Team Selection Q&A and Videos

Continuing from the post here:

Would the suggestions in that post be different for my scenario? I have added my details below.

I have a total 12 years of work experience. Currently, I am a SDE II at a fintech company. I have worked at this company for 3 years now and had 3 managers in past 3 years. At my current company, I am being asked to constantly move from one project to another every 6 months. For the last 6 - 7 years I have been working on mostly frontend engineering, including hands-on experience in Angular, React, and Backbone JavaScript libraries. I am looking to make a job switch as a Senior Frontend engineer.

I know that to get to the Senior level, I have to show influence at high levels. After reading the answer to some of the questions in the community, I am not able to decide whether I should focus on building web projects or should I start building an Android app. The advantage of choosing a web project is that I already have expertise in modern frontend frameworks. My initial years of experience is in legacy backend systems(mainframes) which I think is not of much use now in Silicon valley companies.

As far as my interest level goes, I am very much inclined toward the web. But I know that app development is definitely something that helps to attract users to your product. I am a bit lost on what I should invest my time on. Considering that I have 12+ years of experience, should I do both? Will doing both Android and web both open a lot more opportunities for me?

Should I focus on building something where I can show the impact with the number of users rather than thinking about the platform (android or web) for which I start building my side projects. Should I even care about doing side projects considering I have 10+ years of work experience?

Should I target full-stack roles instead of front-end roles?

Looking for suggestions. Apologies if this question comes out as too broad and not very clear. I am open for discussion if that can help to narrow down the response.

Current TC: 220 - 240K

I have 3 years of experience as a software engineer for a non-tech company.

It doesn't feel like the place where cutting edge development is happening. Processes feel incredibly slow.

I would like to move to a more tech oriented company, but I feel that I can't pass the coding interviews. I never felt particularly gifted. Studying CS at university felt like an uphill battle.

I spent roughly 3 months preparing for interviews (6-8 questions per week of LeetCode, completed all chapters/problems of Cracking the Coding Interview).

I'm almost 26 now. I'm still struggling to pass medium LeetCode questions in a timely manner. I'm wondering if my energy would be better spent somewhere else? Product Management? Consulting? I really want to find a job where I can be valuable. As a kid, I thought engineering was so cool. However, it feels like I am barely making progress.

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'm looking to leave my current team, as I don't find the work to be interesting: I spend ~50% of my time on ops work.

I want to choose the right team that’s interesting to me, but it's tricky as I don’t exactly know what I want to work on. I just know that I want to work on the back-end and on a team where learning opportunities are flexible. During team matching, what kind of things would you look for in a team?

My priorities are as follows:

1. Interesting work
2. Growth opportunities
3. Compensation
4. WLB

I'm looking to build a social media mobile app (similar in flavor to LinkedIn but for a different use case) and considering various options. With some google search, I found that Flutter is faster than React native, but Flutter has less number of packages available. I didn't use Flutter before.

• What classes of features are much harder to build in Flutter than React native or vice-versa?
• In your experience, how fast is Flutter when compared to React native?

Recently, Alex mentioned that Facebook has deprecated React native internally inside Meta and is now using only native mobile development for all Meta applications. So, I'm wondering the reason behind this.

• How fast are native mobile apps when compared to react native/flutter apps?
• Do native mobile apps inherently support some more features (like running ML models on-device?) that react native/flutter apps can't support?
• Is it preferrable to use react native/flutter until the app reaches a certain scale and then switch to native mobile development?
• What's your rationale behind choosing between these options?

I have been working at Meta for around 5 months now. I’m not very excited about the product and the tech stack (its an internal tool). I have an offer from AWS where I get to work on a T1 GenAI service. I have always wanted to be an ML Engineer and my past work has also revolved around it. I know its not ideal to switch teams until I get promoted to E4 given the tight deadline we have so I’m not sure how long it takes before I switch to a team I would prefer. Also I’m not sure how the growth would look like for an internal tool team. Should I make the move to AWS given that it would be a better career start in ML? Or should I hang in, get promoted and switch? Meta is also aggressively doing performance reviews and I’m worried being new to the tech stack and lesser interest will bite me in the back and I might have nowhere to go.

I’m early in career so TC is not a huge concern, I want to optimize for learning and eventually working towards being an MLE.

Hello Taro Community

I want to pick a specialization now due to the market and the lessons I’ve learnt being in the group.

A little context on the issue:

I had a mindset that more technologies I know the more options I’ll have and also working as a full stack dev in my last position I got a lot of hands on experience on different stacks. More like breadth of knowledge but not depth.

