Working With Your Manager Q&A and Videos

I'm an E5 iOS at a Big Tech company. There's already an E6 iOS on my team, so it's been hard for me to get enough scope to get to E6. I feel both of us have been fighting for scope. My EM got forced out due to a PIP, so my skip level's temporarily leading the team until he hires a backfill. My skip level knows that I've been frustrated about the lack of opportunities on this team, so he found me a potential E6 opportunity with a different team in our org.

When the new team's skip level found out I could do both iOS and backend, he got very excited and said I could report to the team's EM or him directly. He wants me to mentor junior mobile engineers on multiple teams. He wants me to be the voice for mobile engineers and a thought partner for multiple PMs/teams. He wants me to bridge the mobile engineers to the rest of the new team, which has mostly backend and web engineers. I feel I have better rapport with the new team's M1, but it could be that I was a bit intimidated by the M2. What are the pros and cons of reporting to an M1 vs M2? Would reporting to an M2 make it easier to get to E6?

As an E5, I'm switching to more of a tech lead role, and one of the engineers I'm leading has had consistently poor code quality despite being at Meta for a few years now.

I've asked my manager for feedback about this, and they say that we should come up with a plan to improve the situation. I've already invested time in this, and I'm not seeing results. How can I get the code quality feedback to fully land and improve this engineer's code?

I’m looking for a healthy raise at work of 15%-20%. To that end, I have done 2 things:

1.      Shared a file with my manager last week detailing things I have accomplished in the last year and their business impact.

2.      Asked my manager in our in-person one-on-one last week for a raise

My manager indicated it will be difficult for me to get a raise, both because raise guidelines are largely determined by how well the company is doing overall and because I got a nice raise last year and so the expectations were higher for me this year.

For background, I work at a big, boring, and bureaucratic finance company. I don’t think I did a particularly stellar job last year, but I benefit from being one of the few technical people on our business team, so am very valuable to the team. As a consequence, I can get away with doing a minimal amount of work, and I generally have a few hours during the day to spend it however I want. I am currently applying to different places, but realistically see if taking 3 months, plus or minus another 3 months till I jump ship. I have it set in my mind to only jump ship for a company which compensates at least 50% more than my current TC (which is low, by industry standards).

My question is, is it worth sending a raise request email to my boss asking him for the 20% raise? I’m leaning towards yes, but the counter would be he is already aware of what I want since I’ve asked him in person and shared my “ego file” with him, so I could be seen as overly aggressive. I would also only be recapitulating what I’ve already said.

The raise request format would be taken straight from Josh Doody:

Thanks for the guidance!

Hey Everyone, would there be interest in a topic, on how to attract a sponsor who is invested in your growth at least 1/10 as much as we are.

Over the years, I have realized in addition to being sincere and making an impact, we need the right projects to make an impact and the right people to take notice. I feel like I cannot catch a break.

I have been able to uplevel and switch, get an upper level from tier 2 -> FAANG (L5), and stayed there for many years. Thriving. Until my project was canned, and I was laid off.

My current team is at a tier 2 company, and I have already made significant impact, but my manager is hung up on some negative feedback that was given to me early on (3 quarters ago) The current staff even insidiously tried taking away my projects from me. I stood up for myself and got the project back with my managers help.

I have good feedback, on PR, good velocity and mentoring engineers to uplevel. But my manager is still biased.

I strongly believe that actions speak louder than words. Would love to know the series of master classes that can help me with Me and your advice.

Would love to know your thoughts on this when is it time to stay and focus on growth or when is it time to move on and start afresh ?

My eventual goal is L6 at Google / Netflix / Meta - Adjacent

I've been a Data Engineer for most of my career and my observation is that scope as a Data Engineer can plateau and therefore I see a lot more L4/5 DE's than L6+. I think it is because you don't impact the bottom line directly and regularly.

At FAANG's I've worked at so far, finding new scope can be difficult even when you are working with stakeholders: it is "easier" to scope/build a product (i.e. SWE work) and show metrics of success to add value vs building a data pipeline which may be limited to them having a reporting need for example which often isn't the case especially in a more established firm.

