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Is Meta more engineering driven or product driven and how does this affect internal mobility for EM vs PM?

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Mid-Level Software Engineer [E4] at Meta2 years ago

It seems to me that Meta has SWEs drive a lot of product decisions but I've always heard Product is better for high growth and the famous examples of Sundar and Satya

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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    a year ago

    First, I recommend checking out this other Meta Q&A about SWE vs. PM: "How can an engineer transition to product manager and do you think there is higher potential to reach VP level at PM?"

    There's a lot of great thoughts there around how to transition from SWE to PM and what upwards career mobility looks like between the 2, especially at very senior levels.

    Is Meta more engineering driven or product driven

    It's definitely more engineering driven IMHO; Meta as a company feels built around the software engineer as its core operating unit.

    Here's another way to look at it: A SWE taking up PM responsibilities at Meta is very normal, even encouraged. A PM taking up SWE responsibilities would be weird.

    Meta is huge on software engineer empowerment and you can see this from how they're encouraged to hybridize behaviors to add value more holistically.

    but I've always heard Product is better for high growth

    Can you elaborate on this more? What's the definition of high-growth, and more specifically, what are people saying?

    If your goal is to become a CEO, I do think having product skills is the most important, but I also feel like optimizing for this outcome seems... too extreme?