Programmer

Senior Software Engineer

Engineering Director

Founder

CEO & CTO

Staff Software Engineer [L6]

Staff Software Engineer

Co-founder

[Sophie Novati](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophienovati/) is the founder and CEO of [Formation](https://formation.dev/partners/taro), an interview prep platform that has empowered hundreds of engineers to secure top-paying roles in the tech industry. With extensive experience in interviews, Sophie understands the common challenges and strategies that lead to success.

Through Formation, she provides tailored coaching to help engineers advance their careers with confidence and earn more while doing it — on average, individuals increase their total comp by $127k after going through Formation.

Before founding Formation, Sophie served as a staff-level engineer at Meta and Nextdoor, where she conducted interviews and mentored over 100 engineers through pivotal moments in their careers.

In her spare time, Sophie loves traveling the world with friends, enjoying great food, and snowboarding.

Learn more about Sophie and what she is building at Formation: [https://formation.dev/](https://formation.dev/partners/taro)

Sophie Novati

Have you watched hours of YouTube videos on system design, but still freeze up during the real thing? Are you concerned about how you present yourself to interviewers?

Discover a different approach to system design interview prep with our video series. We’re moving beyond just technical solutions to focus on mastering the interview process itself so you can show your expertise and interview confidently.

In this course, you will:

- **Watch Common Mistakes:** Explore mock interview clips that highlight frequent errors made by candidates.
- **Analyze Reasons Why:** Delve into the underlying causes of these pitfalls.
- **Improve**: See a practical example of how candidates can successfully navigate these challenges.

The clips are organized around four critical themes for interview success:

1. 🧘 **Staying Focused on the Problem**: Learn how to keep your technical discussion centered on the most crucial issues.
2. 🗣️ **Communication**: Develop the skills to articulate your technical ideas clearly and effectively.
3. 💭 **Thinking Like an Engineer**: Adopt an iterative problem-solving approach and adapt to new information.
4. ✍️ **Driving the Design**: Approach your interview with strategic intent and purpose.

This course provides you with real-world examples that will elevate your system design performance. Equip yourself with our strategies to confidently ace your next interview and make a lasting impression!

The Top Ways People Fail System Design Interviews

Overview

Staying Focused on the Problem

Communication

Thinking Like an Engineer

Driving the Design

Conclusion

Hey Programmers! \
\
I'm [Alvin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/). I'm a software engineer with a serious passion for teaching. I'm a former **Google Software Engineer**. I'm also a former **Lead Curriculum Developer** of a top coding bootcamp. I'm a **Featured Instructor** on the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel, where my lectures have accumulated over **6 million views**. 

I have spent the better part of the last decade teaching students the skills needed to be a great developer and **land their dream job**.\
\
Through years of experience leading in the classroom, working with students one-on-one, and in front of the video camera, I've developed a teaching style that I'm excited to share with you. I believe that **gradual progression is the key** to building robust knowledge that you'll be able to apply in your interviews and on the job. We'll go slow so that you don't miss a step. With my system, you'll enter the course as a beginner, but leave with the skills to land your dream job.\
\
Let's learn together.

Alvin Zablan

Tired of the frustrating LeetCode grind?

The reason people struggle with learning data structures and algorithms (DSA) is that they go about it in the completely wrong way. They jump straight into trying to solve problems without the proper prerequisite knowledge. **This is why studying DSA feels like a slow "grind" for many.**

If you are going to land your dream job, you are going to need to build your knowledge in a way where you can apply your skills to new problems, when it matters most, on a technical interview.

**In this crash course we'll build up your DSA knowledge gradually so you never miss a step.** We'll cover the key patterns and concepts that you can leverage to solve the most common interview problems. By the end of this course, you will be able to:

- Solve interview problems about hash-maps, linked lists, binary trees, graphs, and dynamic programming
- Analyze algorithms using Big-O notation so an optimal implementation is achieved
- Visualize and understand core algorithm concepts so you can apply them to solve new problems

This course is designed for beginners, so you don’t need any DSA knowledge to begin. We will start at the fundamentals and increase the difficulty slowly over time; this is the key to truly **mastering** the concepts.

Once you complete this course, you’ll have the skills you need **ace your technical interviews and land your dream job**.

If you need additional support taking those skills and actually applying them, take Alvin's *complete* data structures and algorithms course on [Structy](https://structy.net/?utm_source=taro). You can try out the concepts yourself in their interactive code editor and learn advanced DSA patterns like stack exhaustive recursion.

Use [this link to get 20% off](https://structy.net/purchase?promo_code=taro20) the entire Structy DSA learning experience (discount code **TARO20**).

Crash Course: Beginner Data Structures And Algorithms Concepts

Core Problems And Concepts

Array and String Basics

Recursion Basics

Linked Lists

Intermission: Go Deeper

Binary Trees

Graphs

Dynamic Programming

Wrapping Up

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. His success is also reflected in his compensation:

- **2014:** Alex was making *$85,000* per year as a clueless new grad at PayPal 🤓
- **2021:** Alex was making *$750,000* per year as a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood 😎

In just 7 years, Alex was able to increase his pay by a staggering +800%. While a lot of this was due to promotions and his personal growth, a huge portion was also due to the 3 company switches he made across his career. It's hard to reach the top without changing jobs, and Alex took that idea to the bank 🏦.