I moved into a partner facing DE role to help more with scope/stakeholder exposure. The highest impact project I worked on so far is influencing an internal team to change the way we measure a particular metric. This involved mostly stakeholder management and nothing more complex than SQL queries from a technical standpoint. While it was fulfilling, this is also something I 'stumbled' upon and is rare due to challenges like partner scope/vision is limited/slow (their leadership can change and therefore you projects/ideas can), technical challenges of automating things because of larger concerns (e.g. privacy, lack of infra on their side which you have no control over) and so on (you generally have even less control than an internal DE).

In my current role, I am generally able to derive projects, but (in my opinion) they are limited in scope/value: i.e. build a pipeline, deliver an analysis. Therefore, even though the projects 'ticks the boxes' for an L5, it is not really driving a 'transformation' as an L6+ would. I also directly asked my manager what are some of the hardest problems we have, and have been told we have a lot, yet, I'm not hearing or seeing them.

Given the situation, would you:

1. Move to a SWE role internally at FAANG for a more established path 'up' (not sure this resolves the scope problem especially at FAANG as I think SWE-DE's can almost be even harder to get to L6+ on because they generally lack stakeholder visibility and focus on more top down work?).
2. Seek roles outside of FAANG where the scope of the work is already scoped to L6+ e.g. Airbnb so the 'heavy lifting' has been done in terms of scope.
3. Refine your scoping strategy within you own team, and if so, how?

Note: my motivation is to thrive at work, this isn't for a promo, just incase the post comes across as promo-focused. :)

Hi all,

Due to recent changes in the company (Big Tech), my current manager is moving to a new org and a new manager is brought to manage the team. I really respect my manager and they were amazing at supporting me (helped me grow from E3 to E5 in 2 years).

They mentioned the new team has an opening and mentioned that I'd be welcome to join if I wanted to. The new team is our company's top priority and based on initial understanding, their work sounds very interesting to me. Here are some pros and cons I could think of:

Not Changing Team:

• Pro- I have great relationships with IC6s on the team and also junior engineers.
• Pro- I know the codebase well and scope is well defined.
• Con- Been working in this space for 2+ years and feel slightly bored sometimes. Skillset also becomes stagnant.
• Con- Manager mentioned hard to find IC6 scope in the org moving forward.

Changing Team:

• Pro- Will continue the same manager, who I have a great relationship with.
• Pro- Exciting new space and top company priority.
• Pro- Manager considers me as high IC5 and mentioned potential IC6 growth opportunities-(although since manager hasn't joined the new team yet- so I should take this with a grain of salt).
• Con- Having to ramp up to a new team as an IC5 (seems a little risky considering layoffs).
• Con- Unknowns like work life balance, team friendliness, team success etc.

Considering these, I am planning to talk to the senior manager in the new org to evaluate their team and vision. Since this is a unique situation, how should I approach choosing between the two? What kind of questions should I ask? Thanks a lot!

My technical lead is excellent but not the best communicator, and by that I mean I don't understand what they are saying 50% of the time. I intend this in the most respectful way when I say that I don't understand the punctuation behind their comments and chats. I ask them about X and before I've even finished they shoot out with a response on Y. I don't think they have ever been able to explain anything clearly to me. It's getting to the point where my manager sees me as incompetent (I think) even though it's clearly a lack on their part.

I'm an L3 and they are a critical L5 so the team will never stand up for me but given this economy, I'm starting to get a bit concerned about my career. The difference between their language and others on adjacent teams is like night and day and I'm not sure how to bring this up with my manager without sounding prejudiced.

What should I do to help myself and navigate this situation?

I joined my current company a bit more than a year ago as an L4. Within 4 months, I'd launched a high stakes project, and after some churn in the team leadership, I was put into the role of being a tech lead to my remaining team of L3s.

As a pseudo TL, I did well in the mentorship and technical guidance responsibilities, but my code output dropped drastically (due to my projects being in the design phase which were being done by my juniors with me providing high level guidance).

