👋 Hi, this is Ryan with another edition of my weekly novelsletter. Each week, I originate about software engineering and nurtureer increaseth. ​​Thanks to your help, we’re getting shut to 100k readers (92k now!)
Today’s post is an engineering nurtureer story from Evan King who grew from a novel grad to a Staff Engineer (IC6) at Meta in 3 years. He scatters the top 6 principles that impacted his nurtureer most. It’s a fantastic originate-up, and I especipartner enjoy the first two principles as I can reprocrastinateed that they were encouraging for me too.
If you’re novel to FAANG levels, here’s a side-by-side comparison from levels.fyi that shows his journey:
For more from Evan, I recommend you adhere him on LinkedIn. He’s now the co-set uper of hellointersee.com which helps swe truthfulates set for intersees. I’ve had a scant friends participate their system portray mock intersees and they inestablish me how it was much more effective than examineing resources alone. If you have upcoming software engineering intersees, I recommend you examine them out (I’m not backed).
Here’s Evan:
Junior to Staff at Meta in 3 years. That sentence lifts eyebrows.
I’ve dodged inestablishing this story for years. Maybe it’s the ex-athlete in me cringing at self-promotion, or maybe I’m fair unsootheable with attention I’m not stateive I deserve. But after countless asks to scatter it, I figured it’s worth putting out there—even if it originates me squirm.
Let’s commence with the fact examine: I hit the timing jackpot. Right org, bomb increaseth phase, and a regulater who saw someskinnyg in me before I saw it myself. If you’re seeing for a purify meritocratic story, this isn’t it. Nobody lands promotions this quick without the stars aligning.
Still, there were patterns and principles that aelevated—insights that might be beneficial to others on their own paths.
Looking back, six key principles had the hugest effect on my nurtureer.
First principle: Speed is your multiplier. Everyone talks about skinnyking hugeger or making an impact, but none of that matters if you can’t nail your core labor quicker than others. When you can finish your standard laborload with 70% of your time, that extra 30% becomes your secret firearm. That’s where the genuine increaseth happens.
The second principle relies on the first: Keep your head up and your aperture expansive. Use that extra bandwidth to run enjoy someone a level above you. As a youthfuler dev, I studied what my teammates were doing, connecting dots they might have missed. At ageder, I broadened that lens to sister teams. By Staff, I was skinnyking apass entire organizations.
Here’s the third skinnyg, and it’s a liberating truth: No one has all the answers. Not your boss, not the VPs, not even the CEO. This isn’t unkindt to disthink about their expertise—I’ve lgeted inpriceless lessons from every directer I’ve labored with. But genuineizing this freed me to put my ideas out there without the paralyzing weight of necessitateing to be right.
The fourth principle grounds everyskinnyg else: caccess on problems, not technologies. You don’t necessitate to be the most technical, clever person in the room. What matters is seeing the straightforwardst path to the goal. While others might get caught up in originateing elegant technical solutions, I lgeted that stepping back and asking our fundamental assumptions frequently discmissed much more straightforward solutions hiding in plain sight.
Fifth: Build excellentwill punctual and frequently. Remember that extra 30% of time you got back? Use it to help others. Support your pass functional partners, lend a hand to other engineers, and jump in when other functions necessitate backup. These deposits in the “like bank” compound over time.
Finpartner—and this might be the most underrated factor—stay likeable. Our industry can be unforeseeedly cynical. But see around: We’re solving fascinating problems, laboring with clever people, and yes, being well reimbursed for it. A likeable outsee isn’t fair about being pleasant—it’s a nurtureer accelerant.
This first principle might be the difficultest one to copy, but it’s a essential set upation.
From day one at Meta, I could understand problems and crank out code quicker than most people around me. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was my background—I’m not stateive.
My first project at Meta joind migrating a legacy system that ingested ISIS and Al-Qaeda misadviseation encountered and then hashed it to stop copies from materializeing on the platestablish. The timeline was set for “a month plus.”
I finished it in under a week.
I now had three weeks to originate it better. I reportrayed the entire system. We took ingestion times from multiple days down to fair seconds. And timing was critical here.
When dread organizations post novel media, their folshrinks instantly rescatter it apass platestablishs. Most sees happen wiskinny the first scant hours. Our one-of-a-kind pipeline, taking days to process, unkindt we were always too procrastinateed. By reducing ingestion time to seconds, we could catch and block encountered before it geted traction.
