How hard is it to find good WLB team at FB newgrad?
Oct 14, 2021
Title basically. How honest are managers about this stuff? FB advertises itself as "fastpaced" which in my mind translates to 50+hr workweek average.
How can I find a chill team where I can do 40/hr normal work?
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1) Straight up ask the manager about wlb. Most likely they'll tell you it's good; disregard this. Very occasionally, though, they'll tell you that the team members tend to prioritize career growth and delivering big impact at the expense of some wlb. You can thank them for their honesty then close the reachout in this case.
2) Check team insights diff heat map. Check for lots of code flying in at all hours of the day, and massive amounts of code committed. Again, this can't tell you if wlb is good, but it can tell you if it's bad. Similarly, check their recent diffs.
3) Ask about sevs and on-call. Check all of their recent sevs. Attend sev review. Is shit catching on fire eight days a week?
4) Set up some 1:1s with "average" team members. Not managers, tech leads, or new hires/recent transfers. These people have the least incentive to obfuscate negative information. I've found generally they're much more candid than managers. These are the people you can trust the most if a few of them say the wlb is good.
5) avoid most product teams. Favor occasional stressful on-call over ever-present stress to deliver impact in product spaces.
You'll likely get a lot of reachouts (30+). Imo the key is to use the publicly available metrics (team insights, recent sevs, etc) to quickly rule out most of them so you can spend more time with teams that are more promising. Good luck!
If you're not in a rush to promote then our team let's you cost your own work and as long as you deliver according to agreed on costs, no one expects you to deliver much more than that.