In the last three months, I suffered some mental health issues. My work productivity dropped significantly during that time. I've been very open with my manager about my mental state throughout this process, and they've been very supportive of the things I need to do to recover. Around this time my team also hired an L5, who is now officially the TL.

Due to my drop in performance in the latter half of the year, I'm afraid my manager won't trust me with important projects. I wonder if I need to again prove my credentials to keep me on track for L5. I feel very low about my software development abilities.

This has made me demotivated and disinterested in my work. I took a couple weeks off, yet I don't feel like going back to work. I'm not considering changing teams due to immigration issues. I also don't want to leave a team on a low.

Any tips on turning around my motivation, and trajectory on the team? What can I change in my mindset and working style to overcome my struggles?

I had a feedback session with my manager, and they gave me feedback that I was doing well overall but they would like to see me become more familiar with Meta's experimentation tools. They mentioned that this wasn't bad feedback as this unfamiliarity is expected with relatively new Meta engineers like myself. That being said, I'm unsure how to process it: Should I process it urgently and if so, how do I become familiar with Meta's gigantic experimentation infrastructure?

For some context, I am a L1 with 1 yoe with experience in DevSecOps and was recently transitioned to an ML Ops role on a AI team where they have no CI-CD pipeline infrastructure and I am tasked with setting all of that up for them by myself. My goal is to hold off asking for a promotion until I actually prove myself and achieve this feat first and it’s also my long term goal to stay on this team as an AI developer, so I don’t want to bring this up with any potential negative consequences. I’m curious to hear more opinions on this matter.

I am working on a project with sister team under my skip level manager. My manager does not manage that project. How do I approach him to ask that I want to work on a task with end-to-end ownership?

I joined company A in October (prior to which I did a contract job at company C for 1 month) but I already had an offer from company B which was delayed and joining was pushed to Dec. Now, I need to inform my manager at company A that I have to leave the company. It breaks my heart because all we have been doing so far is kind of training and stuff and no active work however, I do not like the kind of work I would be doing here as it is more like a Salesforce developer/ tester with the development outsourced and they are building a team to bring development inhouse. So even though the company is quite stable and has good benefits I have decided to leave it for a better paying role that I feel will satiate my career aspirations. Here are a few questions I am seeking answers for:

1. The company has a Winter break starting Dec 22 and my manager goes on leave from 20, when should I break this news to him? (In my last company I informed my employer with a two week notice and I was given the last date to be just a week later. I am a foreign student in USA who has just started working and utilized almost half the number of unemployment days I have for this year to be precise 2 July, 2024)
2. How should I tell him about this decision without burning the bridges. Honestly, I have this feeling that I am kind of cheating my employer so I am finding it difficult to justify it in front of my manager.

Thanks in advance!

I am working in 3 XFN projects (Say Projects A, B ,C) at the same time. Manager wants success in Project A for sure . But he doesn't allow me to be fully dedicated to Project A. He also wants me to come with suggestions to make project A successful. The thing is Projects B & C are huge time consumers and I am left with very little time for Project A. How should I approach my manager to assign me fully to Project A. I have successfully deliver projects in past when I was assigned to a single project only . I am bad at multi-tasking. Project A's success will definitely increase chances of my promo.

Hey everyone! I am looking for some advice. I have weekly 1:1 with my manager and during our last interaction, he suggested to come up with a yearly plan on things I want to achieve. Can someone shed some ideas/templates I can follow to create a roadmap or plan.

Hello

TLDR: I started a new job in September last year, and within three months, I was placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) with impossible tasks to be completed within four weeks, essentially setting me up for dismissal. Two months prior, I had been seeing a doctor for health issues, and they advised that the PIP would likely worsen my condition. The doctor recommended taking Short Term Disability leave to focus on my health. The tasks I was assigned for the PIP were eventually completed by two engineers (1 staff and 1 Sr) over four months. My Short Term Disability leave ends soon, and I'm unsure whether to return to my old job.

