How can I be more decisive about my career decisions?
Senior engineer [E5] at Meta9 months ago
Here's a recent example: I took 2 months to finish bootcamp, and I was very indecisive throughout that time, talking with various managers and tech leads. I initially talked to real time ads infra, then streaming areas, and many others. Even after picking a team I feel FOMO that there’s a better team I could have joined instead. How can I feel better about my decisions?
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(1 comment)- 9 months agoRobinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
- You shouldn't feel bad about taking 2 months to find a team: The team you choose to work on is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make. A healthy team is the foundation for your success.
- Historical side-note: Bootcamp mentors at Meta have been pushing mentees to graduate faster now, trying to offload them across weeks 4-6. This is different from when I joined Meta back in 2017 where mentors regularly encouraged mentees to take 6+ weeks to find the best team for them. I know many people who took 2 months+.
- The 2 keys to improve your career decision framework is to be comfortable that you will never be able to find the perfect option and to timebox them. Software engineering is inherently a crazy and chaotic space; you have to learn to be comfortable settling with a decision that doesn't feel perfect and has to make tradeoffs.
- Timeboxing is the act of confining an action to a certain block of time (e.g. we will agree on the technical architecture for this project within 2 weeks). When it comes to decisions, the contract is that no matter what happens by the end of this time block, you will roll with the existing best option you have.
- If you don't aggressively timebox your job decisions at Meta, you will simply not survive. The company moves way too fast for indecisiveness.
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