Senior Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I've heard this many times be true for senior and above level SWEs at FAANGMULA companies, but wasn't sure how true this was?

As I look to take on other interviews at FAANGMULA companies, the main issue for me when it comes to role whether a senior SWE or EM/TPM is time. Will I have inevitably with more meetings as a senior EM/TPM because of management by itself and having to work over 40 hours/wk in order to get promoted or stay at my level (I have heard this is the case at some FAANGMULA companies), or is it possible to be a code machine and manage your own team and workload to the point that it is automated you can build your own side projects (like how some people build their startups on the side while working "full time" at a FAANGMULA company)?

Personally, I still have the entrepreneurial itch and want to continue working on something on the side, but have issue with working at FAANGMULA 40+ hours a week in order to maintain my level and be promoted, if I know it is indeed possible to be more efficient with my time and achieve my metrics/results with half the time (say 20-30 hours a week instead of 40-60 that I'm hearing is quite common for some senior SWEs as ICs or managers).

Hello! I would appreciate some career guidance tips in transitioning to a new role. To give some context about me, I am currently L62 at Microsoft with 7 YOE and have recently received an offer for E5 at Meta. It is a level+1 for me. From what I have gathered, the expectations for E5 are going to be high involving scope/ambiguity resolution, delivering under tight deadline, etc. Also given the stack-ranking nature of evaluation, might need to compete with my new colleagues, who are currently working at senior level.

I feel I'm an average+ engineer and doing WFH for the last 3 years made me working in silos. My current team does not punish teammates without active participation. Being introvert by nature and someone who is afraid of public-speaking, I got used to the comfort zone of inactive participation. My misconception about focusing solely on technical skills to grow in career has made my career progress slower and I am painfully realizing it lately. To add to that, job security is important for me as I'm a visa holder.

Given this context, I am considering whether to take E5 Meta offer. On one end, I can take this as a growth opportunity and improve my technical and soft-skills. I am definitely looking forward for ways to increase participation, influence team and being a strong engineer. I wonder if I should improve my current soft-skills in my current-role and then move or if I could simultaneously improve them on my new job.

On the other end, I wonder if I could survive in an environment like Meta and deal with stress/burnouts and whether the lack of improved soft-skills would make me unsuccessful in my new role.

Appreciate your thoughts!!

My manager suggested I add a weekly "Wins" section to our 1:1 doc. What's worth highlighting there? Is it better to only highlight things that meet the E6 bar? Or should I put everything I could think of, including mundane things like connecting peers with solutions or creating Gantt charts? Should I limit how many wins I highlight each week? How should I organize these wins?

Alex and Rahul give amazing presentations! Would love to hear your tips for creating amazing presentations. For example:

• What's your process for creating your slides?
• How do you find memes/jokes?
• Do you memorize your slides before the presentation?
• How much time do you spend rehearsing before your presentations?
• Any other tips?

Hi all, I'm currently working on GenAI server infra at Meta as an IC5. I'm interested in the space and have had a long standing interest to dig deeper into ML. At a high level, I'm considering the following:

1. Positioned well for E6 scope and exploring interest in people management (M1)
2. Taking an online masters program to brush up on math, ML foundation skills. This can better validate my interests. Alternatively, I can lean into online resources like Cousera, deeplearning.ai
3. Recruit internally as an E5 to a relevant team. Generally internal mobility empowers people to explore and learn new things. However, it helps to have relevant experience.

For online masters programs, I've heard of great things from Georgia Tech, with a ~$7k online program. Alternative options include UT and Stanford, and the latter is ~$60k. Rahul made a great video about his , but this would rather be a part time commitment, and I already have many YOE at Meta for my resume.

I'd also love to hear your general thoughts on navigating career moves into an area with existing, highly talented pool.

Which choice is better for long term career growth in FAANG, especially senior to staff?

