New Grad to Staff at Meta in 3 years

[ketzo]

> Let's start with the reality check: I hit the timing jackpot. Right org, explosive growth phase, and a manager who saw something in me before I saw it myself. If you're looking for a pure meritocratic story, this isn't it. Nobody lands promotions this fast without the stars aligning.

Very much appreciate this being the second paragraph, made me immediately much less skeptical.

In general, I think these are excellent principles. I didn't really realize how important speed was, in particular, until I was in an organization that pathologically lacked it. It absolutely sucks the life out of anyone who wants to do more than the bare minimum.

[milch]

I'm at Amazon and the promo feedback I see time and time again is that they want to see consistency of next level behavior. I guarantee if you filed for your second promo in 6-12 months, that's exactly what would come back. Unless Meta has much lower standards for promotions I feel like even saying "hit the jackpot" must be a severe understatement

[euvin]

>Finally—and this might be the most underrated factor—stay positive. Our industry can be surprisingly cynical. But look around: We're solving fascinating problems, working with brilliant people, and yes, being well compensated for it. A positive outlook isn't just about being nice—it's a career accelerant.

I don't disagree with how important one's mindset is. But it seems like this justification for the positive outlook -- meaningful work, amazing coworkers, and compensation -- is actually the end goal for a lot of people. Until that's achieved, it'll be a lot harder for some to internalize some of the points in the blogpost.

[alephnerd]

Glass half empty, glass half full.

[spencerflem]

Yeah, anyone who's able to stomach solving 'fascinating problems' at facebook is not cynical enough IMO

[abound]

I didn't do anything nearly as dramatic as four promos in three years (if I'm understanding that levels.fyi chart correctly), but I did a few levels much faster than the average at Google, and much of this rings true.

One thing I think it misses: you gotta play the game. At Google, that's shipping something, having some obviously quantifiable impact, or doing something with a much larger reach than expected for your level. "Playing the game" means seeking out that work, figuring out the narrative, and not working on things that don't help you achieve that end.

Kinda cynical, but if your goal is climbing a corporate ladder, you should understand what that corporation or org actually values and rewards. Note that this may be different than what it says it values.

[alephnerd]

Highly recommend any IC to read this.

The title might be cringe, but this is a very good overview of the core requirements to climb up the ladder (if that is what you want to do)

1. Being helpful cross-organizationally

2. Execute efficiently

3. Go beyond your job description, and do work expected at 1 title above you (if you want to climb6

4. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

5. Know your s### about your product.

[tz18]

>I noticed something that seemed almost too obvious. While our sophisticated models were still processing frame sequences and temporal features, the viewers in the comments section had already identified the crisis.

>Comments like "don't do it" or "it's not worth it" were appearing consistently. While we were pouring resources into optimizing frame embeddings and acoustic models, the clearest signals were hiding in plain sight.

First, I call bullshit. There's no way you're the first person in the room to think "let's check for keywords in the chat". I can believe that being able to tell these kind of bullshit stories is what gets someone promoted at the big companies, but I think this one is not even particularly good. Wouldn't any interviewer be skeptical? Feels like a Feynman story. Then again maybe life is stranger than fiction sometimes. Or maybe the real contribution at the time was in suggesting a feasible mechanism to incorporating the comment data?

Secondly, I hope that whatever model you came up with extended to livestreams without viewers, or livestreams where the viewers were egging them on. Also "Don't do it" seems like a pretty weak signal when you consider the entire variety of dumb shit people do on livestreams, e.g. the cinammon challenge, ice bucket challenge, whatever.

Also this is Facebook we're talking about, shouldn't they already know whether a user is a suicide risk in general from all the data mining shit they do? Shouldn't there just be a report button on the stream so users can report such things?

Sincerely, guy who went from new grad to laid off in 3 years

[greatpostman]

Most FAANG teams are grid locked with gatekeeping engineers.

[_gzov]

Call me a European communist but if you do your work in 70% of the time you should go for a walk or hang out with your kids. I know some people are built different and have a relationship to wage labor akin to substance abuse but I feel like this, in general, is unhealthy advice. You'll increase your superfluous excess with your family in the periphery.

[adsharma]

I understand that it's not a pure meritocracy story and an element of timing was involved.

But I was scrolling to find some description of what was accomplished in each of the steps.

In many big companies there is an inherent motivation to replace the old with new to get ahead without improving the state of the art.

[batter]

Same stuff in amazon, if you're lucky to get into new project, even if it's designed like shit (in my case), people got nice promos. As soon as it was delivered team left with new titles and now new team which alomst doesn't grow. 1 promo in 4 years.

[nonamepcbrand1]

Can someone VP/EM at Meta put this and publishing person on PIP and make them get down off the high horse?

The blog post, linkedin are becoming too atrocious with general advice with useless bragging.

[gaogao]

I don't think they work at Meta anymore.

[laweijfmvo]

No one at Meta considers IC6 “Staff”, except someone 3 years out of school.

[mhlakhani]

I was at meta. What do you mean? It’s how we used to define staff in our cross company leveling docs.

[ahahahahah]

Maybe, but they're making $600k-$1M+ a year whether or not people are gatekeeping the title "staff".