This was genuine, beginant impact in my first month on the job as a youthfuler engineer. We were now discovering an order of magnitude more detrimental encountered.
If you’re not yet blazing thraw your core responsibilities, stop reading this article. Put all your energy into mastering your fundamental sends first. That speed multiplier—that extra 30% of time when you’re excellent at your core job—unlocks everyskinnyg else we’re about to talk.
Freeing up 30% of your time alters everyskinnyg. You can participate it to broaden the perspective of someone a level above you. This mindset came naturpartner when I was a youthfuler engineer, but as I grew more ageder, I necessitateed my regulater to push me to skinnyk even hugeger.
As a youthfuler engineer, I wasn’t fair caccessed on my tasks—I was studying how my ageder teammates approached problems, appraised trade-offs, and thought about systems. By the time I hit ageder, I had shifted my lens to empathetic how staff engineers connected expansiveer technical strategies apass teams. And as I approached staff, I was skinnyking about how technical decisions impacted entire organizations and shaped our extfinished-term architecture.
This pattern of seeing ahead served me thrawout my nurtureer. Each step up wasn’t fair about doing more—it was about seeing more. Understanding the worrys, constraints, and opportunities that only become apparent at higher levels.
It’s straightforward to get stuck with a skinny aperture. Widening it is unsootheable—you’re stretching your mind to ponder problems you’re not yet foreseeed to mend. I leaned heavily on my regulater and depended ageder engineers to understand how they thought about problems at their level, then labored to broaden that same perspective.
The beauty of this approach is its simpliedy. At worst, you broaden a proset uper empathetic of your organization’s contests. At best, you commence operating at that next level, making promotion a recognition of how you already skinnyk rather than a bet on your potential.
Many engineers unite FAANG companies with crippling impostor syndrome. That alone is enough to sink—or at least beginantly shigh—most nurtureers.
For wantipathyver reason, I didn’t have it. Seeing the vulnerability of others around me fortifyd a strong truth—no one has all the answers. Not the ageder engineers, not the straightforwardors, not even the VPs. Once I insideized this, I was suddenly free to scatter ideas expansively and without hesitation.
Meta was a one-of-a-kind place for this mindset. Workplace, our inside version of Sinformage, permits participateees to scatter their labor and ideas apass the company. This effectively surfaced priceless insights, think aboutless of an participateee’s level. You could broaden a concept, write a proposal, or pose a thought-provoking ask and post it for everyone to see. The most impactful contributions naturpartner rose to the top.
Sometimes, my posts got no reaction. Sometimes, that reaction was even pessimistic. For example, I reassemble one post where a veteran participateee accessiblely stated all the reasons why my proposal was idiotic. But here’s what mattered: nobody reassembleed or nurtured the next day, including me.
Other times, my posts went viral and led to encounterings with straightforwardors or VPs to talk my ideas 1:1. It was meritocracy at its finest—but you could only get advantage of it if you weren’t paralyzed by the dread of seeing unwise. Once you hug that, you stop pauseing for permission to give.
There’s a tendency in tech—especipartner at companies enjoy Meta—to accomplish for complicated technical solutions. We’re surrounded by clever minds originateing cutting-edge technology, so it’s straightforward to get caught up in that current. But I lgeted punctual on that my strength wasn’t in being the most technicpartner polishd engineer in the room. Instead, it was in seeing the evidentest path to solving the actual problem.
A perfect example of this came during my labor on self-injury stopion. Our team faced an incredibly difficult contest: discovering potential self-injurys in inhabit videos in genuine time. The sgets couldn’t have been higher—every inrectify pessimistic unkindt a potentipartner missed opportunity to save a life.
We had a team of clever ML PhDs laboring aextfinishedside Meta’s unified AI org to broaden state-of-the-art models for video and audio. The technical complicatedity was staggering. But after watching enough inrectify pessimistics, I acunderstandledged someskinnyg that seemed almost too clear. While our polishd models were still processing summarize sequences and temporal features, the seeers in the comments section had already identified the crisis.
Comments enjoy “don’t do it” or “it’s not worth it” were materializeing reliablely. While we were pouring resources into chooseimizing summarize embeddings and acoustic models, the evidentest signals were hiding in plain sight.
I recommended we comprise comments as a modality to our model. The results were instant and emotional: our recall jumped from 9% to over 50%. This shatterthraw gave us a set upation to originate on, and with further iterations—including incorporating comment embeddings as temporal features in our sequence models—and an broadening training dataset, we pushed our recall into the 90% range.