## Interview 0 -&gt; Interview Hero

Alex graduated UCLA as a lackluster student, just barely maintaining a \~3.0 GPA. He entered the tech job market as an even more lackluster interview candidate who was too lazy to do LeetCode. It took him 25+ failed interviews before landing the offer for his first job at PayPal.

Fast forward to his later years and Alex was passing his interviews with far more ease at better and better companies, having learned from his many failures of the past. For Meta and Robinhood, he only had to study a few hours (&lt;5) to pass their behavioral and system design rounds!

## Inspiring Others To Job Success

Alex has mentored thousands of software engineers towards cracking the interview for their dream jobs. Here's just a small list of the top tech companies Alex has empowered engineers to get into:

- Meta
- Amazon & Twitch
- Google
- Snap
- Microsoft
- Pinterest
- Workday

And this is just the big publicly traded companies. Alex has also landed many engineers into positions at cutting-edge startups.

On top of the stellar selection of companies, Alex has helped engineers from all sorts of backgrounds ace their tech interviews:

- **Junior and senior** - Alex has helped both struggling new grads and senior engineers with 10+ years of experience.
- **US citizens and new immigrants** - Being on a visa makes the job search much harder, and this is an obstacle Alex has coached several mentees through, even helping an international student land a role at a top startup.
- **Traditional and non-traditional** - One of the engineers Alex helped get into Workday didn't even have a Computer Science degree!

## From The Other Side Of The Table

The last big reason why Alex is perfect to teach this course is that he's thoroughly seen the interview from *both* sides and built a deep understanding of what the world looks like through the eyes of the interviewer (i.e. the person giving the questions) and the (often struggling) candidate.

Alex was an interviewer at every company he's ever worked at, giving 250+ interviews, with \~100 of those being at Meta. He's reviewed 1,000+ resumes and been in the room for many hire/no-hire decisions. He's done every interview type from phone screen to onsite and DSA to behavioral. At Course Hero, he was their 1st Android engineer and tech lead, so he wrote their entire Android engineer interview process from scratch.

With all this experience, Alex has seen every possible way a software engineer job candidate can fail during their interview grind:

- He knows why they have to desperately apply online into a black hole with minimal results
- He knows why their resume doesn't even make it past the initial screen, not even getting the chance to talk to a human
- He knows why they completely choke during the interview despite having studied for 500+ hours

With this course, Alex is teaching you how to learn from the countless mistakes both he and his thousands of prior mentees have made.

Alex Chiou

Finding a job as a software engineer *sucks*. From "gotcha" data structures and algorithms (DSA) problems to recruiters ghosting you, the tech interview grind is often miserable. The sad thing is that universities and bootcamps are **terrible** at adequately preparing new talent for the brutal realities of the engineering job market.

This is why this course exists: It is the comprehensive resource you need to fully understand the many ins and outs of the software engineer interview grind. After going through this course, you will:

- **🧹** Organize your entire job search (and make it debuggable)

- 🧠 Train your brain to learn interview skills properly and stay healthy throughout the process

- 📃 Apply effectively and efficiently to jobs

- ✅ Have a framework to come prepared into any interview

- 💡 Understand all common interview types and how to approach them

Now you might be looking at this and wondering, "*Wait, where's the advice on becoming a LeetCode master?"*. This is 100% intentional and not a mistake: Over-indexing on DSA is easily the #1 way software engineers mess up their job search. While the vast majority of online resources help engineers with this portion, there is far, far more to the interview journey. It's why most engineers never break into FAANG - They don't master the multitude of other crucial interview mechanics besides DSA. Take this course and you will learn those mechanics!

Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer

Get Interviews

Interview Types

Pass Interviews

After The Interview

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood, where he was a high-performing tech lead making $750,000/year.

## Resume Master

In order to pass interviews, you need to get them first, and this is something Alex was able to do in droves, largely due to his incredibly polished resume. Alex hasn't properly applied to a job in 5+ years but still gets interviews from top companies who find his resume/portfolio online (he walks through [why his portfolio is so impressive at getting inbound](https://www.jointaro.com/course/get-more-interviews-write-a-stellar-resume-as-a-software-engineer/the-real-secret-for-a-top-tier-resume/) in this course as well).

He's shared his resume format with others to repeat success (which you'll get access to by completing this course), often giving them an immediate 50%+ uptick in interview calls. To help friends, family, and the online community, Alex has reviewed 1,000+ resumes and [gotten them jobs at companies like Meta, Google, Snap, Workday, and more](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)!

## Deep Hiring Loop Perspective

Alex has been extensively involved in the hiring loop at all 4 of the top Silicon Valley companies he worked at. At Course Hero, he built the entire Android hiring loop from scratch, writing the job postings, reviewing the resumes, designing the interview process, administering the interviews, and then making hire/no hire decisions.

Across his 10+ years in Silicon Valley, Alex has reviewed 1,000+ resumes in a professional setting. He has also rejected 1,000+ resumes, tossing 90%+ of them into the bin. He deeply understands what top tech companies are looking for (and not looking for) in a candidate from their resume, particularly the many, *many* traps job-seeking engineers fall into that make their profile look **worse**.