I was applying to jobs like Database, UI/UX, Front End, Back End, Software and DevOps couldn’t land any interview in the last job hunt.

Last month I let everything go and I told myself I’ll specialize in “Full Stack”. I have been also working on side projects for my portfolio.

However, a lot of senior devs told me Full stack is too broad and 2 and 1/2 years of experience that won’t cut it.

I want to specialize in Front End with React and go very deep in that. Build projects pertaining to React Front End for my portfolio.

My fears:

• I’m closing down my options, and limiting myself to Front End
• Also being a foreign student where you kinda have to “work in tech” since that’s my major a lot of fear is coming up. In case the time I go back in the industry there is lack of front end openings
• A lot of family friends in the industry telling me that Front-End specialization will be a waste of time since the industry is very saturated with it

Deep down I have realized specializing will really make my portfolio, knowledge and resume stronger. Plus Front-End is something I genuinely am drawn to and enjoy doing.

Would love to know your input on this.

My ideal plan was to reach E5 (Senior Engineer) on my current team and then leave. But I am nowhere near promo currently. I’ve been on my current team for about 1.5 years now. I have to get promoted in about a year from now, or else I’ll be fired.

I need help deciding whether I should roll the dice and switch to another team. I’ve built some strong relationships on my current team, worked with my manager for over a year now and am fully ramped up to my current team’s stack. I’m not sure how to make the decision of whether to leave or to stay.

I watched the masterclass on finding a new team and understanding my own priorities to lead a fulfilling career and find a new team within Meta.

Currently, I'm being put up for promotion for IC4 (hopefully, I'll know in late Feb about the outcome) and I would like to switch teams.

My priorities in order:

• Work-life balance
• Supportiveness of team + (most of team in NYC)T
• Technical space
• Growth opportunities
• Product space

My technical space interest is mostly in ML infrastructure (partially what my current team works on) and eventually would like to work towards getting to IC5, but more importantly I'm exploring another potential career (i.e. comedy and stand-up!).

I would like to prioritize my WLB, so does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about my search (considering Meta is known more for grind culture)? And what orgs/teams to look at within the company?

I've seen these terms being thrown around on Taro before - what do they mean? Are they accurate and useful descriptors?

Asking because I have some experience with it, which you can find below:

• I wasn't truly enjoying the work I was doing in my role from the very beginning. I think the fact that it is customer facing drains me the most and I keep feeling bad that I wasn't doing deep technical work.
• I completely burned myself out last year after joining a high-stakes team with too much ambiguity to deal with being early in my career. Also, my senior colleague left the team so most of the work landed on my shoulders. It was also a lot of the non-technical work I disliked.
• That burnout was the breakpoint of my decision to switch careers to SWE where I can be more hands-on. LeetCode is a grind on its own so this non-stop chase somewhat makes me question the whole field in general, but I'm probably just spoiled with the current opportunities I have.

In particular, I am about to have a team fit call with a senior manager at Google for an L5 role. The corresponding team/job description from the careers page looks a bit ambiguous (it's a role in google distributed cloud hosted).

I am already HC approved post my interviews.

I wish to gain understanding for the following topics in the role:

1. Domain specific knowledge requirement for the role
2. Whether my previous SWE backend experiences (in Ads Search and in ML Infra) could be aligned with the role
3. Work load

Of course, I do realise that its a fitment call and I need to leave a strong impression on the manager.

But need advise as to how can I balance the two aspects given its a short 30min call. Thanks!

1. When to start this conversation with my manager knowing org transfer is frozen till March? It might affect psc ratings.

2. Should I start talking to new managers or inform my current manager first?

3. Not sure if I will have enough impact created for mid year signal/ratings if I start looking out for new teams in March and may be join by April?

4. Will there be more jobs posted in March?

5. Please suggest some general guidance for switching teams.

Working on personal projects is fun. You have ownership, you work on a problem you care about, etc.

But at work, you might not care too much about the problem that the company product is solving, or you might not have sufficient ownership, or maybe your role is too restricted (e.g., you like talking to customers, but the nature of your SWE job means you are only expected to code).

Basically, you know what you like, but the nature of your job does not fully align with your desires/goals.

How do you navigate such situations?

Many people say to have a hobby outside of work so that you don’t crave fulfillment from work itself. That could be an approach, but I feel that when the work itself is fulfilling/fun/in alignment with what we want, that could be an even better way, as it’s tied to career growth.