Mid-level Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

For context, one of my team's project requires making changes in another team's package and they require us to file a ticket to have the change reviewed. I want to understand why they are doing this and hear from industry experts in what situations it is suggested to request filing a ticket to review changes made by other teams. They don't have this requirement one year ago. Their estimated turn around time is 2 weeks. All changes, big or small, are required to file a review ticket.

If someone is just starting into software industry as a fresh graduate then why not to get into AI/ML instead of software development?

Hi everyone, I’ve spent 6 months at Meta, and I don’t have a project for next half. I want to scope out my project for next half from the roadmapping so I can demonstrate E4 level? I’m very new to this. How do I do it, and can you share resources that can help me?

I am watching "Build Side Projects With 500k+ Users" by Alex and am still in the first section and it's a great course (kudos to Alex). What I felt it's very hard to create a side project for a backend dev or someone with only web dev experience. Because the mobile app is the only way to get users. Normally users don't want the hassle of using a Web platform to test things out. Maybe the course may deliver scenarios for backend and web developers as well later, but for now, it seems that mobile is the only way. I have one more question: Is it a good idea to learn mobile app development (for Backend or Web FE dev) if you have an idea that leads you good user count?

More specifically: How can I tell if I'm building projects properly? How do I make sure I'm teaching the right things? - I'm mentoring a couple other engineers right now, and I want to share the proper methods and ideas with them.

I have a Master's in Computer Science with a focus on Machine Learning. I currently work at Microsoft, where I have built one large-scale model and spent four years developing a platform for model building and inferencing. Due to a re-org, I was moved to a non-ML project. Overall, I have more than eight years of work experience, with four years focused on ML platforms and four years in backend development. I do not have experience with neural networks or deep learning at all. I’m interested in applying for Senior Machine Learning Engineer roles at companies like Meta, but I’m not sure if I have enough depth to succeed ML interview round. Do I need extensive experience in machine learning/model development or deep learning to clear interviews for 'Software Engineer, Machine Learning' roles at Meta?

I interviewed with Meta last July. I have 10+ years of experience but not in big tech so got down leveled to E4. They said it was a close call to E5 but want to set me up for success. But since they were not hiring E4 at that time I just let it go. Heard back from a recruiter that they are now hiring E4 so picked up from where we left. I got team matched this week. Took the advice from the Taro discussions to take the first one which feels right, so after two team match calls picked one. Checking on blind and levels.fyi shows a varied band for E4 from 300 - 400. I am interviewing with 2 other companies one startup another public. Things are going well at my current company and I have a EAD so not in a time crunch. I would love to work at Meta and hit the ground running but the offer should feel like I am being valued. If not, I am willing to try again in July when chances of getting E5 would be more since I have gone through this once or I can proactively time interviews to have competing offers. So after doing Rahul's insightful course on negotiation, taking the opportunity here to ask what is a good benchmark for Meta E4 SWE, full stack for Menlo Park location given my case? Thanks for your time!

I'm going to leave my current company in a month as I have accepted an offer from another company and I'm currently working on the H1B transfer step. H1B transfer should take three weeks at the most. Recently my org had a restructuring and my manager has been changed leading to newer project and new team member and nowadays I spend most of my time onboarding myself onto the new project. I have couple of questions here: What's the right time to inform the manager about my next move? Should I give my 100% into the onboarding? I feel low-key guilty on adding more burden to the team by doing work which will add no value at the end.

In my organization, there are SDE roles till level 4, and then on top of that, you become an EM. Many times, an SDE 3/4 (who is considered a technical lead) gives tasks or creates the sprint. But then when the junior engineer goes to an EM to show their work, the EM changes the entire approach or assigns vague tasks. This impacts the velocity of the sprint. I do want to understand: How do I put it out to the upper management such that this doesn't happen? Also, should an EM make technical decisions in this way?

If I’m interviewing for an L4 position at FAANG+, I understand that the system design expectations aren’t as high as they would be for more senior roles. Should I treat the system design interview somewhat like a behavioral round, focusing on skills like breaking down complex tasks, asking clarifying questions, addressing ambiguity, being open to feedback, and showing vulnerability—essentially, qualities expected at a Junior to Mid level? If I don’t know the specific answers to questions about scaling or other advanced technical topics, would it be fair to approach the system design round as a way to show how I’d collaborate and operate on the team? My main concern is that if I take this approach, the interviewer might still expect deeper technical knowledge and tell me, “You should already know this and have experience with it.” I am looking to avoid this surprise. Any insights would be deeply appreciated.

