Hello all, I will be joining Meta as an IC4. I have a few options between Product and Infra teams. I have received some feedback that it is difficult to show impact in an infra team compared to a product team. Is that correct? Considering it is important for an IC4 to be promoted to IC5, showing impact is an important factor for me when deciding which team to select. The second criteria is WLB and I have gotten the feedback that teams with less on-call duties have better WLB and usually infra teams have more on-call duties than product teams. Is that correct? Any input regarding this is valuable. Thanks TC: 130k #meta #swe #software #engineering
Can you share the feedback which you got about the impact , product va infra?
All I got, I have shared in the question
Is this for Bay Area?
I dont think that matters but yes
For everyone voting infra, is the feedback I have received not correct? Would you say infra does have good promotion opportunities and decent WLB?
TC makes no sense for Meta
Thats his current TC, meta doesnt give $$ until match is done. Going through the process myself right now.
It depends on the product/team but a high priority product can lead to accelerated growth. Reels in particular has accelerated many careers, at least Relevance. Unfortunately, Reels is a crowded space so maybe not the fastest way to grow these days. In theory you should be able to grow to IC5 on any team. From what I’ve seen Infra is very good for IC8+. Not saying it’s bad lower levels, just saying that infra orgs tend to have more very senior folks.
The product team that is interested in my profile is a whatsapp team which I think is high priority. If infra teams are filled with high level professionals then how will I be able to show mentorship in infra teams which, I believe, is important to show impact?
I’m not sure what the level distribution is like between product and infra. In general most of the company is skewed towards E5 now. I wouldn’t worry about mentorship for promo. Mentorship helps but there are other opportunities to demonstrate ‘people axis’. You can host socials, offsites, hackathons, etc. For mentorship, there are opportunities outside your team. My pillar, IG, has an IG-wide mentorship program for example. There are company-wide mentorship programs too.
I don’t think the feedback is correct. There are differences on how to show impact in infra vs product but it does not mean that it is easier/harder it’s just different. You can be successful in both I would recommend picking the area you feel more comfortable with where you can take advantage of your strengths. Also as p2 pick something that’s interesting to you. I can elaborate on the impact differences if you want.
I am a backend engineer with little experience in frontend as well. I have worked on product-based projects before and I like working on them but solving the problem of scalability is something that really interests me at this point in my career. I believe, in product teams at Meta, I will not be dealing with scalability but only user interaction based backend systems. That is why I was inclining towards Infrastructure.
It is true that at meta product teams rely on infra for the most part but is not completely true that they don’t solve or contribute to solving these kind of issues for high traffic products. If you like infra go for it. I’ve been in infra since joining and no issues showing impact (only EE and GEs) or getting promoted (5 to 6)
Vote for product. But what product it is matters. Btw What is your YOE?
5 YOE. In product, i am talking to a team in WhatsApp.