Here is a quick guide for your career. This is for doing an internal transfer. It is like applying cheat codes when you’re newer in your career (years 1-5). For older folks they generally have more leeway and options for which team they join, but when you start out it can feel like rolling the dice. Everyone loves to see on your resume staying at a big company for 2+ years. Less than two years repeated can raise a red flag. But what if you don’t like your manager? What if someone is a dickhead to you? You have recourse. They need you more than you need them. At Microsoft and Amazon you can internal transfer just after getting hired with very little restrictions. You can xfer before you are placed on PIP or dev list. You can use it to help your sanity. Nobody has to know when you build your resume. Just conveniently leave that detail out. I can’t personally confirm, but I’m quite sure it’s similar at Google/Facebook. Hiring managers love internal xfer because it’s an easier hiring process. Less time and less cost involved, more trust. You also have less interview rounds. You have direct access to the hiring managers email through the internal job portal. Here are the steps. 1. Find roles you like in the internal job portal. 2. Grab the hiring manager’s email. 3. Write them a short email, one paragraph. Ask them for an informal interview after explaining your interest in their role, and what you have to offer. 4. Chat with hiring manager over zoom or whatever during the informal interview. This is just a chat. 5. Apply to role. This will probably ping your manager with a notification. You might want to line up a few roles and do it all at once. That’s it! It’s extremely easy. I highly recommend doing this at least once in a big company as a backup plan, if you end up in a tight spot. As a tool the internal xfer can make your career planning more robust to bad luck and mistakes. Email example: Hello , I found your role (link to their role so they know which one you’re talking about) and thought it was interesting. The parts about XYZ seem pretty cool! I enjoy ABC and might fit really well for XYZ. Please let me know if you’d like to chat more, we can do an informal interview over zoom or lunch when you have time. Cheers, Your Name — There are some downsides to this strategy. If you move teams you basically reset any promotion progress you had before. However, if you’re in a tight spot and don’t like your team/manager, then you probably don’t have any “progress” if we’re being honest here. So no loss. If you xfer more than once it can be really difficult to get responses from other managers if they find out. Unless you have a good excuse. This is a bad look. Other than that there aren’t many downsides. Good luck! — Personal experience: I joined MSFT with just a couple years of experience some time ago. I joined an azure team. Unfortunately the team spoke mostly mandarin in the office, and I didn’t speak mandarin at all. It was really uncomfortable and difficult to communicate with everyone. After two weeks of working I gave up and applied to other teams. By week 6 I had an official offer and left to a new team. No harm done! Everyone wins, even Microsoft as I was a happy employee in the new team for over two years. #tech #interview #transfer
Internal transfer at msft isnt easy by any means. You need to go through atleast 3 tech rounds which is almost a full loop
Is it easier to get interview compared to external? Is bar for internal lower
Not really no. The bar is almost the same I would say.
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