So within my own area of the codebase and tech stack I own, I'm very comfortable and confident leaving feedback and sharing thoughts. However, I know that in order to grow to senior, I need to expand past my immediate area into other spaces like the components and services built by other teams in my org like sister teams. For those areas, I'm unsure how to share my thoughts since I'm not an expert in those codebases. So let's say I come across a code review from one of these more "separate" areas from my own and the engineer behind the diff is more senior than me - How can I leave my feedback in a way that respects the situation?

I've gotten some feedback from peers on my team that I should "manage up" more. So: What do you think "managing up" is? What are examples of things you do to "manage up"? P.S. I have clarified this with the people I've gotten feedback from. But asking here to get the "taro perspective" since y'all tend to have great insights.

I am working at a 2 year old startup that has just launched its product a few months ago. The launch was considered a failure because the product has so many issues and customer complaints. Some customers even stated that they prefer the competitor product. After being here for less than 6 months, I observed that the company has a culture of rushing everything with lack of planning and resources/manpower to execute their vision. None of the upper management has business experience in this exact product, they only have experience in tangentially related product. Also, prior to the formation of the current engineering team, the company hired an overseas vendor that overpromised a 6 months project that dragged out into 2 years. That is the main reason the current engineering team I am part of is built: to replace the vendors. The investors are known to be very profit-oriented right from the start, and they are also funding another startup that has the exact same product as my company, although this startup will not be launching anything until next year. The combination of inexperienced upper management and culture of rushing things lead to product failure. Thankfully, I think the atmosphere in the office is still pretty positive and laid-back. People are not pointing fingers and they still do their best to recover from their mistakes and prepare for future initiatives. My manager has stated from the very first time I join the company that he prioritizes quality over speed, and given our previous product failure by the vendor, I agree that this is the solution. However, the Product Manager doesn't agree with this and he pushes us to prioritize speed over quality, even if that's the exact mindset that leads to our product failure. The rest of the upper management seems to adopt the same mindset of quick fixes and rushing, and the most alarming part is that we don't seem to have identified our core users, so I'm not sure if our previous launch has actually taught us anything. Also, I noticed that the Product Manager is lacking competencies in some key areas. I expect a PM to be someone who can not only have a vision on what the product would grow into, but also someone who can do analytics, business projections, and prioritize the most impactful projects for the team. In our daily interactions, he seems to be someone who just passes words from one person to another without doing any substantial management. This is slowly leading to resentment from my manager towards the PM because the team is slowly being overwhelmed with unimpactful tasks that hinder our future milestones. My questions are: Which direction should I follow? My manager's or the PM's (majority)? Should I consider this a sign for me to look for new company? Or is this still normal and workable? If yes, what kind of role / actions should I take in this situation? How should I convey this in my 1-1 to my manager?

I'm in the team matching process for an E4 position at Meta. I've reached out to numerous friends at Meta for team recommendations, but responses have been limited, possibly because most of them are at the E4/E5 level and not really connected to hiring decisions. If someone asks me about if there's any good teams hiring in my current company, I'd have a hard time answering it. I’ve started cold-messaging managers on LinkedIn but haven’t had much success yet. My intuition says it might not be too fruitful because 1) people don't check LinkedIn very often, 2) they might be hiring previously but not hiring now, 3) they are hiring for specialist positions but I'm generalist. Then, are there benefits of reaching on my own? Are there any success stories from contacting managers versus going through recruiters? I'm not too worried about not having a match, but I'm just trying to optimize to get a best outcome. edit: got some responses from my friends. I think I'll wait to see if any leads from my personal network can result in something :))

Every year, there's a mandatory compensation one on one with my manager. I find the session mostly informational and it's not really a bargaining / negotiation process. Usually when the compensation conversation happens, the performance review was set in stone a few months ago. There's limited things a manager can do. What do you ask during the compensation discussion? The nitty-gritty of compensation of my current company is thoroughly discussed over different forums and there's more information over the Internet than what my manager could officially tell me. Should I just quickly close the comp one on one to save time for both of us?

Comparing Meta to other companies, splitting between a PM and an engineer is very awkward. PMs end up doing a lot of strategy work, but when it comes to what tactics you pick, it seems like engineers have to pick there. My PM is very senior at PM6 and their guidance is extremely high-level to the point where the concrete projects we need to work on aren't entirely clear. How do I fill in these details, so I know what to work on?

