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I've been on a lot of teams and wondering if I'm thinking about teams correctly.

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Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta2 years ago

I've been on ~5 teams during my ~4 years at Meta, and I'm wondering if I need a mindset shift when it comes to choosing a team and staying there. Is it more on Meta that teams don't fit or should I make a bigger effort to stay on teams longer and establish myself there? I'm also looking to get to E6 someday, so the team switching makes things tricky.

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    Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
    2 years ago
    • It's hard to quantify this. There are obviously many bad teams at Meta alongside teams that won't fit you. However, it's rare to find a team that feels perfect. There is some onus on your end to make the team work for you.
    • For E6 promo in particular, you need to be on the same team for a while. E6 is a very lagging promotion (9 - 12 months) as they are responsible for looking very far into the future and maintaining the team's roadmap overall.
    • E6s also need to be incredible at filling in the gaps. I think part of E6 is being able to take a struggling team and then fixing its major problems to stabilize it. When a E6 succeeds, the team often succeeds. Similarly, when an E6 suffers, the entire team often suffers.
    • All that being said, it seems like you could invest more into team switching diligence going forward. The good thing is that at Meta, you are the most well-equipped to do this compared to almost any other company. Here's just some of the things you should look into:
      • Talk to the EM and SWEs, particularly the TL.
      • Go to their team meetings.
      • Do a bootcamp task or 2 (or 3).
      • Look into their Pulse results if possible.
      • See their diffs in Team Insights.
      • Go through Workplace activity to see what they're launching and what the process is like shipping projects there.
    • Some thoughts on finding a good team for E6 promo in terms of team composition:
      • You don't want too many E6+ already on the team (4+) as then a lot of good scope is taken.
      • You want a bench of earlier E5s that you can mentor to show E6 people skills.
      • Ideally an E6+ engineer on the team is open to mentoring you (and is also good at it).

    Related resources:

Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns 3 of top 4 social networks in the world: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. More than 3.5 billion people use at least one of the company's core products every month.
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