Question for this community:

1. Is it a good idea to return to the same job after being put on a PIP and taking medical leave? (HR informed me that the old PIP would not be in effect upon my return from Short Term Disability leave. However, I'm unclear on how this process works).
2. I want to change teams upon my return; is this something I can negotiate with HR before trying to go back?
3. I like the company and its culture but ended up in the wrong team with the wrong manager. Is there a way I can remain employed at this company but join a different team and manager?

More Context: My manager was present during the hiring interview, where I clearly expressed my desire to move away from a particular tech stack. I was highly rated in the interview and received a generous offer, which I accepted. However, once hired, the manager assigned me to a project in the same area I wanted to avoid. Given it was a high-priority project and my first assignment, I reluctantly accepted. 1 month into the job, I faced a personal emergency requiring a few days off. I shared the reason with my manager, who seemed understanding at first. After that, the manager's behavior changed drastically. They began assigning more work, constantly switching me between multiple issues and projects, and bullying me in meetings. Despite working overtime (12-14 hours/day) to meet expectations, their attitude worsened. This was the worst manager I've encountered in my 14-year career who had unreasonable expectations as far as ramping up on the projects is concerned and it almost seems like I was hired to be fired in this situation. Note: This is not at Amazon.

Any other pointers would be appreciated. Please help.

Question: "For being promoted from SWE I to SWE II, how do I take the behaviors my company has associated with each role (below) and make that more concrete for a growth plan, taking into account the changing & flexible timelines startups have?"

For context, I already have weekly one-on-ones with my manager (who is new at being a manager & is also my mentor), and a growth plan (that I created with him) that roughly outlines (meets most expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations for my role). Additionally, keep in mind I work at a startup w/ <30 people so highly specific concrete goals set on a particular date can change in 2-3 weeks as priorities change. Also, my company has defined a series of behaviors as to what each SWE level should be able to accomplish. Here it is.

Software Engineer I (<1 year - 2 years)

• Technical Skill
  • Broad knowledge of CS concepts
  • Focus on growing as an engineer, learning existing tools, resources, and processes
• Getting Stuff Done
  • Develops their productivity skills by learning source control, editors, the build system and other tools as well as testing best practices.
  • Capable of taking well-defined sub-tasks and completing these tasks
• Impact
  • Developing knowledge of a single component of our architecture
• Communication & Leadership
  • Effective in communicating status to the team
  • Exhibits company’s core values, focuses on understanding and living these values
  • Accepts feedback graciously and learns from everything they do

Software Engineer II (2-6Years+)

• Technical Skill
  • Writes correct and clean code with guidance; consistently fellows stated best practices
  • Participates in technical design of features with guidance
  • Rarely makes the same mistake twice, begins to focus on attaining expertise in one or more areas(eg. embedded , testing, algorithm, support code, commlink).
  • Learns quickly and makes steady progress without the need for constant significant feedback from more senior engineers.
• Getting Stuff Done
  • Makes steady progress on tasks; knows when to ask for help in order to get themselves unblocked.
  • Able to own small-to-medium features from technical design through completion.
  • Capable of prioritizing tasks; avoids getting caught up in unimportant details and endless “bikeshedding”.
• Impact
  • Self-sufficient in at least one large area of the codebase with a high-level understanding of other components
  • Capable of providing on-call support for their area including systems that they are not familiar with.
• Communication & Leadership
  • Gives timely, helpful feedback to peers and managers
  • Communicates assumptions and gets clarification on tasks up front to minimize the need for rework.
  • Solicits feedback from others and is eager to find ways to improve
  • Understands how their work fits into the larger project and identifies problems with requirements.

If you have a new manager joining to manage your team, how can you ramp them up quickly on all the work you have done before them, the impact you have generated, your role in the team.

I'm a new grad. I watched the and i understand the theory -- be vulnerable, use it as a time to grow and get feedback on improvement, keep docs and an agenda

But I've only ever had 1-on-1s in my 1 internship where every 2 weeks I'd meet with the manager and it would be 5-10 mins. When I ask how can I improve, they would say yep everything is good, your perf is good, keep doing what you're doing and I'd say ok.