The beautiful thing about resume optimization is that it really doesn't take too much time. If you go through this entire course and deeply pay attention to the hard-earned wisdom Alex has bundled within it, you can maximize your resume's quality in at most 10-20 hours. This is a 1-time cost that's definitely worth paying as you will be sending that resume to hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs.

7\.4 seconds: That's how long the average recruiter spends on your resume according to [this well-documented eye-tracking study](https://www.hrdive.com/news/eye-tracking-study-shows-recruiters-look-at-resumes-for-7-seconds/541582/). When it comes to tech where any decent job posting will get 100+ applicants in the first 24 hours, this study rings quite true with recruiters almost always spending just 5-10 seconds on a candidate's resume (sometimes less!).

Because of this, you absolutely have to make your resume *extremely* polished. Despite this, so many software engineers make basic mistakes and phrase their experience incorrectly. The wisdom in this course will get you out of those traps and maximize the chances of your resume surviving the initial screen and getting you an interview. After going through this course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **principles** behind a stellar resume

- 🗑️ Avoid the common **traps** that make resumes suck

- 💯 Get **maximum credit** by best framing your experience

- 📊 Make the right resume based on your **level**

- 🤔 Know what to do if your resume **isn’t enough**

The tricky part about writing a stellar resume is that there's so much misinformation online about what makes a good resume, usually coming from people who have never worked at top tech companies. This course cuts through all this noise by giving you time-tested tactics from proven engineering leaders who have been behind the hiring loop from all sorts of companies from FAANG to hyper-growth startups. By completing this course, you will also get a real resume from the instructor himself that you can use as a concrete template.

Get More Interviews: Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer

Traps To Avoid

Framing Your Experience

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. His success is also reflected in his pay:

- **2014:** Alex made *$85,000* per year as a clueless new grad at PayPal 🤓
- **2021:** Alex made *$750,000* per year as a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood 😎

In just 7 years, Alex was able to increase his pay by a staggering +800%. And a lot of that success? It came from mastering the data structures and algorithms interview, which let Alex break into Meta, unlocking a massive amount of doors for his career.

## Interview 0 -&gt; LeetCode Hero

By some miracle (alongside [building several side projects with 10,000+ users](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KJ4VXh6rUhKbWeiJoRDe/finding-a-mobile-app-idea-how-to-do-it/?playlistId=vKUWMgmmaEvzcYUXZs4B)), Alex was able to get his first 2 jobs at PayPal and Course Hero without grinding LeetCode. However, when he was leaving Course Hero and targeting Facebook, he knew that his luck would come to an end and this would have to change.

Alex picked up LeetCode for the first time in his life in early 2017, embarking on the arduous data structures and algorithms journey. It was extremely tough as he even struggled with LeetCode easy for the first month, but he was able to figure it out with hard work and time-tested learning instincts. Around 3 months later, Alex sailed through the data structures and algorithms rounds at Facebook with an offer in-hand.

You can watch the full story of how Alex got into Meta here: [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior LeetCode Experience](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ZYiTbN21FsqFxFdpwt5a/how-alex-got-into-meta-with-0-prior-leetcode-experience/)

## Master Of The FAANG Bar

Alex has given \~250 interviews across his career, \~100 of those being at Meta for the infamous data structures and algorithms interview, codenamed the "Ninja" round. On top of the 100 LeetCode rounds he gave at Meta, he's done 100+ more mock interviews, helping many of those engineers crack the interview for top companies like FAANG and hyper-growth startups.

Alex is someone who doesn't half-ass anything, and that includes giving interviews. He did extra shadows at Meta to train as an interviewer and always gave some of the most detailed feedback for candidates. Even though Alex rejected 80% of candidates at Meta (the FAANG bar is high), he got excellent feedback as an interviewer, even from candidates that he rejected.

With Taro, Alex has now worked with hundreds more engineers who have struggled to make it into Big Tech, developing an even deeper understanding of the mistakes engineers commonly make to miss the FAANG bar. All of those learnings are now in this course, so you don't make the same mistakes.

Data structures and algorithms, otherwise known as "DSA". Dread it, run from it, LeetCode still arrives, especially if you're trying to get into FAANG. These problems are notoriously frustrating as they're both hard to understand and not relevant at all to what software engineers actually do on the job (including at Big Tech).

Unfortunately, it is effectively impossible to avoid DSA as a software engineer due to top company interviews being full of them. To succeed in tech, you simply must master DSA. On the bright side, you now have this course where we'll teach you how to conquer these pesky problems and maybe even develop a newfound appreciation for them. After going through this course, you will:

- 🔥 Be **motivated** to grind DSA

- 💡 Understand how to **truly learn** DSA concepts

- 🗣️ Know how to navigate DSA in a **live** interview

- 🏔️ See how DSA is proctored at **top companies** (FAANG)

- 🧠 Set up a proper DSA **studying regimen**

It's easy to look at data structures and algorithms and feel helpless - We've been there too! But once you truly and deeply understand the overall space and how the best companies administer them differently from everyone else, you'll be crushing your DSA rounds in no time. You simply have to put in the work.

Master The Data Structures And Algorithms Interview

Answering The Questions

Getting To The Next Level

Preparation

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. He started off as a new-grad at PayPal in 2014 making *$85k* and grew to a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood in 2021 making *$750k*.

