A memo on things I have been learnings as a software engineer at Meta 🪴 Main themes: How to operate well, how to be an independent and reliable teammate.

Background? I started my role around August 2022, and through the Meta team-match process, I joined a team that builds click-to-message (CTX) ad products.

Why did I choose to join an ads team? Compared to Meta’s VR area, I think ads org provides direct feedback on a widely adopted product.

What do I feel most of the time? I enjoy my time here so far and try to stay curious to focus on learning, while actively improving on my weaknesses.

With that, here’s a memo about 9 growth areas that I have been reflecting on:

1️⃣ Prioritization: What are the high-leverage things to be done?

At any certain time at work, I should know what my P0(high), P1(medium), and P2(low) priorities are. If I’m not clear, I should spend time thinking about it. Prioritization is a multiplayer on output - if I execute at 100% speed, being 20% prioritized or 80% prioritized makes a big difference.

How? It’s a great exercise where I share those with my mentor and manager. This helps me to catch a pseudo-productive thing I do - reading documents for the sake of “learning”. It felt productive when I consume new things. But it’s actually not the core of my job, but a cheery on the top. As of now, I try to accumulate depth over breadth and focus on execution.

If I have an idea, I try to test it and put it out as a draft code change, that’s