"My journey was not a straight shot to counting $100 bills. In fact, for the first six months after I joined Facebook, I was extremely anxious. I felt imposter syndrome as a senior engineer, I struggled to adapt to the company's culture and tooling."
This what an Indian-origin Rahul Pandey, wrote on his LinkedIn profile after he quit Meta in 2022 after spending five years in the company as its tech lead and manager and getting paid more than ₹ 6.5 Crore annually.
A South Asian engineer working for Facebook in California said he suffered immense levels of anxiety while working there.
Pandey holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. Pandey admits that he did not seek any help from his colleague because he thought it would "out" him as someone who didn't deserve to be a senior engineer.
"I had only been at the company for a year, though, so I felt it was too soon to jump ship. Instead, I made a concerted effort to improve my performance," he told Business Insider.
Then, at the end of his second year, he came up with an internal tool that was adopted throughout the organisation as it saved a lot of time for the engineers. Soon, he was promoted, and granted equity worth ₹two crore, in addition to his basic annual pay, also around ₹two crore. This, however, was followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and Pandey started to explore options outside the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent.
“For my last year, I transitioned into a manager role and switched teams after three years in the same organisation. As 2021 wrapped up, I began exploring the world beyond Meta. After almost a decade in tech, I had achieved some degree of financial freedom, and realised how much more I could learn beyond engineering,” he said to the publication.
Finally, in January last year, Pandey resigned from the Mark Zuckerberg-helmed firm, and opened his own startup, Taro, to help software engineers grow their careers.
"My total compensation in 2021 exceeded $800,000 (approx. ₹6.6 crore) due to sustained strong performance and a run-up in the Meta stock price. I was in the top 1% of income earners in the country! At that level, the money does not actually feel deserved: luck plays a huge role," the ex-Meta staffer concluded.
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