How do senior FAANG engineers manage time?

I highly recommend the time management masterclass. And I actually talked to Steve Huynh about exactly this topic! Productivity tips from A Life Engineered. I'll ping Steve to see if he's interested in giving a talk :)

A few random tips from me:

• Start each day with a clear task. It's worth spending a few minutes at the end of each workday to write down your first task for the next day. Ideally something < 2 hours long that you are reasonably confident you can accomplish.
• Reflect on where your time is going, and get feedback from others. We have our own ideas of how productive we've been, but your project lead or manager will provide a valuable perspective on how it lines up with team/company priorities.
• If you have a hard time finding focus time at work, it's likely your colleagues are as well! Coordinate with them to setup pre-defined focus days that more people can follow, e.g. Wednesday is a "no-meeting" day at Meta.

I was a tech lead at Meta and Robinhood (a FAANG equivalent), and I rarely worked >40 hours weeks. Here's how I did it:

1. Focus blocks - Both Meta and Robinhood had no-meeting Wednesdays. I would write 80% of my code on those days, often putting out a stack of 10+ diffs. Once you have a good flow state, your coding velocity is only really held back by how fast you can physically type. I go through my "code machine" tactics in depth here: [Masterclass] How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer
2. Find a good manager and team - Work-life balance, especially at L5+ levels, is a team effort between you and your manager. There are a lot of organizations that equate high performance with raw number of hours worked (instead of impact): Avoid those like the plague. Use the advice here to find a good team: "How possible is it to spot red flags about toxic culture during the interview?"
3. Ruthlessly prioritize - At Big Tech, you will have an astonishingly high amount of noise. Become extremely comfortable pushing back against and ignoring tasks. When it comes to impact, there is almost always a power law. There will be 1-3 big projects that generate 80%+ of the possible impact on your roadmap. Find those and focus on them. Pretend the others don't exist.
4. Delegate, delegate, delegate - As a senior engineer, you absolutely have to work through others. You rise when others rise. This becomes even more painfully true as you progress to staff. At Meta, I had a small army of mentees (10+) who were constantly ready to take work off my plate (and I can claim a piece of their impact as I'm leading/teaching them). You can learn how I did that here: "How can I help juniors?"

I recommend these other resources as well:

• "How does one effectively handle pressure especially when the stakes are high?"
• "How to keep my mental health while working in a competitive team and having kids?"
• "How can I have less burnout and better work-life balance?"