1 month in, manager manages several teams - how do I get feedback?

Work backward from the goal. Your goal is to transition from contractor to full-time engineer.

• What is involved in this process? Who makes the decision?
• Can you talk to other engineers who have also made the transition from contractor to FTE?

I'm guessing your manager is one key decision-maker, so even if you can't meet with them weekly, I'd send them weekly updates and invite feedback. And make your intention known that you'd like to transition to full-time.

For getting feedback, more is better: This Is How You Get Feedback - Making The Process Smooth

Ok, thank you Rahul, Charlie, and Alex for your responses. Had my 1 on 1 last week and told them my goal is to be converted. They appreciated me coming up with a list of priorities and told me to go back to the other engineer to align. Manager and I decided I'd send written updates after every 2 week sprint, we'd meet every month, and I'd be evaluated after 3-4 months.

In that "awkward" 1 on 1, I also discovered unbeknownst to me because of weird titling, I was hired as a senior engineer. I thought I was mid-level, oops.

I'm SO glad I took the onboarding course before meeting with my manager. I can already imagine how screwed I would have been if I hadn't realized the expectations were, um, senior level. They shared a sample job description too, which was super helpful. So at least now I know the expectations, even if I'm now super anxious about not meeting them :[

My manager initially told me we'd probably meet once a month

Can you suggest meeting with your manager every two weeks instead and set clear time expectations about the full-time conversion? The goal will be to make sure you are both aligned on what work needs to be done to get the full-time offer. A month timeframe can make it difficult to course correct early. If you can send updates in a regular cadence through email, chat, or a 1:1 doc, you'll make it a lot easier for your manager to evaluate you when it's time for them to consider you for a full-time position.

Your manager will probably solicit feedback about you from your peers if they don't have a lot of insight into your work. This advice isn't going to be that helpful because it's so obvious, but I'll say it: make sure you are proactive in your work, get things done, and communicate with your peers with regular updates.

The best feedback you'll get, especially as a mid-level engineer, is from other engineers. So that engineer from the other time zone and whoever else is reviewing your code are the best to get feedback from.

Regardless, the PM and manager can still provide good feedback, particularly on more fundamental skills (how good you are at communicating with stakeholders, disambiguating tasks, being independent, etc).

Given that you only meet once a month with your manager, make sure to get maximum value from that meeting. Come in with a tightly focused agenda and make the conversation as "awkward" as possible, primarily via probing for feedback: [Masterclass] How To Have Impactful 1 on 1 Meetings

Another thing to talk about with your manager is to create a concrete plan for your conversion (if it's possible). You really want as much clarity as possible given that the stakes are so high. This is effectively a promotion plan, so I recommend following the advice from the "Set Up Success Criteria" section of the promotion course here: https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/step-0-establish-yourself/

Best of luck!