If I told my manager that hey I'm not happy with the current scope and I'm not learning enough they said rn keep doing what you're doing and later in the internship I'll give you other stuff and then I never got different work

In my new different company where I'm working in an early stage startup I want to set up a strong 1-on-1 culture with the founders who I am always working/talking consistently with but I have no idea what actually to talk about?

Can someone share case studies on what your recent 1-on-1s are like? what did you talk about -- breaking down in time components (e.g. first 5 mins small talk, then next 10 mins talking about X, then 10 mins on Y). If someone could share like a blue-print/actionable framework or guide that would be really helpful

I'm currently working on one of my KR tasks, and have pockets of time available as the project involves cross-time zone communication at this stage. My manager wants me to focus on another KR that I have been planned for in Q4. This project is an important part of my manager's project that he started when he was a TL.

My skip manager wants me to focus on a non-KR task of increasing the scope of our team in a different project. If I manage to increase the scope of this project, I can change my KR to this new task in Q4 and lead the whole project is his rationale. I'm confused in this situation as to what to do?

I've raised this concern to manager in almost every 1-1 once even in front of Director of Eng that I'm interested in more roles and responsibilities. Cuz I was not a fresher even when I joined the current company at entry level and now that I've done decent work too at current company.

But manager fails to give me a path/timeline of when will I be entrusted with some impactful work.

He criticises in public, and has a favourite too who uses this to influence the manager against others.

Manager also wants every small thing to be done his way and he presents the whole thing as learning opportunity for me.

If junior engineers are not supposed to do anything on their own then why are they even hired as engineers?

Should I look for new opportunities? Or how can I take away most from the current situation?

Data engineer here. Manager is the leading a project which is severely mismanaged and he just demands results. He doesn't plan at all. There is no proper project planning and it is XFN project. If I do project management tasks it saps my energy due to numerous meetings in order to do that. Project has been going on for 8 months. Everyone working knows it is not going anywhere. Just that manager wants us to keep working on it. Even our org doesn't recognize it as a critical project. Problem is continuing to work on it takes time away from other interesting work which has more impact.

What do you suggest? How do you suggest I approach this?

I have been working in this company for 1 year 3 months now, and I'm feeling burnt out. I'm looking to take a break for around a month and a half, which I know is on the lengthier side. Does anyone here have experience requesting this long a leave?

I have been doing good at my current company, been here for 3+ years working initially as an Entry Level, then promoted after an year to a MidLevel Software Engineer. I have been receiving "Exceeds Expectations i.e. 4/5" rating since the beginning and "Superb i.e. 5/5" rating once.

I applied for international relocation to Singapore back in July. The manager and skip mentioned that while cost cutting is going on, they are making an exception for me and it should be processed completely by initial weeks of January 2023. In times of layoffs, and especially with my company's stocks not doing that good, I am afraid if it could lead to getting laid off. This is causing me a bit of anxiety.

Although it is being mentioned by leadership that no layoffs are happening, we are seeing projects getting cut off, rigorous re-orgs happening, and entire focus of the organisation is on cost saving, which I feel is great especially in current times.

I started the conversations for relocation when times were going good in terms of offers being posted in the market. The teams were thriving as well in terms of work. But by the time entire process got over, it seems the situations have changed. What should I do?

To add on, another thing I did sometime back was to share with my manager on how I am performing several roles of the next level and how it can be used to further the cause of promotion in the upcoming performance reviews. I tried to break down the career ladder doc into key umbrellas of behaviours needed, and assigned the initiatives I delivered under those. Now afraid if this was another way I shot myself in the foot by asking for more in times of cost-saving and probably being conservative. Please assist with your advice.

My manager and skip both put me up for a promotion, but I was told it was blocked because it is not in the budget. They seem to empathize with me and was told there is a possibility for promotion during the midyear cycle but it's not certain, so I don't want to get my hopes up.

I'm really disappointed because I been working hard and taking on additional responsibilities that are beyond the scope of my level. I have received feedback that I am a "top performer" and "workhorse" of the team, so this is a hard hit to my morale. I feel I have done everything I could do, but it seems like there is nothing more I can do and that is what's bothering me. I been trying accept that is out of my control but it lingers in the back of my mind.