With 4 different companies across 8 years, Alex got incredibly good at interviews with one of his strongest points being behavioral rounds:

- For Course Hero, Alex did so well in the behavioral round with the VP of Engineering that he got a phone call 1 hour after the onsite saying that he was being extended the offer. The offer ended up increasing his salary by over 50%!
- For Meta, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 5 hours of studying.
- For Robinhood, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 2 hours of studying. It went so well that he ended up teaching the hiring manager giving the round insights about effective mentorship!

When you're operating at the absolute highest levels of behavioral interviews, it ceases to feel like an interview and more like a fun conversation between 2 incredibly talented people. Through years of hard work, Alex got that level and is excited to get you there too.

## Interview 0 -&gt; Interview Hero

Alex is an introvert and grew up incredibly shy, having very few friends all the way up through high school and most of college. He then graduated UCLA as a lackluster student, just barely maintaining a \~3.0 GPA. He had poor communication skills and a tiny professional network - It's needless to say that he was terrible at behavioral interviews as well.

Fast forward to his later years, and Alex improved on all those fronts. He became an expert communication and a tech lead after just a few years, building all of Course Hero's initial Android app from scratch and creating a team of 4 Android engineers behind it. His professional network reaches far and wide across FAANG, top startups, and everything in between. Armed with an arsenal of incredibly rich career stories and charisma, behavioral interviews became a walk in the park for Alex.

Alex is living proof that the skills necessary to become a behavioral interview master can be learned, no matter how much of an introvert or weak communicator you are. You just need to put in the effort and have the proper guidance, which is what this course provides.

## Expert Of The Other Side

Alex was involved in the hiring process for all 4 of his companies, doing 250+ interviews. Of those interviews, 50+ were behavioral interviews. On top of those, Alex has also done 50+ mock behavioral interviews, coaching dozens of engineers to cracking behavioral interviews at top companies like FAANG.

Alex deeply understands:

- The difference between a passing and failing behavioral interview performance
- The most common reasons software engineers fail behavioral interview rounds, often stemming from their incorrect preparation and lackluster skill development
- What good behavioral interview performances look like at each level from junior (L3) to mid-level (L4) to senior (L5) to staff (L6)

Data structures and algorithms problems (i.e. LeetCode) suck up all the attention among software engineers when it comes to interviews. However, you need to master far more than LeetCode to land a quality tech job (even at FAANG). If you want to succeed on the software engineer interview journey, you absolutely have to get good at what's *actually* the most important interview type: Behavioral interviews.

Here are the attributes of behavioral interviews that make them so critical:

- You will encounter them on every interview loop from Big Tech to early-stage startups
- They can screen you out early (often at the recruiter pre-screen)
- They're used extensively for leveling
- You cannot fail them and still get an offer

Despite this, many engineers see them as a fairly meaningless and "fluffy" exercise. This leads to them struggling with behavioral interviews, often not realizing that they're getting hard rejected on these rounds! By taking this course, that won't be you anymore. After going through it, you will:

- 🧠 Have the right mentality to answer *any* behavioral question well
- ✅ Understand good vs. bad behavioral answers
- 📖 Use the right tactics to prepare properly
- 🤔 Possess the skills to vet the company
- 📊 Know what behavioral performances look like across different levels

The beautiful thing about behavioral interviews is that by improving at them, you just become a better software engineer overall. Skills like effective communication, speaking with charisma, and empathizing with others are fundamental skills that are useful anywhere at any stage in your career.

Master The Behavioral Interview As A Software Engineer

Questions To Ask

Leveling

[Gaurav Sen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gkcs/) is the founder of [InterviewReady](https://interviewready.io/?_aff=JOINTARO). He has expertise in distributed systems from working at Uber and Directi. \
\
He has been invited to speak at events on distributed systems by University of Houston-Texas, IIT Gandhinagar, and BITS Hyderabad. \
\
Gaurav's [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@gkcs) on system design has over 500k subscribers.

Gaurav Sen (gkcs)

System design interviews are an integral part of the software hiring process. In this course, we dive into what a typical interview is like, what parameters are assessed, and how you can excel in the interviews. If you are a software developer looking to ace your system design interviews, this course is for you. \
\
Here is what you will learn: 

1. What happens in a system design interview 
2. The dos and donts when designing a system 
3. How you can prepare for an interview 
4. What metrics are used to score a candidate 
5. How you can self-evaluate your interview performance

How To Crack System Design Interviews As A Software Engineer

Interview Process

Mock Interview

Evaluation

This is a course about the "insider's guide to negotiation", so it had better be taught by an insider! Rahul is a Stanford CS grad and Silicon Valley tech veteran who has seen the profound impact of negotiation throughout his 15 years in the industry.

