Meta Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Last weekend, I got some surprising news from my EM after our team's Pulse review submission was done.
Turns out, I'm getting a 'Meet Most' rating. I've been at Meta for two years now, and my EM thinks it's a good idea for me to start looking outside the company since a promotion seems tough in the next six months.

I'm not really sure what to think about this. Has anyone else been in this boat? I'd love to hear your experiences. Also, Is switching teams within Meta a viable option ?

The project I worked in for the year is getting deprioritized and I am looking for new teams to work in for the next half. Since PSC is coming next month and I am expecting relatively better ratings.

Q1- should I look out for new teams now. have chats with them and switch by next year once ratings are locked? Would managers wait?

Q2 - when is the good time to let my manager know that I will be looking for new teams?

Q3- If I let my manager know now, will it impact my psc results negatively?

Q4 - how to make the best use of time till psc results are locked?

I just did but we can also collect questions here that I'll answer afterward.

Work history

I recently joined Databricks as a Senior Director of Engineering. Most of my career has involved Machine Learning, and I've managed teams ranging from 2 to 200 engineers/research scientists.

Previously, I was the Head of FB Reels and Video Recommendations (Director of Engineering) at Meta, from 2019 - 2023. Before that, I was a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead working at Google in Mountain View. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from Penn State, and my publications during that time have accumulated almost 9K academic citations.

Some questions I've heard:

• How Fair is Performance Evaluation for Tech ICs vs Managers?
• Can you give some examples of effective communication? What channels are used, level of abstraction, tone, etc?
• Any advice for a new grad to progress faster in their career?
• What are interviews even like for Director+?

Other

I've started writing detailed notes in blogs titled TLDR0. Slightly cheesy, but it stands for Tech Leadership - Direct, Respectful, Zero Ego. See the full details on my .

• Substack:
• Medium:

I have been having a hard time dealing with my tech lead. He’s e5 and leading our project. I’m aiming for promo end of this half and I feel like he’s really using that as a weapon against me.

For the project I am on, he gave me some deliverables. For one of the deliverable d1, I pushed back as there was no clarity. He basically said you have to do it or someone else will. I pulled in my manager and eventually the manager said it’s his project, his decision.

Fast forward, after spending a good week or 2 on this , we were asked to stop the project due to the alignment issues I had highlighted earlier.

The whole deliverable d1 was de prioritized and I was asked to work on something else (d2). It’s close to the end of the half now and the Teach lead is asking me to do more work to show that d1 made any progress and it was landed.

Despite working super hard on this, I have not clear deliverables. I think this is a directional problem. A lot of this was out disambiguating stuff. He’s also said stuff like you don’t seem to be working much on this.

I feel quite frustrated that despite working a lot the TL doesn’t seem to acknowledge any of the work or doubts cleared.

• How do I deal with this when I keep doing things and he keeps moving the finish line slightly ahead?
• I’m also tired of his snide comments such as this really isn’t e4 scope but I can say it is for you.

I'm moving forward to team matching at Meta for E4 and wanted to ask the community if they had any suggestions for teams with the strongest potential for growth, especially for the New York office.

The recruiter gave me the following survey. I stated I'd be more of a "Product - Generalist" role. Would also be curious to learn more about "Systems - Generalist" as I did the System Design interview as well.

In general from what I've seen, there's a decent amount of opportunity in Instagram, Whatsapp, and Reality Labs (from product announcements and earnings calls). I've also been told to avoid monetization as it's difficult to make an impact there.

Would appreciate any advice or suggestions! Also would appreciate tips on what questions to ask Hiring Managers to assess how they grow E4s.