I am a Software Engineer without a CS degree with around 6 years of work experience. I quit my job last year to work on my CS fundamentals and i have worked quite well on that. Now i am in a position where i am able to get jobs which i would caste aside as Not top-tier. I want to get through these top tier jobs but i am facing a lot of difficulties in getting through. How can i achieve that?

In a previous team and organisation I had 3 different reports. Lvl 5, lvl 4 & a lvl 2 I was the only remote member of the team, so at times it was difficult to fully understand the social and team dynamics within their office. I initially was unaware of any jealousy within the team until I was asked to fly out for a week for an unrelated reason. When on the ground, it become very clear to me there was a strong level of tension between some of the employees. The lvl 5 was jealous of 2 of their friends who were now lvl 6 because they joined the organisation at the same time. The lvl 4 was a strong performer who was happy with their current position. However the lvl 2 who was an apprentice, was an outstanding performer (approx lvl 6) and it was close to witnessing a savant, especially at their age (18). However there was no possible way for them to go up any higher as their role was tied to the completion of a certain stint of education. This, alongside that the lvl 5 had aspirations of becoming a lvl 6 but was severely under performing which was especially noticeable by the lvl 2 - made things very awkward and difficult to navigate. The outcome of this in the end was that I would support the lvl 2 in finding another role in a different organisation and with the lvl 5, we had a long discussion alongside my director to work out a plan of how they can start adding more value and improving their position within the team. How could I have gone about this differently to create a more positive environment for the team?

I had an interview with a Big Tech company last week. The Hiring Manager told me that he had 2 spots open on his team, one mid L4 and one senior L5. He then asked me what role I wanted to be in. I waffled a bit, but then said the L4 role. I genuinely believe I'd rather be in the L4 role since I've never worked in Big Tech before. I'm assuming I made a mistake in answering the question though. Similar to how you should never give the first number when asked about comp expectations, I'm assuming the right answer to a levelling question is something like "I'm looking to contribute at the highest level I can". I imagine this response is the better response for 2 reasons: 1) I might be able to get an L5 role and operate at that level, even if I don't feel that way 2) If they think I'm going for L5, they might give me L4 as consolation, whereas if they think I'm going for L4, I might end up with nothing. This is the "shoot for the moon, land among the stars" strategy. Can people confirm my thinking is accurate?

What are some good books or online resources for learning how to write better code? I am looking for actual code examples demonstrating best practices for someone who already has programming experience but who wants to improve. Examples of topics I am looking to see covered would be whether a function should always include a return, when it makes sense to use try-catch instead of handling bad input with control flow, or when to use different approaches for handling invalid input.

I have worked primarily on the backend, but my company now has assigned me features concerning our Android app, which is built mainly on XML for layouts & Java. How can I get started on this, be productive & contribute effectively? Thanks.

Every quarter, manager asks few question like what are things that went well for team? what are things that didn't went well? what are your top priorities as a team member? What is best way to answer these questions (as someone who's been in company for less than a year)?

Context: Over a conflict, an aggressive conversation occurred between the engineering manager towards the business lead. From the point of experience, there are ten years more on the side of the BL. Everything happened over Slack over the weekend. Due to this, today, the entire engineering team had a 1-1 to skip meeting with HR to give our statements about the issue. What usually happens after this meeting?

I switched jobs ~4 months ago and switched teams (not voluntarily) after ~1 month. My eventual goal is to (voluntarily) internally transfer into the AI org once I'm eligible. During a 1:1 with my skip manager, I mentioned that my current team didn’t have much opportunity for impact. He floated a meaty project in a different org and asked if I was interested. Previous question here. Let’s call this option 1. Afterward, I spoke to my direct manager, who presented opportunities in the other team that he directly manages. Let’s call this option 2. Now I'm trying to decide between these options. Pros of option 1: More technically interesting Platform/infra play that will eventually integrate with every single product => project has large scope Cons of option 1: Not sure whom I'll work with Not sure how much support I'd get. (Good thing if lots of scope; bad thing if I'm flailing alone) Org structure tbd: although my skip asked if I want to work on this, he’s loaning engineers to another org to fund the initiative. Uncertainty re: how well defined the work is Pros of option 2: I know there are things that I can start working on tomorrow that are time-sensitive and needed for an upcoming product launch. My EM manages this team and is responsible for the overall delivery. He seems to care more about this new project/team than my current team. - It sounds like my EM would rather that I work on option 2 than option 1 Product surface is high-visibility and therefore affords opportunity for impact Cons of option 2: I'm less interested in product / user-facing work, even though it's high-visibility With all this in mind, does anyone have advice on which option I should pick or things to keep in mind? Thanks for reading this far!