Rahul's compensation went from $110K at the beginning of his career to $830K in his peak earning year, 2021, as a Tech Lead and Manager at Meta (Facebook). That's more than 7x! A lot of his Total Compensation (TC) growth can be attributed to his ability to negotiate. The 2 primary segments of negotiation in Rahul's career:

- **2013**: 5 offers at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and Square
- **2017**: 6 offers at Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Stripe, Uber, and Airbnb

Some examples of the shocking increases that Rahul saw with the leverage he had:

- The Snapchat salary went from $160K --&gt; $180K, the stock grant went from $600K --&gt; $1.0MM, and the signing bonus went from $10K --&gt; $100K 💸
- The Facebook stock grant went from $325K --&gt; $600K and the signing bonus went from $30K --&gt; $45K 💰

The numbers here are due primarily to having control over timing, information, and options. This is something you can learn and replicate, and the results can be life-changing.

(No, you don't need to get 5 offers, get a Stanford degree, or live in the Bay Area. Many others have replicated or exceeded Rahul's success in their own careers.)

### **Condensing Years Of Learning**

Rahul is now the cofounder of Taro, a platform designed to accelerate career growth for engineers. In this capacity, he has directly coached dozens of engineers through negotiations and has also seen the outcome of 100s of other negotiations across companies, geographies, and timelines.

This course condenses the collective wisdom from these tech workers into a high-density reference guide for you.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

Rahul Pandey

Your ability to negotiate is undeniably one of the highest-leverage skills you can learn. But tech workers are lousy at negotiation!

This course is designed for tech employees who are actively or passively in the job market. Candidates who proactively think about negotiation during their job search can increase their compensation by 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars with a few extra hours of work (I'm proof of this!).

**Negotiation is not that complicated. It's not even that difficult.**

If you have (1) a desire to get paid more and (2) the ability to tolerate some uncertainty, you have everything you need to *manufacture* leverage and negotiate a higher compensation. This course teaches you how to do exactly that.

We'll demystify how successful negotiations work so you feel confident in discussions with recruiters and hiring managers.

Here's what you'll gain by the end of the course:

- **✊🏽** Understand **if and when to negotiate**

- 🔮 **Create leverage** for negotiations

- **💰** Deconstruct the best ways to **improve your TC**

- 📝 Share **concrete tactics and phrases** to employ

This course is broken down into 3 major parts:

1. **Principles** - How does negotiation work and why is it worthwhile?
2. **Planning** - What should you do (and not do) before and after you receive an offer?
3. **Tactics** - What is the best course of action for various scenarios?

We'll also cover tips for common situations such as:

- Negotiating your current compensation at your job
- Negotiating when you have a single offer
- Dealing with exploding offers

Finally, we'll also share specific phrases that have been used successfully by dozens of engineers, for you to adapt/copy/steal into your own negotiation playbook.

This course is the distillation of 100s of hours of experience and feedback from negotiation: 100s of conversations with other tech employees, dozens of conversations with recruiters, and the author's own journey with negotiation across 10+ companies.

One of the best things you can do for negotiations is to land several offers. If you need help with that, take this course first: [**\[Course\] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer**](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation

Core Principles Of Negotiation

Before You Have The Offer

After You Have The Offer

Engaging With Recruiters

Specific Scenarios

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood.

He became a tech lead just a couple years into his career by owning the entire Course Hero Android app (100k+ users) as their 1st Android engineer. After that, he expanded his scope as a tech lead at Meta and Robinhood, shipping multiple $10 million+ revenue projects with 15+ engineer teams.

## From Ineffective Junior -&gt; Rockstar TL

It wasn't all sunshine and roses for Alex as he started off his career in 2014 as a [junior engineer at PayPal doing pretty much nothing](https://www.jointaro.com/question/MldWyFYyJUTxRGjId2f5/help-needed-new-grad-job-going-at-a-slow-pace-with-nothing-to-do-next-steps/). He would spend more of his day playing foosball than writing code. His career trajectory was completely stagnant, and he was making every mistake in the book.

Eventually, Alex woke up and took control of his career. He began thinking more proactively and making deliberate moves to ascend up the career ladder, striving to do amazing work and add as much value as possible to those around him. Fast forward 7 years to 2021 and Alex was making **\~$750k/year** as a high-performing Robinhood tech lead at the age of 29, leading 25+ person projects.

## Mentoring Engineers To ⚡ Fast Promotions

What Alex is even prouder of than his own career trajectory is those of his mentees, particularly those at Meta. Across his \~4 years at Meta, Alex mentored 30+ engineers and achieved these incredible outcomes:

- Got 10+ junior engineers \[E3\] promoted to mid-level engineers \[E4\] in just *1 year* (2x faster than industry average)
- Got 5+ mid-level engineers \[E4\] promoted to senior engineers \[E5\] in just *1 year* (5x faster than industry average)
- Got new-grad E3s promoted all the way to E5 with *"Greatly Exceeds Expectations"* ratings in just 3 years (*$200k TC -&gt; $500k TC*)

These trajectories are way faster than what Alex was able to accomplish himself, which was his goal. Every great teacher dreams of having their students surpass them, and Alex is no exception.

With this course, Alex is taking the largely unknown tactics he shared with his direct mentees and sharing them with you 🤲. With this newfound knowledge, you can also level up at 🚀 speed and help Alex achieve his dream on an even grander scale.

Switching jobs is great, but it can only get you so far. *The true foundation of any ultra-successful tech career is promotion.* When you look at software engineers at the pinnacle of career achievement like the FAANG Principal Engineer \[L8\] making $1,000,000+, you'll notice that the overwhelmingly majority of them have very long stints at a particular company with several promotions.