1. A team of extremely talented engineers (where showing an impact would be very hard)
2. A team of decent talent (but hardworking) where it might be easy to stand out

I know the way I’ve framed the question makes it more like option 2 is better; but, I would love for hear your thoughts.

I am a mid level engineer from a small startup and have recently secured a senior FAANG engineering position. Given this I am expecting to have some challenges when transitioning both from startup to FAANG and also from a mid level to a senior position.

Given the above my questions are:

• How can I ensure I find a good manager and team during team match to help me succeed? Particularly, what questions should I ask during team match to achieve this?
• Given the quite situational nature and the focus more so on making the transition easier rather than growing, I assume that my focus should be on finding a team with less pressure. Perhaps an internal team?

Would be good to get some thoughts on this.

I often find myself in situations where I need to optimize Spark scripts for processing large volumes of data. However, I frequently encounter challenges such as memory failures or excessively long evaluation times, which can lead to significant costs.

What are the best strategies you employ to test the performance of Spark jobs that handle heavy workloads without incurring substantial expenses? I'm particularly interested in methods that can help identify bottlenecks and optimize performance effectively while keeping costs low. Any insights or recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Hello everyone,

I joined Meta a couple of months ago as an IC5, coming from a predominantly Java background. Recently, I've started working with the PHP codebase, which is somewhat new to me. I've noticed that my diffs tend to undergo several rounds of revisions, which not only delays their integration but also consumes more engineering time than I'd like.

A fellow engineer pointed out that my diffs are often too lengthy, leading to extensive feedback and additional iterations. I'm actively looking for ways to streamline my review process and improve the quality of my submissions.

Here’s what I’m considering to reduce the review cycles and improve my coding approach:

1. Reducing the Size of Diffs
2. Pre-Review Checks: -- Any suggestions here would be great

I would greatly appreciate any advice on:

• Strategies or tools that could help in catching potential issues early.
• Best practices for structuring PHP code and managing larger changes in a PHP environment.
• Any insights on transitioning from Java to PHP, particularly with regard to common pitfalls or key differences I should be aware of.

Thanks in advance for your help! I'm eager to learn from your experiences and improve my contributions to our projects.

In taro there are tons of great resources for Job Switches, like:

• As Alex explained  Job Switching has some caveats
• As , it is a red flag for recruiters when you switch jobs within 12-14 months.

I understand the point, but what if I choose the wrong company? It's well-known that not all companies can offer the opportunities that we wanted initially. In this case, should I stay longer even if I know that I won't grow there due to factors such as the company structure or lack of opportunity?

I have a goal of reaching senior levels in my career, but to achieve this, I need to gain expertise in certain areas, like

• Strong domain knowledge to make an impact on the product side,
• connections and collaboration
• software craftsmanship.

Currently, my role does not offer me an opportunity to gain experience in the first two areas. As the product is well-regulated and the entire engineering team works on-site, it is difficult for me to connect and collaborate remotely.

On the other hand, this is making me lose my confidence and my ability to make an impact, even though I have gained hard skills and knowledge from my previous experiences in software craftsmanship part.

I am seeking advice on what to do next, should I even care about those red flags in my particular case if I switch the job?

I've recently received an up levelled FAANG offer in the US. I originally applied for a mid level role (SDE II, E4, L4) etc. but was up levelled to a senior engineer in interviews.

I currently have ~3.5 years of engineering experience all at small unknown startups so I'm trying to decide whether to accept the offer or whether to ask for a down level.

I have several concerns about taking the senior offer, which I've listed below:

• I have only 3.5 years experience in development and I'm simply worried I haven't written enough code as of yet to be a senior and I'm not actually technically strong.
• My current experience has been in startups and I've never worked in the big tech environment. Currently we don't need to do things such as write design docs or seek approvals to write code. Additionally, we don't aggressively unit test and only have unit tests for key parts of the code.
• During the interview process I studied super hard and ended up seeing a lot of the questions that were asked beforehand in both system design and coding rounds (I'm concerned I have somehow gamed the system).
• I am worried that the fast ramp up time and expectations in big tech will end up seeing me setup for failure.

