Not even at FB yet but starting in December I wanted to know what I should look for in a team during bootcamp for career growth, and what I should do once I’m at FB to get a promo? I have ~4 YOE and feel pretty confident about working in SDEII level roles. Not sure if FB is similar to other places in what’s required for SDEIII. Also, I know most people get promoted in 2-2.5 years but that seems like a small window, given that you’re pretty much out if you don’t get promo in 33 months. Is it possible to try for promo at 1.5 years and know your gaps early? Also are promos quarterly? Current TC: $193k 4 YOE New TC: $260k Remote dev
Is this "up or out" policy applicable in analytics roles within FB?
First, congrats on the offer. 1. You have 33 months to progress. In facebook terms, half way through you are in Yellow Zone and as you get close to ¾ of your 33 months, you will enter the red zone. 2. Join e-nonmanager and E4 to E5 red zone workplace groups when you start. Plenty of posts about how to suceed. 3. Facebook PSC measures project impacts, engineering excellence (aka fix tech debt, doc, reduce oncall churns), people and direction. For E4 go to E5, you need to demonstrate project impacts (medium size to large project). There is plenty of shit to fix so better engineering is easy to get. You definitely need to lead a few projects and get people to work for you. Internally we call this XFN (cross functional). E5 is all about leading and being the core contributor that knows how to fix shit. Pick a em that has multiple e4 and e5 and has bene around for a couple years at facebook. Join a team that is stable with enough scope (but avoid shinny shit that likely get reorg or cancel). 4 visibility is key. Make post about your work and project updates. Get yourself known in your org. 5. People is the least important. Help with a social event, sign up to be a bootcamp mentor or be your team’s “bootcamp me tor”. Internally we have a long backlog for interview training so even if you do get trained expect 1-3 interviews per half and that’s enough for people. 6. Direction is all about design doc and leading a project (esp xfn) from start to finish Project impacts are all about who can identify the most “jaw breaking” “oh shit this is nice! Thanks for fixing!!” Big projects over fixing small shit == impacts. If you want to survive, don’t spend time fixing small shits.
Thank you! This helps a lot. I definitely have experience leading cross functional projects and hope to apply that here One thing I’ll need to change is how often I fix the “small things”. I like to make quick fixes that improves our team QOL but I think I’ll focus on larger scale fixes at facebook Really informative comment, thank you so much for your time
Nice post. What do you mean by "33 months to progress"? What happens at the end of 33 months if you don't progress? Is it the same at higher levels?