Despite this, promotion gets a bad reputation as it's sorely misunderstood, both by individual engineers and entire tech companies. This leads to many engineers getting stuck at certain levels, giving up, and just hopping companies to escape the pain. This course is here to demystify promotion and teach you how you can plant roots and actually climb up the tech career ladder. By the end of the course, you will understand:

- 💡 How promotion **actually works**, particularly at top companies like FAANG
- 🧠 The framework to understand the **senior engineering career ladder**
- 📃 How to define a **clear plan** to get to the next level
- ✅ What it takes to get **maximum credit** for every project
- 🚀 What it means to master your performance review and produce the **best promo packet**

Now here's the beautiful thing about pushing for promotion and following the advice of this course: *It will make you a much better software engineer*. The skills you build up to make a serious promotion case are genuinely useful for your long-term development. This is in contrast to interviewing where you're largely trying to fake mastery. At Taro, we're all about a *"growth first"* mentality, which is why we're so excited to share this course with you.

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer

Finding The Right Team

Set Up Success Criteria

Project Credit And Scope

Performance Review

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood.

He became a tech lead just a couple years into his career by owning the entire Course Hero Android app (100k+ users) as their 1st Android engineer. After that, he expanded his scope as a tech lead at Meta and Robinhood, shipping multiple $10 million+ revenue projects with 15+ engineer teams.

## Leapfrogging Junior

Alex became a mid-level engineer just 1 year into his career, joining Course Hero as their 1st Android engineer and lead to build their Android app completely from scratch.

He did this by [sharpening his coding skills (a lot of which was done outside of work)](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ciE9a2TZ7rZNyYP8HbeJ/how-can-i-write-great-code-faster/), being a feedback sponge, and heavily working on his communication overall. Despite being a big introvert and falling behind in college, Alex was able to quickly overcome barriers to grow past junior.

## The Master Of Cultivating Junior Talent

[Alex loves mentoring engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/EX9563YnxcJb62cCmetg/case-study-mentoring-junior-swes-e3-to-senior-e5-in-just-25-years-at-meta/), directly growing 50+ of them to lightning fast promotions at top companies like Meta and Robinhood. His favorite mentees were the ones he got to raise all the way from new-grad. His results speak for themselves:

- Got 10+ Meta junior engineers \[E3\] promoted to mid-level engineers \[E4\] in just *1 year* (2x faster than industry average)
- Got 2 Meta junior engineers \[E3\] promoted to mid-level engineers \[E4\] in just 6 months (4x faster than industry average)

Junior isn't a title you should have for very long. With Alex's wisdom, you can make that your reality.

Congratulations on breaking into tech and becoming a junior engineer! Now how do we make it so people stop calling you "junior" as soon as possible? 😅

Well, you do that by growing from a junior engineer to a mid-level engineer. The good news is that if you are on a decent team, your destiny is completely in your hands when it comes to this promotion. When you play your cards right, you will make this level up *fast*. By the end of the course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a junior engineer and a mid-level engineer

- 🛠️ Learn to **code** like a mid-level engineer

- 💪 Know what it means to be truly **independent**

- 🧠 Have the right **mindset** to act as a mid-level

- ✅ Define a clear **roadmap** to mid-level

Being a junior engineer is scary - You don't know what to do, and the job market is the harshest towards you. But worry not: After going through all the lessons in this course, you will have the necessary tools to quickly grow from a clueless junior engineer to a fearless, respected, and extremely capable member of your team!

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer: L3 To L4

The Code

Independence

Collaboration

Across my 4.5 years working at Meta, I experienced the frustration of failing and then **finally achieving the Staff Eng (E6) promotion**. This course distills years of my own career experience as an IC, transitioning to management, and talking to 500+ engineers directly to observe patterns that hold engineers back at this critical inflection point.

I documented his entire journey at Meta, including every performance rating and compensation change, in this viral video: [What It Took To Become An $800,000 Engineer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inydj1VZ0y0)

### Distilling patterns from 100s of engineers

Before the creation of this on-demand course, I taught a live, cohort-based version of [this course](https://maven.com/taro/senior-to-staff). This course was taken by 100+ engineers across several sessions, and I was able to receive amazing feedback on what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to the promotion beyond Senior.

I was able to incorporate nuances and ideas from many more engineers at managers, going far beyond my experience at Meta. This on-demand course is the distillation of hundreds of 1:1 conversations and students from live cohort multiple times.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

The Staff Engineer promotion can feel impossible: it requires a level of initiative and ownership that engineers rarely demonstrate. However, the reward is immense: Staff Engineers are clear leaders in their org, often commanding [$500K+ in total compensation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inydj1VZ0y0) (TC).

This course is about breaking **beyond** the senior level as an individual contributor. We'll cover frameworks and tactics to optimize your promotion to Staff Engineer.

The most common reasons for a failed Staff Engineer promotion are:

- *"You don't have enough scope"*
- *"You're not working strategically enough"*
- *"You need to drive problems with more technical complexity"*

It's easy to hear this and feel stuck. *How can I translate this into action?*

The promotion beyond Senior Engineer (generally called Staff or Principal Engineer) is **not about working faster or longer** -- it's about behavior change that enables you to tackle more difficult problems.