On the other side:

• I'm a hard worker and have good soft skills so I wonder if this will be enough to aid me while I get up to speed.
• I know that big tech companies spend a lot of time on their interview process and because of this I should probably trust their rating. They must have seen something if they gave me this offer.
• Finally the senior role offers a lot more money and it might be a good opportunity to see whether I sink or swim. At worst case a highly paid learning opportunity.
• If I could make it through as a senior engineer it could potentially save . 1 - 2 years career time.

Wondering if anyone has advice for this particular situation?

What is the Rotational Software Engineer Program?

How is it different from a regular SWE role?

Is it like being a contractor hired through a staffing company?

Are there levels to it (E4/E5, etc) or is it just one level?

Is there a good chance to become a fulltime employee afterwards and is this a good way to join Meta?

Is it a decent career move to join such a program if you are already a senior in another company or will you be considered a noob if you join a role like this?

I am looking for new opportunities and based on what I am seeing on Taro. My strategy so far has been.

1. Create and polish resume
2. Prep for DSA and System Design
3. Apply to jobs.

This is the end of week 2. 8 Applications, 2 Rejections and not heard back from the rest.

So far I have been applying through LinkedIn and Otta only. I have intentionally avoided and not reached out for personal references. My thinking has been, that I don't want to waste the guaranteed interview opportunity if I am not ready.

My target at the moment is that I should be able to complete 90% of the grind 75 leetcode questions and at least a few system design mocks.

My questions to the community:

1. What are other good job listing services?
2. Is my approach sound or should I change my strategy?

With every rejection, I try to remind myself what said. "We can only do what is in our control; that is to continue preparing."

I recently started a side project that could have an org level impact soon within this year. The feedback for the prototype is pretty good and I got a green-light to put more bandwidth in it.

I used to think once I get the good work done, promotion should come naturally. But both my manager and skip manager are telling me to leave proper documentation and communication as evidence for promotion - docs like PRD, roadmap planning, status update etc.

I usually do communications pretty well, so their feedback make me wonder if I missing something for a staff level promotion.

• What kind of evidence is being valued in a staff promo packet? Any differences between senior and staff promo packet?
• What do I need to highlight and keep track of if I'm creating scope outside of daily work?
• What kind of data I should keep track of to quantify the impact? How do you usually learn about finding the matrix to track?

Thanks!

As you climb up the career ladder (senior -> staff), this soft skill becomes more and more important. What are some ways I can keep honing it? Are there any professional courses I can consider?

I would learn to be effective and efficient at it, specially in scenarios such as public speaking, team meetings, project status, emails etc.

Also, English is not my first language.

I am a self taught developer and have primarily focused only on Android. I'm not a genius and I know I lack in many of the lower level foundation areas. Examples would be I've been doing Android development and really do not know much about the JVM or ART for the matter and how they work. I have never had to learn algorithms at all with my 7 years in the industry. The list goes on.

I do see myself as a solid Android developer and can churn out work but the goals I am striving for I won't hit at my current knowledge level. In my opinion.

However I am a process person and for me I basically need to put together a personal step by step plan on what to learn in order.

What are some suggestions?!

I am a senior software engineer at FAANG (not Meta), and have found myself in a difficult career dilemma.

I joined the company as a junior and made progress to senior in the same team (say A). The nature of the work was very unique. It was heavily focused on technical analysis of software as opposed to writing one yourself. A significant portion of it was cross functional collaboration across different orgs, probably the reason why I was able to get promoted fairly quickly. The coding part was maybe 30% (you were welcome to pursue more if you have the time). The culture overall was nice with good work life balance. Manager mostly supported things I wanted to pursue. Later, I switched teams (say B) and moved to the one with more focus on development of the software. I loved the technology, projects. However, the expectations were crazy high. I ended up getting a low performer rating, a year after I was promoted to senior in my previous team. The side effects were no bonus, refreshers, salary hike.

