Team Selection Q&A and Videos

I joined company A in October (prior to which I did a contract job at company C for 1 month) but I already had an offer from company B which was delayed and joining was pushed to Dec. Now, I need to inform my manager at company A that I have to leave the company. It breaks my heart because all we have been doing so far is kind of training and stuff and no active work however, I do not like the kind of work I would be doing here as it is more like a Salesforce developer/ tester with the development outsourced and they are building a team to bring development inhouse. So even though the company is quite stable and has good benefits I have decided to leave it for a better paying role that I feel will satiate my career aspirations. Here are a few questions I am seeking answers for:

1. The company has a Winter break starting Dec 22 and my manager goes on leave from 20, when should I break this news to him? (In my last company I informed my employer with a two week notice and I was given the last date to be just a week later. I am a foreign student in USA who has just started working and utilized almost half the number of unemployment days I have for this year to be precise 2 July, 2024)
2. How should I tell him about this decision without burning the bridges. Honestly, I have this feeling that I am kind of cheating my employer so I am finding it difficult to justify it in front of my manager.

Thanks in advance!

I'm currently employed at a startup where we're building bookkeeping tools. My work mainly involves Python, some database work, and a lot of business logic wrangling. Due to the small size of our app and engineering org, I don't have many opportunities to gain the necessary experience in distributed systems. I'm seeking advice on how to transition to distributed systems. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

For background, I’m self-taught and got my first software dev role less than 2 years ago. I want a new job because this job isn't providing me with the skills needed to keep up with the industry/job market, but in part because I don't have those in demand skills I'm struggling to get interviews. At my current job, I was able to negotiate a large pay raise and because of that, for the first time in my life I’m not anxious about finances, so I'm naturally pretty cautious about taking a pay cut.

I code a lot outside of work, so I have skills/knowledge of areas outside of what I do at work, however, it seems most recruiters only value commercial experience with a given tech stack or field.

Is it a smart move to sort of ‘take a step back’ in order to get different commercial experience? Or should I just keep grinding and looking for Jr. roles with comparable salaries?

I'm thinking there are a few options:

1. Get a role on an AI project/team (internal transfer), learn AI specific engineering expertise on the job (not research)
2. Do part-time masters, land a role in AI research
3. Self-learn, land a role in AI research

This seems to depend very heavily on the company culture. Which one do you think is the right way to think about the field, and which one do you prefer?

Hey all, I'm a new grad Data Scientist and I've been working for my current employer for about 6 months now. It's a mid-sized company so I didn't get the chance to pick the team when I first joined. I realized not that long into the job that I don't want to stay on this team for the long term, and today I just heard the news about another team actively hiring for Data Scientists. But I'm not sure if I should pursue this opportunity for a few reasons:

1. I've only been at this company for 6 months and haven't gone through a formal perf cycle yet. This means that I would be evaluated on a "case-by-case basis" and would need approval from the HRBP and my manager.
2. They are hiring for one level above my current role, although someone on that team told me it's flexible.
3. My current team is understaffed and is currently hiring as well, so there is a risk of my manager not approving this transfer. This also means I won't have enough time to prepare for the interview.
4. This is not currently listed on the internal job board (although supposedly this position was only released externally today so the internal job board might have been updated yet)

Here are a few reasons why I want to transfer to the new team:

1. Due to the scope of the work on my current team, I feel that I'm not learning as much as I'd like to. It's not very technical and relies heavily on specific business contexts. I'm more interested in improving my technical ability in writing code and building products over learning business contexts, at least for now.
2. A lot of my current work involves writing ad-hoc SQL queries to support other functions. I don't find a lot of value in this kind of work and want to invest my time in building stuff from which I can learn new skills.
3. I interned on the team I want to transfer to and really enjoyed it. I keep good relationships with many of the team members and am familiar with their work. Also, I genuinely think the work they are doing on that team is very interesting.
4. I don't see a clear way of progression on my current team. My current team was only established two months before I joined due to a reorg. Every IC on my team is brand new and my manager is brand new to being a manager as well. There are no senior engineers to learn from and I can't see what senior engineer scope looks like on our team.
5. Our team supports the sales team in client communications, which means we have very unpredictable workloads and deadlines. Sometimes I have to work very long hours and take on-call requests which can be very stressful.

I really want to switch to a new environment but I feel like my chances aren't great. It would be great if folks could share their thoughts on:

1. Should I reach out to the prospective team's manager to express my interest in this role right now?
2. Since manager approval is required before starting the interview process, it's possible that I would have to stay on my current team with my manager knowing I want to transfer out. I think it is a situation I want to avoid but also don't want to miss the opportunity because of this.
3. In general, what would be a good approach to this? And is there any specific advice?

Thanks in advance!