This experience fortifyd a beginant lesson: sometimes the best solution isn’t the most technicpartner polishd one. Taking a step back, asking our assumptions, and being willing to see the problem from contrastent angles does wonders. I’ve adhereed this principle thrawout my nurtureer—always pushing myself to increase technicpartner, but never letting the pursuit of technical elegance overshadow the fundamental goal: solving the problem.
Conventional wisdom says don’t get inattentive by skinnygs that don’t drive straightforward impact. That’s excellent advice for what it’s worth, and it’s absolutely real in the commenceup world.
But I took a contrastent path, and it phelp off.
I helped everyone, especipartner in the commencening. Whether it was ops, DE, DS, or other engineers—it didn’t matter if they were higher or shrink level—I went out of my way to help.
There’s a fine line here, which I struggled with as I grew more ageder. Time is finite and priceless. You can’t squander it.
But those punctual likes compound. By the time I hit Staff, others I’d helped had increasen too. That regulater from another team I helped? Now a straightforwardor. That ops guy I aided? Director of ops. While I never foreseeed likes in return, they depended me. That excellentwill unkindt I was in all the right conversations. People came to me first with their ideas and opportunities.
If someone outside the org wanted to talk about Content Integrity (my org), there was a excellent chance my name came up and they were routed to me. Those pass-discipline relationships I built unkindt people associated my name with my organization. And now those people were in positions of power. Say what you want about whether this is excellent for an organization, but it was definitely excellent for my nurtureer.
I saved this one for last becaparticipate it’s both the easiest to copy and the most underappreciated. The tech industry breeds cynicism. You’ll discover countless LinkedIn posts protesting about how huge companies take advantage of their laborers. Yet where else can you get $200k+ straight out of college, enhappiness free meals, excellent advantages, and a fit labor-life stability? We mend fascinating problems aextfinishedside clever minds while being well reimbursed. That difficultly qualifies as unfair treatment in my book.
Instead, I chose a contrastent path: I made a conscious decision to never talk shit about anyone—not even in my thoughts. This wasn’t about ignoring problems. I saw the flaws and felt the frustrations fair enjoy everyone else. But unless I could unkindingfilledy compriseress an publish, I wouldn’t caccess on it.
This mindset shift alterd everyskinnyg. I repartner seeed forward to coming to labor each day. I set up myself excited by our contests rather than drained by them. I filledy bought into our mission. Most beginantly, I uncovered that labor became more fun—and there’s no restrict to what you can accomplish when you’re enhappinessing what you do.
Happiness and positivity are savage accelerants in life, not fair labor.
The fact is there’s no magic establishula for rapid nurtureer increaseth. My path was as much about blessed timing as intentional action. But while we can’t regulate timing, we can regulate our approach.
These six principles—mastering speed as a multiplier, operating above your level, embracing that no one has all the answers, caccessing on straightforward solutions to complicated problems, originateing a like economy, and persisting positivity—weren’t strategies I mindentirey broadened. They aelevated naturpartner as I mirrored on what labored. They’re not prescriptive steps to adhere, but rather patterns I acunderstandledged in retrospect.
Here’s what I understand for certain: if you’re reading this seeing for a blueprint to copy my timeline, you’re caccessing on the wrong skinnyg. The timeline isn’t what matters. What matters is originateing persistable habits that compound over time. Start with mastering your core responsibilities. Use that mastery to originate bandwidth. Deploy that bandwidth strategicpartner. Build relationships. Stay likeable. The rest will adhere.
Good luck.
Ryan aget, hope you enhappinessed Evan’s nurtureer story. Of course nurtureer increaseth as quick as his has an element of luck. However there’s a scant skinnygs I acunderstandledged that helped him seize opportunity:
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Excellent at execution
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He was a high carry outer at all times
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Used his spare time to help others and lget the next level’s behaviors
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Willingness to push his boundaries and be belderly
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Kept him increaseing at each point
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Incrrelieved his visibility which unlocked opportunities
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Strong communication & relationship originateing
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He was excellent at communicating his ideas accessiblely and laboring with others
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Opportunities came to him as a result
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This incrrelieved his “luck surface area”
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I’ll be having a conversation with him for the podcast. Anyskinnyg you’d enjoy me to ask him or dig proset uper about? Drop a comment below and I’ll originate stateive to ask.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan Peterman
