#Career: From Microsoft to Facebook

After 14 years at Microsoft and a few months into the pandemic, I decided I needed a change.

Deciding

... was hard. 14 years in the same company made it a very comfortable place, like well-worn socks. I knew the culture, I knew the people, I knew the ropes and I was in a good place, team-wise and career-wise. But, in the back of my mind, some things kept nagging me. I felt less motivated, with a lower drive and less enthusiasm.

Since I'm organized and live by lists, I put pen to paper and tried to capture what was wrong:

• Even with new projects, I was working with the same tools and with the same Microsoft technologies. I wanted something new to challenge me, accelerate my learning, take me out of my comfort zone.
• 14 years in a company shapes you. My husband noticed again and again that I started talking in “Microsoft lingo”. For me, all was natural, and couldn’t even detect those patterns. +1 for change.
• When interviewing other people, I valued varied expertise (working at multiple companies, on multiple projects, etc). And not just me; the industry as a whole values diverse experiences. I worried that having just one company on my resume made me less competitive.
• I was scared: scared that I couldn’t get into other companies, scared that I couldn’t succeed in a different environment. And that was another big +1 for change. Fear was a clear sign that I was losing my confidence. I am not at the end of my career, so taking a risk sooner rather than later seemed like the right choice.

“Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers

Decision made: it was time for a job change.

So... what now?

It's been 14 years since the interview that landed me at Microsoft. Not only things have changed in the interview process, but I changed. I was now in a different place in my career, no longer interviewing as a junior. What to do?

First, I had to do some introspection to determine where I would like to land and what I would like to do there. At that time, I had been IC for ~10 years, manager for ~4. Do I target IC or manager? I decided that I was fine with either, which opened up more opportunities.

Next, I looked around for interesting projects. I found some nice ones at Amazon, Facebook, and Google I decided to follow up on.

I started prepping for interviewing with a refresher on algorithms and data structures, then lots of practice on leetcode.com (starting with Easy problems until I was really comfortable, then graduating to Medium and then Hard ones). I prepared for design problems by watching YouTube videos and then answering questions as if I was in an interview. I prepared scenarios for behavior questions to be able to address them quickly and I practiced a few with the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result) .

Many recruiters had been reaching out to me on LinkedIn for years, so all I had to do was say I was interested. Recruiters gave me really good pointers on how to prepare. For example, it’s important to read and understand the Leadership Principles for the Amazon interview and to be prepared to receive many questions that highlight them. There wasn’t any interview in the loop that didn’t ask at least a question about the principles. Facebook's recruiter, Kelly Butler, pointed me to Facebook-specific preparation resources and gave me links to external sites with coding problems and behavioral questions previously encountered at Facebook. Similarly, Google's recruiter gave me a list to help me prepare. All were super supportive and prompt in answering my questions.

So I prepared... and I prepared.... and I didn’t start to feel any more ready. So I set a deadline for my prep phase, took a breath, and went for the interviews.

“Feel the fear and do it anyway”. - Susan Jeffers

The interviews

One tip that worked really well for me and that I highly recommend to anyone: do a mock interview with a friend (or friend of friend) as a learning board. All the offline preparation is good, but being live in an interview it’s another thing altogether. Yes, it will be uncomfortable, but it's worth it. And try to simulate the interview conditions, including virtual interviews if that is still the case (I did all my interviews virtually, and going through design in Google Drawing was quite the experience the first time). For me it was a really useful experience; I was a bit rusty, but not as bad as I feared. Confidence boost!

First, I interviewed with Amazon for a Principal Engineer position (IC). About a week later, with Facebook for a manager position. Last, Google for an IC position.

I got offers from all. And here is my second tip: you want to have multiple offers because that puts you in a position of power when negotiating your benefits and salary. It certainly helped me set my deadlines and my conditions on the table.

The decision

The offers from Amazon and Facebook were very competitive. Both teams looked great, both managers made a very good impression. What to choose?

After some deliberation, I chose AI Infra at Facebook. My passion and experience so far were in distributed systems. The blend of AI and Infra was very attractive: it gave me a chance to learn something new (AI), while still using my skills and passion for distributed services.

Was it worth it?

Undoubtedly, unequivocally, YES! Being in a new environment, learning new tools, new platforms, new culture, getting to know new people, everything has been worth it! I achieved what I wanted: being challenged, gaining diverse experiences, meeting new people, opening my horizon.

Facebook made it easy to have a great experience. The Bootcamp process is amazing: a few weeks to focus on learning the culture, the values, the tooling, the infra, taking time to read various code and fix tasks in different areas (from Android to backend), connect with other n00bs (though doing that virtually was harder and not as rewarding).

In the new team, the ramp-up was also great. I was given the chance to ramp up as an IC (even if I was a manager), to get hands-on experience. I truly believe that hands-on experience helps you become a better manager, as you have more empathy for the engineers if you understand what they do every day. As a manager, I'm having a blast supporting people (compared to other companies, FB managers support people instead of managing them, which makes it clear that their role is to enable devs to do their work and not to direct them).

Overall, I found Facebook very refreshing. The things that resonate most with me are the open culture (more transparency in sharing ideas, making decisions, seeing code for all Facebook), the fact that devs are more empowered to choose what to work on and to go fix issues as they deem important (“Nothing is somebody else’s problem”), a culture of moving quickly (“Move fast and break things on stable infra”).

I'm writing this hoping to help others that are considering a change but are afraid, or maybe not really sure, to get more perspective from my experience. Whether you decide to stay or leave, do it for the right reasons - don't let fear or comfort dictate your career.