I'm trying to better understand how to select a company that has good growth opportunties.

My priority is to get into a company where I can grow the fastest in my career. Unfortunately, at this time getting into big tech/prestigious companies is not an option for me and I am choosing between typical tech companies

I have already watched the

My questions are as follows:

1. In the video, it's mentioned "Growth solved all problems". It's not really clear to me why? Obviously if a company is moving backwards, then I understand, but between a company that ships products every 6 months vs every 1-1.5 years why exactly is 1 company better than the other in terms of how it impacts my growth opportunity
2. How do I know if a company has good growth opportunities?

I started working at Shopify in the product side. It's backend API development focused with some full stack elements. However with AI popping up everywhere, I get the feeling that to be employable in the future, I need to get a job as an AI engineer or work on a team that focuses on it. With Shopify heavily relying on rails as well which is seen as an older framework, I don't know if I'll have a competitive edge in the future.

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
• WhatsApp
• Reality Labs (AR/VR)

I'm currently employed as a Computer Engineer. I've been with the company for a while, 5 years now. I find myself in a strange position where I want to explore new opportunities but at the same time don't have enough confidence with the interviews. I study consistently but not sure if it's the most efficient way. Please share guidelines or past experience on what should I focus on. Thanks.

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?

Hey Taro community. So I saw on and Alex touched on seed startups being not really good for early careers. I wanted to ask: So I met this person at a tech meet up and we exchanged twitter names over the summer. She’s currently building in health tech now. She made a tweet asking if any engineers wanted to work at a seed stage AI devtools startup (round led by top tier technical firm) and to DM her if you were interesting.

Should I do it or just leave it? Knowing how the climate is now just thought about beggars can’t be choosers.

I started working at TikTok last September. So far I feel like I have learned a lot but am unhappy with the work-life balance and the expectations to work long hours. I don't see a path for promotion here so I would like to move to a company that isn't under so much political pressure and the path to career development is clear. One caveat is that my official title is DevOps but I am doing SRE work. I like SRE work and would like to get that official title.

1. I have 11 months to prepare for my next role. What should my preparation look like?
2. What kind of companies should I aim for? I made a list from blind of the 2023 prestige companies and wanted to shoot for high TC. I am thinking that after the prep phase, I would start interviewing at companies I don't want to work at and get practice and offers so I have some leverage during negotiations.
3. How can I connect with other SREs from top companies that I can ask them how it is to actually work there?

At this stage of my life, I need to begin more focus on my social life. I have been working on my career only and I don't have the abundance in my social life to justify the work I have been doing. So I am hoping to land a role at a company with prestige, solid TC, and work-life balance so I can accomplish both my personal goals and my career goals.

I have often found platform teams to be quite "tech-heavy" rather than being driven solely by business. On the other hand, it is easier to convey impact for product teams for the metrics that the org cares about much more.

If I am trying to move from Mid Level to Senior Level i.e. Senior Software Engineer to Tech Lead level in my org, what kind of teams should I target?

Does choosing a certain one help you in fast-tracking your career growth?

Hey, I work at a large IT firm (can be compared to Big Tech in the west, similar culture, similar scale of work), currently in the process of switching teams, interviewed with a bunch, ended up with a choice of 2.

The first team has great growth potential (they are young and intensively hiring), and it directly works with money, so it seems like a good place for an SWE to do projects that are meaningful on the scale of a company & to have an opportunity to grow as a manager (more opportunities to pick up an intern, as they hire - to become a mentor of new hires and lead projects with them as a part of my virtual team). They have an analytics team which prospects the important tasks, and when the tasks are done, the results are measured to calculate the profits.

The second team is special in that it deals with the subject area that interests me the most - they develop an analogue of Facebook Games (or ), and it hits home, as I got into SWEing to be a game dev (before I found out they get paid pennies ). This team has less potential for growth, to the point them may have no headcount for an intern, and the hiring of new members will be slower. Also, they do not work with money directly, rather with target metrics defined by business. But they also have an analytics team which proposes the tasks based on the projected metrics growth & they measure profits on task completion, so the aspect of delivering the measurable profits is present here as well.

I'm trying to choose the best team for my career goals - long-term growth from L4 -> L6. As far as I understand, that may be done through team-leading of through tech-leading. I fully understand I'm not going to develop any games myself in team #2, but the fact that the subject area is the one I understand makes me feel like I'll have some morale boost in that I'll have an understanding of usefulness of the tasks i'm doing, as well as I'm seriously considering overworking for the next 1-1.5 years to perform better than peers & grow from L4 to L5, and it just feels like if I have more connection to the area of work, it'll be easier to pour extra effort, opposite to the area which I have little emotional connection with.

But this point about the "morale boost" might just be me wearing the rose-colored glasses, and I may be making a mistake trading a team with better potential for the one with seemingly more interesting scope.

