Team Selection Q&A and Videos

Context can be found below:

I am a 32-year-old engineer with 7 years of experience. For the past 5 years, I've been working at a startup that is around 10-12 years old and recently went public, serving as a mid-level backend engineer.

Despite my time at the company, I haven't seen much career growth. I received my first promotion after a year and a half, but nothing significant has happened since then. I'm feeling lost and unsure about my next steps. The work is unmotivating, and I feel like I'm not learning or growing. I'm constantly occupied with production issues, and my manager frequently cancels 1:1 meetings. Even though I receive positive feedback, I know I'm not fully utilizing my potential, which is troubling as my years of experience increase without meaningful progress.

Currently, I'm extremely demotivated and struggle to find the drive to work each day. I wake up feeling stuck and unhappy with my job. Although I get my monthly salary and perform my duties, I'm no longer passionate about my work. I have the knowledge and skills, but I just don't feel like contributing to this company anymore.

Can you help? I'm not happy with my current situation. I used to be a curious person, staying up all night coding and learning new things. However, for the past two years, I've been merely going through the motions at work. I want to regain my curiosity and sense of empowerment, so that when I go to bed each night, I feel excited about what I can achieve the next day.

Seeking Advice on Choosing the Right Team

Hello everyone,

I’m currently at a crossroads in my career and would appreciate any insights or advice. Here’s the context:

Background:

• I work at a company that primarily deals with payroll and HR services for companies.
• I was originally on the payroll team, which has now been absorbed into a larger payroll, taxes, and payments vertical.
• Earlier this year, I was loaned out to help another team set up a new service and architecture.

Current Situation:

• Our company underwent reorganization, and my old team is now part of a different department with the same manager but a different director and VP.
• I recently spoke with my skip-level manager, who praised my work and mentioned that several teams would be happy to have me. I also have the option to stay with the team I’ve been helping recently.

Teams Available:

1. Growth Team: Works on tools for prospective customers (estimates, self-enrollment, etc.).
2. Accounting Firm Team: Services accountants who handle payrolls for multiple companies, focusing on admin ops tooling.
3. Payroll Team: My old team. Not sure how things will change post-reorganization, but I had a good relationship with my manager and team.
4. Integrations Team: Handles integrations with multiple product teams. Not too many interesting problems to solve.
5. Leave and Absence Team: Deals with leave/work schedule-related matters (PTO, holidays, work schedule, etc.). This is the team I was loaned to recently. The new manager appreciates my work, and I get along well with the team, although they tend to work slower than I’m used to.

Considerations:

• I feel a strong inclination to stay with the Leave and Absence team due to high visibility and good relationships with the current director and SVP.
• Career growth and self-fulfillment are important factors in my decision.

Question:

• For those of you who have had to make similar decisions, what type of team did you choose to join and why?
• Any advice on factors to consider in making this decision?

Thank you in advance for your insights!

I hope this helps structure your thoughts and gather valuable advice from others.

If you receive an offer from a different team, how do you communicate to your manager that you plan on moving to a new team / opportunity at Microsoft. What if you don't have the best relationship with them?

At Microsoft, the current manager does not need to approve team switch, regardless of whether it's a software role or not.

Large tech companies used to provide a sense of stability and financial security, but with falling stock prices and layoffs everywhere I wonder if joining a hyper growth late-stage startup with a growing business and hefty pre-ipo RSUs is a better choice?

Hey Folks,

I have the famous question here : Big tech -> startup : Should I do it?

Context:

I have a pretty toxic leadership. I have even got offers internally, but the leadership played political and I didn't end up switching teams. Also to note, I was told that I have been given "meets most" or the lowest rating a person can get.

This was a pretty horrible, as I was in exceeds in my mid year. I am not sure why they are being nasty.

And rumor is that they will be letting folks with this rating go this month. ( All on blind, and some managers from other teams also confirmed, but I have not been given a last day yet)

Given this a context, I just want to see if I should take up a startup offer.

I have 10+ YOE, and I see that I am not getting as many calls as I used to just 2 years back. And the interviews are much more random. This makes me concerned.

