AMA with Engineering Directors at FAANG

Hi folks, Ray is here 👋 It's been a while. As I promised, I am posting an AMA interview with Engineering Director. I was lucky to talk to two directors! Both have exciting stories. The interviews were anonymous, and I'll try to keep as many details as possible without revealing their identities. For simplicity, I'll use the name "Jack" and "Jill" 👨‍💻

Jack's Background

Jack has a 20+ YOE, including being an engineer, CTO and CEO. In addition, Jack successfully built two start-ups in Silicon Valley and leading a considerable product direction at a famous FAANG company in London.

Jill's Background

Jill has a 15+ YOE. She was an engineer before and worked as IC4, IC5, IC6 in different FAANG companies. Now she is an Engineering Director and the whole leading organization inside the company.

Before we start

I've merged the answers of Jack and Jill to help to protect their identity. So read the answer as a combination of their opinions. Thank you for understanding.

Q&A

What do you feel about the trends for the next 10-15 years?

ML / AI, VR are definitely what comes first to mind. Companies are actively investing in this direction because of the potential impact on business and society's life. Not investing in it could mean a failure for the company in the technology race. But what I feel about this direction, that we can't say that it's something new. Companies have worked on it, at least for the last decade. Yes, it's still in development, but people already actively using it. Companies will continue their direction in broadening the use of ML / AI and VR, and the demand for engineers who can work with these techs will only grow. But let's think about something new. As industry leaders and investors, we need to research different areas, before it becomes "trendy". The new emerging direction I see is Biotechnologies with the combination of ML and VR. It's truly on the most of its early stages of development, and the potential impact on the world is immense. I see it as a next step for the most innovative companies, and potentially, these are the future FAANGS.

What were the most challenging engineering projects that you worked on?

I ran my own start-ups not much time ago. Initially, I thought that developing the "idea" from scratch and selling it was the hardest part. But it turned out not to be true for me. If your idea is good, it's relatively easy to find investors money in Silicon Valley. It's easy to hire developers and run the first MVP. But the challenge I personally faced is scaling the company to at least half of the size of FAANG. I failed three times, all times I ended up growing the company, so it became a profit, however each time, I faced a "growing Plato". This is one of the reasons why I come to FAANG. Learn how to run such a big company

Why did you choose a manager career path instead of tech (staff, senior staff, principal) and how hard was it to make this decision?

I used to be a Senior Staff Engineer, but there is a point in your career when you want to try something new. It was precisely my turning point. I started my own company, learned Project Management and Marketing. Engineering experience helped me a lot in that. I am happy with this decision. I think I reached my potential maximum in Engineering Direction and it's was an obvious next step.

Do you have any plans on retiring?

My current net worth, including pension pot, is about 30 million $. So potentially, I can retire even now, but I feel like I still have things to do and learn in my career, so I continue exploring myself and the opportunities I see ahead.

What's your TC

To be honest, I stopped checking it when it reached a certain amount. I think my base is about 400k $ and 1.5M stock refresher each year. So the initial grant was about 4M over 4 years.

How do you invest your money?

VTI, VOO - wide index stock funds, state and corporate bonds, private equity.

How do you spend your spare time?

I read when I have time. I like driving around the country in my car. Spend a vacation abroad, and do hike/bike when the weather is good. I also love having a nice dinner once in a while and visit a farmers market every week.

Do you buy any luxuries?

Not all. I love the tech for its immunity to the status symbols. I don't value expensive watches because I have an apple watch that is much more comfortable. I don't have lambs and Ferraris in my garage because tesla is good enough for me. All luxurious things for disturbing my comfort and try to own less thing and make my life for simple and comfortable

How should you make the decision about a team or company to work for?

That's a personal and challenging question, and I don't have a short answer. But I'll try to make it simple. Consider next things:

Grow opportunities and brand name
People in your team
Compensation Level

Author note: I have an article about choosing the team for the project. Check it out and give me some 👏

What's the difference between IC4 - IC5 - IC6 - IC7 levels in your perspective?

I don't think going to E7+ is about knowledge. It's about thinking about broader complex problems and thinking in terms of the business.

Let's split it by levels:

IC3-4: mostly solving problems that passed from senior colleagues
IC5: leads the small team and could potentially lead a vital product feature
IC6: acts as a TL in the team. Involved in active cross-functional team collaboration. Creates a scope for IC3-IC5.
IC7: TL for multiple projects and teams ~30-50 people

The most common path to IC7 is to think about and drive comprehensively, more entire projects with more significant business impact.

What's your favourite book?

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - the best I read so far. Highly recommend it.

The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small - helps to understand how a big company works and potentially help you survive working in it.

Best advice for Engineers to grow at FAANG?

In short - learn and practice Product Management. The more senior you're, the more critical it becomes. Learning Product Management will help you grow in large companies and later help you build your own start-up if you decide to go this way.

Basically, Product Management as being about three things:

Understanding the user base. You need to understand the goals, motivation and user's environment to build a successful product. The close you're to users expectations, the bigger chances that your product succeed.
Understanding the product. As a senior engineer, you will be more involved in roadmap planning, visioning and choosing the features and priorities. Successful Engineer knows its product and drives it in the right way.
Understanding the business. How will the users or the companies they work for benefit financially from the product? How much would they be willing to pay? Who are the partners that can help you distribute, promote, or service the product? Finally, how will the company you work for make money or otherwise benefit from the product? Understanding this is crucial for the long term success of a product.

More likely than not, you already have a Product Manager working with your team. Talk to them and ask where they need help. Suggest to your PM that you will go ahead and think about these features. Over time, you can start thinking of larger and larger product issues and user and business issues. In general, think of PM / Eng interaction as that of a close partnership. That's it. Learn some PM - this is the most helpful tip for growing anywhere.

Final words

Thanks a lot for posting the questions in my channel. I hope you enjoyed the discussion. If you are subscribed to my channel, you're very welcome to do so:
https://t.me/frontend_engineer_blog