9 lessons learned going from comfort zone to Facebook (Meta)

a key turning point of my career

When engaging on LinkedIn, a lot of people tell me things like: “Wow Mihai, you have such an impressive career / profile”.

I’d lie if I’d say that everything was planned ahead. Some things were planned, some just happened, and in this post I will dive into the journey.

In 2017, I was working as a software architect in a large company. My team was in charge of building one of the key software solutions of the company. I already had a proven track record of successful product launches but I was already at the highest technical level I could be (as an engineer). The only higher position was at the HQ, but there was no plan for opening such a position in the local branch. So for me, there was no place to grow.

Life was good. And my comfort zone told me that everything is fine.

So here’s lesson #1: Make sure you always have a place to grow into, something to look forward to.

A key part of my role was to enable the technical teams to move faster and experiment in order to increase revenue. While all the team was doing a good job to make that happen, we were often blocked by some process or by other teams that didn’t have the capacity to keep up with our pace. I learned the hard way that a slow dependency can hurt the success of a whole team.

Which brings me to the lesson #2: If your team’s speed is consistently faster than your dependencies and blocks you from achieving success and leadership won’t improve that, it’s time to look for another opportunity.

As a result of this, a large chunk of the work was just negotiating capacity, getting people to help, waiting for tickets, a lot of back and forth and politics. Meanwhile, our competition was moving way faster and getting more and more of our customers.

As time passed, this also demotivated the engineers in my team and they started to slow down, because this became the new status quo. Soon, I found myself being the only driving force for the project.

And one day, my manager told me:

Mihai, if everyone here is giving their 60%, don’t give your 200%. Just give your 105% and you’ll bine fine.

That made something click in my mind. I realised that would mean stepping on the brakes and was not an option for me.

So here is lesson #3: You must be surrounded by like-minded individuals to make things happen. If you are not, look for another opportunity.

I started to look around — where can I find a large concentration of people who share my mindset and beliefs?

Big tech companies immediately popped on my radar. But they were always scary to me. I had so many misconceptions about them that prevented me to apply over the past years. I was afraid that I would fail the interviews if I were to apply.

Looking back, the lesson I learned here (Lesson #4) is to: Just apply. Even if you know you could fail. If you do, learn from that, prepare for the interviews, and try again in 6 months.

And these interviews felt frustrating. I had 10 years of experience successfully shipping numerous projects across many technologies and yet somehow getting into a big tech company is decided by Leetcode exercises that had no relevance for the job.

Lesson #5: Gatekeepers (leet-code interviews) are pointless, but this is the game to play in order to unlock amazing career opportunities.

Moving abroad was another thing. I was living in Romania, had a very good quality of life. Looking at relocating brought a lot of unknowns as well.

Lesson #6: Your comfort zone will make any attempt to grow seem like an immediate danger for you. Talk to others that done it before and the fears will go away.

As humans, we always tend to look at the negatives, to the point we lose sight of the amazing opportunities in front of us.

So I changed my perspective and instead of looking at all the things that scared me, I turned them into all the amazing things I could gain from working in big tech, such as:

• working with amazing people

• top of the market compensation

• working on amazing projects and at the largest scale in the world

• building a network and being considered for other high impact roles

Lesson #7: Looking at the upsides instead of the downsides will give you the motivation to tackle the downsides.

I prepared 3 months for Leetcode interviews in the evenings and weekends while having a full time job, and after that I started interviewing.

When travelling to the on-site interview in Dublin, I got the chance to meet some amazing people. I realised that that is the place I belong and I was looking forward to getting the offer and joining.

Lesson #8: Location and/or environment is a multiplier for financials, growth, network, everything. Be in the right environment.

Few days later I received the news that I was accepted and received an offer. I joined few months later and this was the best decision I took in my career.

While at Facebook, I got the chance to work with some of the brightest engineers so far, and for the first time in years, no one would do any push back. No one would use processes or politics as excuses for not shipping stuff. Everything went as smooth as it could be.

Lesson #9: If it feels you are the only driving force, you need to change your environment to one in which everyone is a driving force.

That’s why I encourage every ambitious engineer to join a big tech company at some point in their career. Whether you like it or not (I personally liked it), it will give you a unique perspective that no other environment can.

I am writing this newsletter because I wished someone would have thought me these lessons 10 years ago. I had no one to learn from, but you do.

And besides the content in this newsletter and the posts on LinkedIn, I can also help you with:

• figuring out your next 1-2 steps of your career

• improving your tech skills, problem solving skills, mindset or soft skills

• stand out and ace interviews

• get a second opinion on a complex tech problem / architecture

• skip years of career stagnation

• and in anyway I can help transferring my knowledge and experience to you

If you read through the end, I hope you liked it and find it motivating. If you have any feedback or questions on this, or you need mentoring, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn (I have open profile so anyone can message me even if not connected).

See you in the next one,

Mihai