What is your role? (select the one that applies) 

• Systems - Generalist 
• Product - Generalist  

What type of work motivates you the most? (select all that apply) 

• Infra: Scaling challenges
• UX: Building user experiences
• Growth: Top of line impact
• Integrity: Ensuring platform safety 
• Social Impact: Progressing positive change on key social issues 

Who do you want to build products for? (select all that apply) 

• Consumers: External, individual users of the Meta family of apps 
• Businesses: External business account users of Meta family of products 
• Meta Employees: Users of internal tools 
• Developers: Internal and external engineers using Meta developer products and APIs 

Please select which Meta Pillar(s) you’d be interested in joining? (select all that apply) 

• Family of Apps: Enable optimized enforcement and support of account integrity to foster safe and meaningful communities. 
• Monetization: Empower people and businesses to succeed in the global economy
• Gen AI: bring the transformative potential of generative AI to people and businesses
• Reality Labs: build tools that help people feel connected anytime, anywhere

How would you rank your preference in terms of products? (feel free to use numbers)

• Facebook App
• Monetization
• Privacy
• Messenger
• Instagram
• What’s App
• Reality Labs (AR/VR)

I've had 5+ friends leave Meta or quit software engineering altogether after E6. Either the responsibilities and stress were too much or what they were being asked to work on wasn't really aligned with their core interests. Business needs are always changing, so it can be a common occurrence to take a lot of ownership over a project you don't have personal interest in.

It's important to be adaptable, but I think intrinsic motivation can be hard to sustain if the people, project, or priorities are in flux.

For the older crowd, what really typifies career longevity in a software engineering?

I have a recruiter screening with Meta next week for a full-stack software engineer role. What can I expect in the recruiter screening?

This is my first interview after a very long time, I need to brush up my skills. what is latest acceptable time frame to schedule the technical interviews without being considered late?

Hey everyone, I tried searching online about this but couldn't find much info. I did virtual onsites with Meta this week and the recruiter called me asking if I knew anyone at Meta that could be used as an internal reference.

Is this generally a good sign and does this mean I'm going to the HC?

How do you choose a team at Google or Meta? There might be a ton of internal teams that you would have no idea about if you are not working there. Most people only know about Instagram, YouTube and other user facing products. How did the folks working at those companies select which team they want to join? I was asked which team I would like to join in my first conversation with a Google Recruiter.

Based on Rahul's answer here, he mentions that you should move to a location where your team is based :

I am interested in moving to Seattle if I get an offer from one of the FAANG companies. I would like to know what are the teams in those companies that have a center of focus in the greater Seattle area?

If you refer someone and they get the role but they do not perform well: Are there any negative consequences on the person who refers them?

At a small startup where you refer someone directly to the Team Lead maybe that will cause them to lose trust in you for future referrals. Is that the same case at Meta or FAANG? Do they keep track of people you refer and how they perform?

Hi community,

I am a recently joined M/L engineer at Meta and working in ads domain. I am stuck for last few weeks in verifying a change. Essentially, it involves multiple systems built, request routing and looking for the expected changes. Tried reaching out to T/Ls and internal users. Even politely asked team / outside to ramp me up in the domain but nobody responded positively. They all give me pointers to some internal documentation or workplace group to ask questions. I feel I am really stuck. I have regular updates meeting on Monday.

Here's 2 things about how the updates work:

1. I am making some progress everyday but things are moving very slow which is making me frustrated.
2. When sharing updates, everybody shares the impact and good followups where I only share one incremental step like looked at the logging, traffic is low so can't determine the magnitude of the change.

Anyone willing to share their experiences?

I got an interview call from Meta for SDE position. They asked to send over any names of references I have at Meta. Can you please suggest me any names from Meta to put as references?

Thank you.

Always been on the fence here whether an MBA helps me boost my visibility, help me learn more business skills and builds a well rounded profile than "you're just another average software engineer" which could help me get into management track and above faster than my peers?

In other industries, having an MBA is a requirement, but not so much in tech yet, apparently.

Happy to hear back thoughts form folks about this with some recommendations

I am currently living in the Bay Area and considering moving to Austin, TX for personal reasons (affordability, family, friends etc). I have an option to go fully remote and work on the same team. My team's current setup is a few folks are in East coast, a few in the Bay Area and some of them are remote. So, I don't really see a whole lot of benefit going to the office regularly. Plus, I started during the COVID- WFH time in 2020 and did very well working remote, so I (or my manager) don't have a problem with productivity as well.

That said, I do have a fear that my career growth might be affected if I move out of the Bay Area, especially if I want to find a FAANG equivalent role or startups in Austin. Recent RTO mandates by multiple companies are also making me nervous about long term future of remote work. What are your thoughts on making this move for personal reasons and availability of great roles with remote option or in Austin? Thanks!