Staff engineer to principal engineer mindset change

Hi Alex,

How do I figure out who to build relationship with? What would ideal E7 performance evaluation look like?

How do I figure out who to build relationship with?

I recommend these lessons:

• https://www.jointaro.com/course/networking-guide-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech/tactical-stakeholders/
• https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/organizational-complexity/

An E7 will absolutely need to have good relationships with the following:

• Other very senior engineers (E6, E7, E8), particularly those who are within your org (same Senior Director [D2])
• Eng leadership (managers and directors, both standard-level and senior-level) - If you can you get to know the VP as well, that's obviously great
• Everyone on your immediate team (duh)

I assume "ig recsys" is "Instagram Recommendation Systems", which seems more like an infra team instead of a product team. So I imagine needing to know the non-technical people like product design, PM, marketing folks, etc aren't as necessary.

Hi Alex. I forgot to mention this. But due to personal matter, I will need to onboard and work remotely for at least 1 year before moving.

Do you have good tips and advice on building connections while you are remote? Thank you

Do you have good tips and advice on building connections while you are remote? Thank you

I recommend this: Networking Guide: Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech

This is another good resource: "How to build meaningful relationships with your co-workers if you work remotely?"

Hi Alex,

Could you give a bit more detail about what the first 1-2 months be like on bootcamp and ramping up especially for E7 Meta? Is there any directions on ramping up "smartly" and not "hard"

I think that I will need to prepare more due to:

• I heard Meta is very cutthroat. Impact expected within first few months as per your story
• My last bootcamp is when I was L3. So I am not sure if during the first 1 year, I should expect spending around 60 hours per week to have "wow" impact.

Could you give a bit more detail about what the first 1-2 months be like on bootcamp and ramping up especially for E7 Meta?

I understand that you're looking for more granularity here, but at E7, it's just really, really, really hard to give. E7s are so specialized and different, and the necessary behavior and impact for an E7 will vary wildly from team to team.

The first 1-2 months are also pretty unpredictable nowadays as bootcamp functionally doesn't exist at Meta anymore. Back in my day, bootcamp's primary purpose was team matching, and it was a relatively fun time with low expectations where you're doing general training and learning about the culture.

Now, every team wants their new hires to hit the ground running ASAP. Bootcamp exists in name only, and everything I described in the previous paragraph doesn't really exist. So your initial time at Meta will be dictated by whatever the situation of the team is, and it's hard to predict that. Meta moves incredibly fast, so the burning need on a team can easily change every month or even every week.

In a nutshell, you will need to do the following as an E7 within your first quarter (this should apply to any team):

1. Get an extremely deep understanding of your team's goals (KPIs and OKRs)
   1. Talk to a ton of people
   2. Go into every high-level meeting and really pay attention. Ask a ton of questions
   3. Go through your team's dashboard suite and try to understand every single one
   4. Comb through Workplace posts from your team, especially the notes which will have rich context about the team and its direction/priorities
2. Ship something that makes a meaningful contribution towards #1 (I would say minimum 10% contribution towards the goal)
   1. Follow the advice here: "How do I come up with innovative, impactful ideas and bring them to my team?"
   2. If you can't come up with something on your end, see if you can pair with an E7/E8 who needs another pair of hands and piggyback on their effort

If #2 can't be fully done, I would expect the E7 to at least be in experiment stage.

Instagram Recommendation Systems is a very mature team I imagine, so I would bet that the team goals are very clear and measurable.

My last bootcamp is when I was L3. So I am not sure if during the first 1 year, I should expect spending around 60 hours per week to have "wow" impact.

You should 100% expect long hours:

1. Meta is generally more brutal than Google when it comes to expectations
2. You are getting up-leveled from L6 -> E7
3. You need to adapt to the new culture
4. Meta nowadays is a very competitive company, and you have to always be running (or fall behind into the grinder)

Of course, you will get rewarded for all of this with the 2x TC increase.

Zooming out from all this, a strategy you can take here is to simply not take the Meta E7 offer, especially if you still enjoy your life at Google as an L6. You are actually on the right side of the fence as Google does negotiate internally (Meta doesn't), especially to prevent Meta poaching. I know so many Google engineers who took a Meta offer to their director and got massive pay increases ($100k - $250k). One of them was a Google L4 who got their TC to $425k!

A Meta E7 offer is incredibly valuable, and I would be really surprised if you couldn't get Google to bump up your TC by minimum $250k.