Ex-Meta engineer says he asked for a demotion - but that was easier said than done

""I did not fit in perfectly," Tsvetkov wrote in the December post, describing the need for intimate systems knowledge and credibility among leaders at his rank. "It is very hard to achieve all of that when you join as a new hire from another company and work from a remote office." His slow ramp-up caused a "lot of stress," he wrote, and he eventually wished for a demotion - before jumping back to Google."

"Tsvetkov needed to "start from zero," he said. On day one, he said he knew less than the intern sitting next to him. Within the year and two months that he spent at Meta, Tsvetkov guessed that he had reached the performance of an E6 software engineer - if he was "generous" - but not the E7 he was hired to be."

Igor Tsvetkov joined Meta as a senior staff software engineer after roles at Google and Cruise. He struggled to blend into Meta's culture, lacked intimate systems knowledge and credibility among leaders, and faced added difficulty working remotely. Slow ramp-up created significant stress and led him to request a demotion. Performance reviews compared him to long-tenured senior staff, and Meta's low-performer layoffs intensified pressure. After about fourteen months he estimated his output matched an E6 engineer but fell short of the E7 expectation and he realized he preferred coding and debugging to broader E7 responsibilities, prompting his return to Google.

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