In your experience which is better long-term - the team where work is work, but it's better for career goals, or the team where the work seems interesting, there's less direct career opportunities, but you feel like you are more likely to make your own via being more involved into the project you work on?

God, the universe work in funny ways. I've been in my current job for a couple of years and have been looking to get out basically since I started. The job was never as engineering-oriented as I wanted it to be, but my manager was really nice and I grew comfortable, so that slowed my exit a lot. I also went through an evolution in my job search, from certificate gathering to blind Leetcode grinding to job hunting over those 2 years that made me a better job-seeker.

And then finally, this week, fortune smiled on me: I got not one, but two job offers that pay decently (both comfortably above my current role) and where I would develop much more valuable skills as a Software/Data Engineer.

One is at a large financial data vendor (think Bloomberg) with 10K employees. The other is at a boutique data science and analytics consulting firm that only has 10-15 people. The latter offered actually a little more money, but not significantly more. The title at both is "Senior Software Engineer", which is good, because even though I'm actually a Data Engineer in both places, I know I'll be an Engineering-oriented one rather than an Analytics-oriented one.

But here's the twist: I'm pretty sure I want to move to Asia now. The reason for the move is personal: I have a lot of family and friends there and it's been something I've wanted to try for a long time.

So here's my dilemma: do I stay or do I go? If I don't end up leaving, then switching companies is obviously the right move. However, this is unlikely. I'm pretty sure I want to go. I cite this because making the move to a different country is a process that will take me 4-6 months, and stuff can always happen that might change my mind. Again, not likely, but needs to be said.

The more interesting and likely scenario is where I do go ahead and move in 4-6 months time. Do I accept a new job then? I think the straightforward answer is no and that's for 2 reasons: 1) it can look bad/odd on my resume if I list working at a company for 4 - 6 months prior to moving; 2) starting at a new job is usually stressful and there's a lot to learn. Moving, especially to a new country/continent, is also stressful, so why add to my stress? My current job is comfortable, so it won't stress me.

However, changing jobs also has a compelling reason which is I will learn more at my new job (whichever it is). Probably a lot more. I feel like I've stagnated at my current job and haven't learned the best and latest tools in the DE space: Spark, Airflow, Docker, Cloud. Changing jobs will give me that exposure, and 4-6 months is not nothing! Heck, university co-op terms are only 4 months! Plus, if go to the consultancy, I might get assigned a project that is only 4 months (or fewer), so I might be able to add value before the move. So the "odd-look" on my resume could be totally offset by the learning/growing I do and the tools /projects I'm able to add to my resume as a result.

To answer the question of whether I can take my job with me, I'm pretty skeptical, particularly for the big vendor. They want me in the office 3 days/wk, and on top of that, I will have been there max 6 months by the time I go. Not prime time to ask to relocate. Plus, I'm pretty sure the role is tied to my current location, so it's almost certainly a no. The consultancy has greater chances, but even there, not sure they'll want someone to continue working for them who can never come in and who's in a different timezone.

So that's a wrap! I think I gave a lot of context, but happy to provide more if needed!

Thanks :)

I am currently a senior fullstack software engineer with 7 YOE. I'm employed at a retail establishment where tech/engineering is not the primary product. Before this, I worked as a business intelligence analyst for two years writing Python and R scripts. As an engineer in my late thirties, I'm looking to grow my career at a big tech company. I hope to secure a position with significant growth opportunities, a good work-life balance, and a high salary. What are some companies (possibly FAANG or FAANG adjacent) to which I can apply to achieve this objective. Any other advice you can give (interview, negotiation, etc.) will be useful as well. Thank you.

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.

I have worked at two larger companies and two small startups (currently at one). I'm quite content with my current company and role, as I have ample opportunities for growth and a great work-life balance. However, the only factor that makes me contemplate leaving my current position is that I'm earning less than some of my peers. I'm not comparing myself to the exceptionally high-earning individuals; rather, I'm looking at other senior software engineers who are making around $400K in total compensation. Currently, I'm earning around $250K. It's important to note that I recognize my experience level is relatively young compared to those with 20-30 years of experience, as I have only 6 years of experience.

I want to think about the bigger picture and position myself in the best possible way for the future. When I discuss this with some of my peers, they suggest that I should work at a FAANG company at least once to attract recruiters from better companies. While I've always been drawn to roles with high visibility and a need for velocity, I've found that at larger companies, I tend to work at a slower pace with less visibility. However, if transitioning to a FAANG role is indeed the key to opening up new career opportunities, I'm willing to consider it.

Has anyone else faced a similar dilemma in their career? I would appreciate any insights or advice from individuals who have gone through a similar experience.

