Trying to figure out what rating I got for midpoint
I had a 1:1 with my manager today after he had the calibration meeting for my internship midpoint. I'm having a hard time figuring out what rating I might've gotten since my manager seemed upset with the results based on his body language but maybe I'm looking too far into it. He said he's not allowed to tell me the rating either.
I told him from the start that I'd like to aim for GE and we were taking an approach where he leaves tasks ambiguous for me to figure out. I'm almost certain I didn't get GE for midpoint since the main thing he mentioned was that an area for improvement is communication (specifically documentation and design docs), this wasn't something mentioned to me before until 1 week ago so it kind of came out of left field and he said even personally it was something he struggled with on his own PSC. He also said to start thinking of XFN opportunities for stretch goals once the project is done but that was already discussed before.
The part that confuses is this, he said I'm doing good and mentioned that all my axes other than communication are good - especially productivity and quality of work, but I'm not sure if that's from an MA standpoint or GE. I thought from this I would at least have still been EE, but near the end of the meeting he said that this is the most competitive cohort he has seen from 4 previous interns he has had and that "I'll try my best to get you an offer for the final review". Maybe I'm letting my anxiety get the best of me (because of the recent layoffs return offers feel dubious) but those two things make me think I might've gotten much worse than EE. I feel like I'm getting completely mixed signals now and feel like I have no idea where I stand, tbh I don't understand why they don't just tell you your rating.
Discussion
(2 comments)- 1
a month agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroFirst off, I wouldn't tell your intern manager that you're aiming for GE for the following reasons:
- It feels very "cart before the horse" - Getting a return offer is already hard enough, especially in the current climate at Meta. It's much more organic to get a solid confirmation that you're trending towards MA (offer) and then work towards EE and then work towards GE. The problem with aiming for GE off the bat is that it makes your IM afraid to give you any feedback that isn't validating you operating at GE as they won't know how you'll take it. If an intern came in and just told me they're aiming for GE, I would take it negatively as it's just way too aggressive and to be 100% honest, I've mostly had bad experiences with engineers who thought that way (overly competitive and obsessive).
- GE is HARD - Intern GE literally means that you're operating at E4 already, which is incredibly rare. I've only ever worked with 2 GE interns at Meta, and they were both insanely cracked (one of them made a 100k+ user side project back in college). It puts a lot of pressure on the intern manager as every intern manager (ideally) wants to help their intern as much as possible, but raising an intern to GE takes an immense amount of effort. The FTE engineers at Meta are already stressed enough, so I imagine most won't appreciate the extra burden.
...tbh I don't understand why they don't just tell you your rating.
It's just safer for companies to divulge less information rather than more. It sucks for us as the employees, but it is what it is. Ratings were much more transparent back when I was at Meta (I gave my intern a midpoint rating), but the culture has definitely shifted to be more opaque over time.
Overall, I think your midpoint went well. Your intern manager is clearly supportive and said they will fight for you. You didn't get a rating, but you did get very valid feedback to improve (communication, which is probably the most common barrier towards intern EE/GE ratings). At Meta, a lot of the communication axis comes down to writing more Workplace posts.
- 2
a month agoSupportive TarodactylTaro CommunityThanks this was a great help! Your point on the pressure that comes along with mentioning it to my IM is a perspective I didn't think of. I do try to proactively ask for feedback in 1:1s even if it's awkward so I'm hoping it hasn't resulted in the feedback dynamic you pointed out.
From my perspective, it wasn't right at the beginning - I waited to get strong feedback within the first 3 weeks prior to mentioning it. The reason I mentioned it was because I wanted to be as transparent as possible and thought that, if there were early opportunities to show an early strong signal that they'd be more likely to get flagged (my IM did let me run with ambiguous tasks much earlier than I would've had the chance to otherwise). Retrospectively, I see how the cons outweigh the pros here and why moving progressively would be better.
Overall, I'm glad I learned this sooner rather than later and that the feedback has a clear path forward. One of my friends (a FTE at Meta) mentioned that if a complex problem you solved isn't documented somewhere it pretty much didn't happen. Thank you for the helpful response!
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