I am not on visa. But moving from big tech -> start up is a huge paycut.

What do you suggest I do?

I'm a 30-year-old SDE-2 looking to shift my career towards data and machine learning. I’ve started as an Android Engineer and also have experience with React and Node.js. However, I no longer find these areas satisfying. Now, I understand the importance of staying consistent within a domain. For the next decade, I want to focus on a technology that will remain relevant for the next twenty years, without being affected by frequent framework changes.

I've noticed that people around 25 years old are able to build impressive projects thanks to good courses and tutorials. Although they make mistakes, it seems likely that within the next two or three years, they will have overcome these challenges. I find data and machine learning more rewarding because they involve answering meaningful questions. Recently, there was an internal opening in my company for a data and ML role, but I didn’t apply because I clearly lacked the necessary skills. However, I believe it’s time to switch and commit to this new direction. Any advice on making this transition smoothly and choosing the right path would be greatly appreciated.

I have been in the team matching process with Meta for the last 3 weeks. I have talked to 4 teams and 2 of them did not proceed futher. The other 2 teams are something I would rank in the top of the 4 but I am not completely satisfied with the role at these teams. How long do you think is it good to slow down the team matching for so as to explore other team matching calls? Or would it be a bad move as I can miss out the current available opportunities?

If I go ahead with any of the teams that don't completely align with my interests, how easy is it to switch internally after I join a team?

For new grads, do you recommend starting career and living in California, despite the high living costs and high taxes?

My company recently changed my remote role to in-person and I have to move cross-country.

I started interviewing for the few remote companies that are left and got an offer.

My problem is that I really like my company and my team. It's a midsize company with about 500 engineers or so. I'm wondering if people have any suggestions / tips on how to make a decision in a case like this. For me, being remote is important since it enables me to live near my family right now, but my career progression is also important at this moment and I can always go back to remote later in my life. Thoughts on this?

I also wonder if I can leverage this offer and ask my company for an exception. My team really needs me since I'm the team lead with deep knowledge about a lot of our new services and it can kill some of our projects completely, at least for 6-12 months.

I got a job through a friend after getting laid off, but the day I started this new job, I got a full-time offer for another more prestigious company. Do I take it?

I've noticed that my manager often doesn't acknowledge my suggestions or thoughts during team meetings, even though our one-on-one interactions are fine. I feel that high-impact opportunities are given to other team members, despite my requests for them. I am moved to support work recently (manager claims that this is also high impact and there is scope to reduce operational work). Additionally, I received the no salary increment in my team in last review.

I also feel that my manager supports a teammate at the same level as me more than they support me, even though we are both working towards promotion.

I'm not sure what to do—whether to stay and hope things improve or transfer to another team and start fresh. If I change teams, I will need to start working from scratch for my promotion.

I am working in a product, it has been 4 years, started from level 59. Now I am at level 61 for 1 year now. I am reporting to the same manager in these 4 years. I am not excited in the current team and want some change but these factor is holding me:

Pros:

1. The product team is expanding, this time they have taken work from US and hiring in India.
2. They are promising for new challenges this year with the product with AI features.
3. Last year, this product was having visibility from CVP, now they are claiming it will be having visibility from EVP.

Cons:

1. Last year, the head of UX left the team to join outside firm and recently the head of PM has taken internal transfer.
2. Overall team culture score(known as Thriving Score) is lower than the average score of Microsoft.
3. To be honest, I don't use this product in my day-to-day life, neither my friend does, even my team mates doesn't use. But it has good number of downloads.
4. WLB is sometimes worse for a specific period.

Note: Not considering switching to other company as stocks are doubling every year here.

Should I switch in-org or outside org or switch to other company?

I've been a software engineer in India for 8 years, working with reputed companies. My previous company (A) was an Indian startup that grew significantly during my 5-year tenure there. I learned quickly as a junior and mid-level engineer, often handling urgent issues. Despite frequent deployment failures, it never hindered our release pace. However, after 5 years, I felt burned out due to poor work-life balance, especially after getting married, and the pay wasn't competitive.