By the end of the course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a senior engineer and a staff engineer (more than a career matrix)
- 🧠 Create **clear mental models** to develop L6 behavior
- 📃 Identify your **fundamental gaps** to staff
- 🗺️ **Chart a path** to Staff Engineer
- 🧐 Go through Staff Engineer **archetypes** to find your fit

### Who is this course for?

- You're a senior engineer in Big Tech looking to **get promoted, but struggling to find scope and influence**. e.g. Google L5, Amazon SDE 3
- You're an engineering manager or director and want to provide **concrete guidance for your engineers** to achieve career growth.
- You're an engineer who wants to validate your career direction by **learning how** **very senior engineers are evaluated** at larger companies.

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer: L5 To L6

Impact

Engineering Excellence

Direction

People

Staff Engineer Archetypes

[Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) and [Rahul Pandey](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/) are good at interviewing, but a lot of their career success actually comes from being consistently excellent in performance reviews, especially at Meta (which is one of the toughest tech companies to perform at).

**Alex Chiou:** Across his \~4 years at Meta, *Alex got an "Exceeds Expectations" rating or higher every single half*. In fact, Alex has never gotten a below average performance rating across his entire career. Alex then took the learnings from his personal success to [mentor dozens of engineers to lightning fast promotions at Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/), increasing their compensation from \~$200k to $500k+ in just 3 years. It got to the point where he could perfectly predict which rating his mentees would get.

**Rahul Pandey:** Rahul has always been a star performer, getting all the way to Staff \[E6\] at Meta. Rahul actually was one of very few engineers at Meta to get DE, which is Discretionary Equity (i.e. a huge chunk of RSUs). DE is a massive performance bonus only given to the top engineers who operate within the Top 5%. Rahul's DE reward was a huge reason behind [his meteoric rise to $800k+ TC](https://blog.jointaro.com/how-i-became-an-800k-engineer/).

Alex Chiou & Rahul Pandey

Passing the interview is tough, but it's actually just the 1st step of the journey - After you get into the company, you need to figure out how to survive and thrive there. *More specifically, you must consistently get good ratings in that company's performance review system.*

This is particularly hard, especially at top tech companies like FAANG where stack rank percentages and PIPs are getting jacked up higher than ever. In the modern tech economy, performance management is more intense than ever, and as a software engineer, you must be ready for this (and we're here to help!). After going through this course, you will:

- 💡 Understand the 3 core performance review system archetypes and which one is the best
- 🤝 Smoothly work with your manager to create a plan to achieve the exact rating you want
- 🛡️ Have sharp tools to protect yourself from the dreaded performance improvement plan (PIP)
- 💪 Make the best case for yourself with an expertly-written self-review
- 💬 Know what feedback to write for your peers, particularly on the constructive side

[Taro Classic] Expertly Navigate Your Performance Review in Tech

Understand The System

Getting The Rating You Want

Feedback Writing

Rahul has been "the new engineer" seven times in his career: four internships and three full-time jobs. He's been an engineer for most of his career and directly shaped the onboarding experience for new engineers on his teams as a manager. Most recently, he worked for 4.5 years at Meta as a Staff Software Engineer and Manager.

### Rahul: The Frequent Noob

Rahul has personally onboarded across a variety of companies and levels of seniority. His first job after university was as a founding engineer (employee #3) at a Stanford startup. Onboarding in this company was as simple as "Here's your laptop, good luck!"

This startup was acquired by Pinterest, which was a Silicon Valley darling undergoing hypergrowth at the time with \~400 employees. Pinterest had more process than the startup, but the product and company were changing rapidly. The onboarding was frequently incorrect or outdated.

Rahul then onboarded as a senior engineer at Facebook (now Meta), the classic Big Tech environment with tens of thousands of employees. Facebook is famous for a very structured approach to onboarding through Bootcamp: a multi-week program to get engineers up to speed.

This doesn't count the "mini-onboardings" that happen within a company: switching teams or moving around due to a re-org. The tech industry today moves incredibly fast, so the ability to adapt and ramp up quickly is essential.

### Years Of Learning In 3 Hours

Rahul is now the cofounder of Taro, designed to accelerate career growth for engineers. In this capacity, he **spoke directly to 100s of engineers** who have onboarded at dozens of companies. This course condenses the collective wisdom from these engineers about the successful (and unsuccessful) traits of new employees.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

Onboarding is the critical period when you first join a new team or company. The impression you create in the initial months has an outsized impact on your future opportunities. The best engineers leverage this time to put their careers on the fast track, while poor engineers miss expectations and end up [PIP'ed](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-ultimate-performance-improvement-plan-pip-guide/) or terminated.

There's a lot to do as you ramp up: learn the codebase, build relationships, and start working on impactful projects. So it's no surprise that joining a new company can be overwhelming and stressful.

**This course presents a roadmap to ensure your success while onboarding**. We cover the importance of onboarding as the foundation for your job and career, why companies generally suck at it, and the correct mindset to adopt when you're new.

We'll then share tactics around three key pillars for Software Engineering onboarding:

- 🧠 Asking for help
- 💻 Learning the codebase
- 🙋🏽 Building relationships

Most importantly, this course will share the **principles** behind the advice so you can navigate any situation you're in.

