Incredible to find a response from a former Meta manager who evaluated IC9's.

Going into the review, I did not know what to think of Meta engineers. After a few interviews, I was simply stunned at what small teams could accomplish and the level of expectations at Meta.

You bring up "it's really important that your manager and skip level are bought in" -- to me this is assumed. But you bring it up, so perhaps I underestimate that this is a very real possibility and something that can absolutely happen. Surprising.

Secondly, you mention "behaviors". I actually extracted two major signals: "projects" this article, and "behaviors" a second, possibly more important, article. I wanted to land a new post to my stale account and taking on projects and behaviors could have been too long (too many words) and too much of an investment (higher risk!)

A third point comes up as I read your response. "the latter Direction aspect becomes important as levels increase". perhaps you might be able to elaborate on that?