I moved to my current company (B) about 2.5 years ago, drawn by a 100% salary hike, better work-life balance, and excellent perks. But I soon noticed a strong cultural shift. The engineering quality at B is not on par with A, and their systems are less mature despite being in the same domain. I saw this as a chance to improve B's systems using my experience, but progress was slow. The company seemed more focused on appearing as tech leaders rather than actual tech innovation.

Initially, I had a supportive manager, but my feedback on engineering practices and processes led to tension. Over time, my manager avoided interactions with me. Now, the team dynamics are strained. Juniors respect me, but peers and seniors, even recent joiners, view me negatively, questioning my teamwork. Bureaucratic politics from new tech leads and senior managers, who came from the same previous team, add to the problem. My manager, caught in this new dynamic, no longer supports me and avoids our 1:1s due to their negative nature, although she now wants to rebuild our relationship as she claims that she has reflected over it after she got a break from everything after few weeks' of leaves.

The toxic environment has pushed me to prepare for other opportunities, though it's made me wary of company cultures. I don't want to join startups due to their poor work-life balance, but I seek a role where I can spend 60% of my day learning valuable tech skills without unnecessary politics. The office environment has turned very hostile for me where anything I try to say gets taken in negative light. This is affecting my mental health, but I'm trying to stay here until July for my stock vesting.

I'm struggling to stay hopeful about the software industry and would appreciate any encouragement. Thanks!

I'm a 2023 new graduate working at a mid-sized software company that operates remotely. The company has a rotation program for new graduates, and my first rotation was with the backend team. After six months, I moved to the mobile team, and in another three months, I must decide whether to stay with the mobile team or return to the backend team.

Both teams have positive cultures, work-life balance, teammates, and managers. However, it seems the mobile team's manager faces more pressure from the leadership. The work I've done on both teams has been interesting, although the mobile projects were more challenging. This has forced me to think more about structure and patterns when writing code. It's clear the mobile team needs more engineers, while the backend team receives a steady influx of new graduates each year.

There were noticeable differences in the onboarding processes of each team. In the backend team, my tasks were intentionally organized, starting with simple tasks like deleting a few lines of code and gradually moving to small projects with pre-written design documents.

The mobile team gave me a series of official tutorials for the first two months. The tasks varied greatly in difficulty—some incredibly challenging and others relatively easy. I understand the difference, as the backend teams have more experience with new graduates, while the mobile team typically hires experienced engineers directly.

My decision pivots on whether I should pursue a career as a backend or mobile engineer. I am grateful for the rotation opportunity my company has provided, but I'm unsure about the next steps. What factors should I consider when making this decision? What kind of question should I ask my managers or help I can get from them for making a better decision?

In this economy and the cost of living worldwide, having a safe and secure job is increasingly valuable - especially since all of the layoffs that are happening around tech.

In the last 9 months, I moved to another organization for better pay and new experiences, however, due to complete and utter dysfunction in my project I'm increasingly getting frustrated with this new organization.

I have started to shift to a different project that's more aligned with my skillset and is functionally better in the organization, but this will be a staggered release.

This is positive, but it's still going to be many months until this move has been finalized and I'm unsure if I can maintain my sanity for long enough.

I have already noticed a fall in my quality & speed of work due to this and I'm worried that this will continue in a downward trajectory.

I have other potential offers outside of this (nothing concrete) but have never been out of a job so unsure to take that risk as well.

Due to my situation, I have no dependents or ties, so my ability to take risks is theoretically higher as well.

I recently joined Meta as a junior engineer and my hope is to be able to try out several domains (guessing realistically 2) to see where my interest lies. I’m not on an AI team currently, but given the rise of AI, I hope to be able to explore that area.

However, I understand that switching teams will disrupt my productivity and growth as a junior engineer. I’m wondering:

• When should I approach changing teams/domain? More specifically, is it better to change teams after being promoted to mid-level?
• How should I approach changing teams?

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.

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?