Publicity skills are more important than Engineering
Publicity skills are more important than Engineering
Great pay, perks, benefits, and cool offices. Friendly people (at least on the surface).
What I find most annoying and frustrating (other IC4 or 3 DEs share the same frustration) are:
-
The role: Like someone else mentioned, I canāt see why we have āengineerā in our title. Itās like 80% of your day goes about project management, expectation management, navigating team and product priorities, finding work for yourself, and just what you need to do next. Then keeping others and yourself updated about whatās going on. When you can get a break from constant meetings and notifications and pings in chat, then you can get some work done (Hello overtime!). Also put aside time for advertising yourself, writing posts about what great things you are going to do, doing now, and have already done. Add a ton of stress on top of that for delivering IMPACT and constantly wondering if what you are doing is going to create enough noise to get you somewhere.
-
Lack of well-defined projects: You have to put in so much time and energy just to find something to work on. Itās like a manager decides they need some more headcount on their team and hires the person, and then tells them, āI donāt know what you need to do, but thereās something out there for sure, go find out!ā Good for you if you can find or define a new impactful project. Otherwise, take on someone elseās work which they abandoned for something with more IMPACT, or start working on some product thatās not going anywhere but some VP cares about.
Other things to consider:
- The role: Data Engineers at FB are in a tough position. Usually, no one in other roles really knows what you are supposed to do. Even DEs themselves will have a bootcamp course to tell them what they are supposed to do. As such, you are always in the position of pushing back on requests, trying to define what you should do, or seeking to do the job someone else is already doing but in a better way. If you fail to push back, youāll be flooded with meaningless work (adhoc requests).
Other cons:
-
Lack of knowledge sharing and documentation: A piece of info you seek could be in a post on Workplace, stored on some random Quip, a file on Dropbox, a sheet on Google Drive, or some random wiki page. And when you find it, you can never trust what you see because it is possibly wrong or already outdated. Better to directly ask someone and hope they have the correct answer to your question. Enjoy waiting for responses or not finding any available time on their calendar to book a meeting.
-
Moving fast = tons of junk: Moving fast to deliver short-term impact has plagued the analytics org with tons of garbage. No one cares about optimizing their solutions or documenting their work, and when they get credit for the IMPACT, they move on to the next thing. Good luck if you inherit someoneās work which you need to make sense of on your own.
Additional Ratings
Was this helpful?
Meta Interview Questions
Meta Interview Experiences
Data Engineer
First is the recruiter round, then a one-hour technical interview which included questions around SQL and Python. After that would be behavioural and other technical rounds. Other technical rounds would cover system design, etc.
Data Engineer
Bad interviewer. Did not respect interviewee. They were late, shut down the camera in the middle, and did not let me finish my interview despite having enough time. A really bad experience.
Data Engineer
The interview process typically begins with an initial phone screen, where background and overall fit are assessed. This is followed by one or more coding interviews to evaluate technical problem-solving skills. Finally, candidates usually particip
Data Engineer
Menlo Park, California, United StatesNovember 12, 2025First is the recruiter round, then a one-hour technical interview which included questions around SQL and Python. After that would be behavioural and other technical rounds. Other technical rounds would cover system design, etc.
Data Engineer
Menlo Park, California, United StatesOctober 3, 2025Bad interviewer. Did not respect interviewee. They were late, shut down the camera in the middle, and did not let me finish my interview despite having enough time. A really bad experience.
Data Engineer
Menlo Park, California, United StatesSeptember 9, 2025The interview process typically begins with an initial phone screen, where background and overall fit are assessed. This is followed by one or more coding interviews to evaluate technical problem-solving skills. Finally, candidates usually particip
