simultaneously build my skills in machine learning during my free time. Could you offer any advice or insights on balancing these two objectives effectively?

My goal is get promoted to senior [5A], and I'm currently working remotely. My manager is okay with me working remote only, but the promo committee might not be as Uber leadership overall is investing into RTO, and my team has gone back to the office for the most part. Do you think this will hurt my chances, and if so, any tips on how to navigate the situation?

I have to negotiate for my offer from Uber today, verbal offer chat will be today

Context

1. I am SDE2 at Amazon and was promoted so I have the low band base salary
2. Uber is the only interview I cracked, others were a weak yes and didn’t proceed to the offer so no other offers to negotiate against
3. This is what recruiter said which has me confused: They do not pay competitive salary as the other top tech companies, their pay is still in top 70%. Starting base mentioned was less than my current salary.
4. I am not sure if this is a tactic for negotiations or the market salaries right now. (Not the same on Levels fyi and I confirmed from someone working at Uber, their pay was definitely comparable to Amazon band, may be even more)
5. Unsure how strong I should approach it, if I am switching, I need it to be at least a bump in my salary. I want to ask for at least a some bump in base. Previously, when I have negotiated the final offer was a little less than what I asked but XXk+ more than what they first told me at the first call.
6. Would like to negotiate as much as possible, unsure if they consider other competing offers or my currently salary to counter.

My work will often times span across multiple services within Uber, which means that I need to write code in codebases outside of my team's. Sometimes when I do this, it takes a long time for my commit to land as there's many rounds of follow-up questions, leading to a lot of rebases, revisions, and time spent on my end. I understand that they're trying to be the best stewards of their codebase, but this can be a bit frustrating sometimes. How can I make this process smoother and land these kinds of changes more quickly?

So within my own area of the codebase and tech stack I own, I'm very comfortable and confident leaving feedback and sharing thoughts. However, I know that in order to grow to senior, I need to expand past my immediate area into other spaces like the components and services built by other teams in my org like sister teams. For those areas, I'm unsure how to share my thoughts since I'm not an expert in those codebases. So let's say I come across a code review from one of these more "separate" areas from my own and the engineer behind the diff is more senior than me - How can I leave my feedback in a way that respects the situation?