Hi,

I have 6 years of experience in the software engineering field, mostly working as a software consultant and at not well known startups. Having done MSc in the field AI, I got an offer to interview with Apple for an interesting role that seemed to have the best from 2 worlds - Software Engineering & AI/ML. To my surprise, after 6 interviews over the span of 2 months and an emotional rollercoaster, I got the job at ICT3 level and moved to another country. I thought I might be underleveled at first, but I kept thinking I actually don’t have experience in AI/ML so they’re levelling me as ICT3 must be right, I also don’t feel like a senior yet.

The situation I’m in now at work is very frustrating and disappointing to me, because of the following :

• I’m still onboarding after 9 months in, without being in a senior role. There is no serious documentation, I have to “network” in a forced manner, to find out vital information for an engineer like “do we have 2 prod environments and when do releases happen”.
• up until now I have not received any tasks or projects to sharpen my skills or keep the ones I worked hard for so far
• I had to beg for 8 months to be included in a project, the explanation was “we’re in the planning stage, we’re waiting for OKs to get started”
• I get neither serious SWE experience from this, nor ML/AI related one.
• Over the past month, after telling my manager I would apply for other jobs if this situation (not participating in anything palpable - just meetings) did not change, they finally moved me to another team that’s closest to SWE that this role can get.
• in the new team, they advertised this project that would mostly be backend work in Go. It turns out the codebase belonged to another team and the role that I’m in, does not imply bettering/maintaining their codebase or adding new features, it’s mostly data hillclimbing and adding some strings in the right places, so super humiliating after having prepared from DSA , system design & design patterns
• I don’t get to touch any AI/ML models yet or work with them, because I don’t have experience with AI/ML
• My manager is a new manager and has half the experience in the field as I do. I talked to him about my disappointment of being so undervalued and his take on this is, I first have to learn the tech stack to participate in “more advanced” projects. However my male colleagues, who joined the company a few months earlier than me, have been given more responsibility faster (participating in 2-3 projects after aprox. 6 months in)
• Time spent in the office is not productive at all, I can’t do focused work there at all. People chat and socialise all the time in the open spaced office we all work in and there are at least 60 people working there. This forces me to work overtime & during weekends, to achieve deadlines for the project and to learn the needed tech stack
• I’m starting to feel trapped in this job because it’s consuming my time, including my free time and I’m actually worried that if I continue like this without coding, participating in code reviews & other healthy SWE practices I’ll get out of hand and have a hard time getting another software engineering job or staying relevant in the industry
• Maybe what I’m experiencing in this particular branch of Apple is unusual for FANG or even other Apple jobs and would be grateful for others’ opinions on this situation.

How can I avoid being assigned a manager who is managing people for the first time? This happened to me and my colleagues multiple times and it was always extremely stressful and unpleasant to work with someone who is managing people for the first time.

I know this would never happen to a staff engineer or a tech lead, but I'm mid-level.

Should I ask to move to another team? What reason should I give for wanting to switch teams?

I don't feel as interested in work as much as before after being at the current company for a little bit over a year. Is there something that I'm doing wrong? Do you have any suggestions to get better at this?

For some context, I also only stayed at my last 2 jobs for over 1 year, but less than 2 years. I think the current company, co-workers and product are great. I haven't been stressed about work for a while. But I don't feel as excited for work as I was 6 months in.

1. What are the pros and cons associated with picking a founding full-stack engineer role at a pre-seed startup over a senior SWE role in a platform engineering team at a decently high-scale late-stage post-IPO startup?
2. Does being a founding engineer make you unemployable even if you have 5-6 years of experience?
3. Will working on larger-scale infrastructure projects make a significant difference in terms of employability?
4. Are there any other career risks associated with being a founding engineer?

Hey guys, please guide me for the next steps in this journey.

I am currently L5 at social media company (not Meta) and have done Android dev for most of my career. I was a manager for a brief amount of time as well but layoffs took that away. I am on a H1B visa and family is dependent on me (single earner).

From last 4 years or so I haven't done much dev work and have been working with developers/customers/partners to help them in integrating our solution to their Android apps. I can crack LC any day though but might not be able to pass Android round easily. I don't enjoy Android dev too much now but it's a different ask if it becomes a necessity to survive at this level. I used to be really good at it and if I put 3-4 months to it I can pick it up again. I am interested in AI/ML given the popularity, high TC, etc. but also interested because I genuinely believe that it can transform people's lives + it will broader my skillset beyond tech companies and gives me a long run. But I have almost 0 experience in it.

I fear another layoff at my company and it may impact me in next 6 months, or it might not happen either if market or company situation improves.

Question now is: Should I get back to my Android roots OR try to dip my toe into AI/ML? If latter then does Certification course from Standford/Berkley,etc. helps?