I have been working hard since then to manage the expectations. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to exceed them and thereby pursue a career growth and the next title without throwing your life at work. I can get “meets expectation” for foreseeable future. We are also thinking of expanding our family next year.

I discussed with my previous manager who is willing to take me back. The work there has a high visibility, impact for the next year. I could build strong soft skills - leadership, driving things through others, collaboration there; but, not so much as to actually writing software.

My options -

1. Stick through in my current team for few years because it lets me stay closer to software development and open up opportunities in the future for development roles. But that means financial stress, an impact on family goals. Added anxiety.
2. Go back to previous team. Get that job stability, pursue family goals; but, might get rusted on software development skills. Maybe if I find some ways to keep honing them (also software design skills) then maybe there is that.
3. Looking externally. This is my last resort; but, given the market conditions it does not look pretty. I also like my company in general and would hate to leave. Also not sure of the dynamics of going through pregnancy shortly after joining a new company.

What is the correct mindset I should have? How should I navigate this situation in short and long run.

So, in the past, whenever a job switch happened, it was comparatively easier to align all the interviews and get the offer timing synced up to some extent. But with team matches now, with the big companies, how do you manage the timeline for offers, and also, how long should one wait on any of the offers, given there is no assurance of a team match?

I am wondering if there is a strategy that can be applied in this scenario. Also, if one accepts an offer at company A, and there is a team match with company B, at what time is it okay to let go of company A (accepted offer, joined the company but less than a month, joined a company less than a year). This is assuming that the candidate is joining in a senior role and both companies A & B are big Tech firms.

In AWS clusters, there are numerous instances, and multiple teams deploy new data workflows every week.

We once had a situation where a team member added numerous nodes to a cluster for a backfill operation, resulting in an unexpectedly high bill that shocked us.

To prevent such instances in the future, we're exploring ways to streamline monitoring and accurately calculate the costs of each instance. However, this can be time-consuming.

How does your company establish guardrails to prevent unexpectedly high costs from the use of expensive machines?

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?

I recently joined Meta, with over a decade of experience in software product development from various companies.

Currently, I'm working as a system generalist, but I have a growing interest in transitioning into a machine learning engineer role by next year.

This interest stems from both a desire to explore that sector and the recognition of the high demand for ML skills. I'm eager to invest the necessary effort to learn and adapt.

Could anyone share insights on the feasibility of this transition within Meta? Additionally, what specific skill set should I focus on developing to align with the expectations for a machine learning engineer role here at Meta?

Your guidance and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I recently read an existing question "Do FAANG...ever hire M1 from outside?"

I am aware that M1 is usually filled internally. The part that shocked me is that the questioner stated they are a Sr EM with 10 years of management experience. I would expect they would interview for Tier 1 as a Sr EM with that background.

This relates to my own career strategy as well: I plan to move from Sr IC to EM at my current company, gain 2-5 years of experience, and consider interviewing out for promo if I can't achieve internal promo in that frame.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? We know promo to senior for engineers by interviewing is often easier than internal promo, but is that a poor mental model for EM?

Hello, I have 3 years of experience and I'm an SDE II at Amazon. The Q1 promotion results are out, and I'm surprised to see many fast-track SDE III promotions. It seems to me that when the time is right and stars align, SDE III promotion can be quick, and if you stay in one team long enough, it wouldn't be hard to get to SDE III.

80% of my team are SDE IIs, and I don't see my possibility of SDE III promotion in the next 2 years unless:

1. I find some big opportunities that bring huge revenue to the organization
2. There's a major reorg, and I'm assigned to a new team, and the new team expands
3. My current team shrinks for some reason, I stay, and my team grows again. Interestingly, my team's senior manager and 2 senior engineers actually fall into the third bucket.

What do you think? Should I just relax, keep pace, and grow my skills, hoping for a promotion by job hopping when the market recovers?