We'll also cover specific tips for success in common situations:

- Junior engineers
- Senior engineers
- Joining a small company (whether VC-backed or indie business)
- Joining a large company

Here's what you'll gain by the end of the course:

- **✊🏽 Build serious respect** with your manager + team

- ⌛️ Quickly become **productive in a new codebase**

- **👨🏽‍💻 Learn from coworkers** (even if they’re not helpful)

- ❌ Understand **failure modes** (+ prevention)

If your anxiety is coming from **looking** for a job instead of **onboarding** into a job, you're in luck! Take this course and come back when you're gainfully employed: [**\[Course\] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer**](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

Watch the full course or go through the parts that are most relevant for you. **The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers: Succeeding When You're New** is designed to give technical employees to increase your impact and reduce your anxiety.

The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers

Proper Onboarding Mentality

Asking For Help

Learning The Codebase

Building Relationships

Contextual Onboarding Tips

I am a seasoned Tech Lead working for the past 8 years.

I work strategically as an area tech lead for a team of 45+ engineers. Previously, I built core payments backend a large payments app. My ultra-fast growth as an engineer (staff engineer in 6 years) has been fueled by my passion for building products, finding the right problems to solve, and investing in my leadership skills.

During college, I qualified for the ACM-ICPC world finals, aka the "olympics of programming". In addition, I also invested in uplifting Indian competitive programmers—hosting specialized training camps, coaching the Indian team for IOI ([ioinformatics.org](http://ioinformatics.org)), simplifying complex concepts via tutorials, hosting various programming contests as a judge.

Connect with me on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalitkundu/>

Lalit Kundu

Most engineers strive to become a **Tech Lead** (TL) without a clear understanding of the job.

There’s no job role/designation called “tech lead” at most tech companies. Most engineers get thrown into tech lead roles naturally, without ever being told what exactly the role is and how to grow as one. Most advice on the internet on how to be a TL is: do your job well, take responsibility, help others, or something even more vague like “be a leader”.

In this course, Lalit, a seasoned engineer, breaks down his experience playing the TL role in various capacities across the company, from a team of 3 up to a team of 45.

Lalit goes beyond truisms to share tactical advice for success as a Tech Lead. He talks about topics such as interfacing with management, upleveling team productivity, and dealing with poor performers.

The course is broken down into 4 modules:

- 🧐 What is a TL?
- 🎨 TL role: why and archetypes
- ✊🏽 TL duties
- 🐐 Great TL patterns (and tricky situations)

Tech Lead Blueprint: Role, Skills, and Strategies

The TL Role

Technical Duties

Team Unity + Growth

Tricky Situations

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. Across his entire storied career, he has been a champion of code quality and woven it into so many of his accomplishments:

## Course Hero

At Course Hero, Alex was hired as their first Android engineer and tech lead. From there, he grew the team from 1 to 4 engineers and led the [Course Hero Android app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coursehero.coursehero) to having the highest NPS by far of any Course Hero surface (web, iOS, and Android) with the most 5 star ratings.

## Meta

At Meta, Alex was a Top 5% code committer and Top 1% reviewer, always getting **Exceeds Expectations** or higher on the *Engineering Excellence* performance review axis every half:

- With *270+ diffs landed per half*, Alex landed more than double the average Meta engineer. This is largely because his code quality was extremely high, leading to his diffs getting approved and landed on the 1st try 95%+ of the time. Alex was one of very few engineers within his 100+ person org to have an average time-to-close of less than 1 day.
- With *720+ diffs reviewed per half*, Alex reviewed more than three times as much code as the average Meta engineer. This is because his expertise in code quality let him spot messy code patterns extremely quickly, uplifting his entire team (and multiple sister teams) to ship much better code.

## Side Projects

Outside of work, Alex has built several side projects at scale and with a stunning degree of quality:

- [Random Name Picker](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomappsinc.studentpicker): 1,000,000+ users with a 4.7 star out of 5 average rating after 5,600+ reviews
- [Random Number Generator Plus](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomappsinc.randomnumbergeneratorplus): 680,000+ users with a 4.8 star out of 5 average rating after 6,500+ reviews
- [SQL Practice PRO - Learn DBs](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=randomappsinc.com.sqlpracticeplus): 550,000+ users with a 4.9 star out of 5 average rating after 9,300+ reviews

With the infinite amount of tutorials and infrastructure services out there nowadays, writing code really isn't hard - Just getting things to work is much easier than ever before. This means that if you want to stand out as a software engineer, *you need to write much **better** code than almost everybody else.*

Every engineer needs high code quality, especially at Big Tech companies like FAANG where even the slightest mistake can hurt hundreds of thousands of users and cost millions of $$. After going through this course, you will:

- 🔎 Understand what good code looks like (and doesn’t look like)
- 🌱 Set up the right growth mentality around code quality
- 💻 Learn how to submit a quality pull request
- 🍝 Avoid common messy code patterns

Now you might be looking at this and thinking, *"I need to move fast, I don't have time to write the perfect code"*. This is a very understandable misconception many engineers have before getting to the highest-levels, but it couldn't be further from the truth: *When you write better code, you will actually move **faster** as a software engineer*. Don't believe us? - Take the course and find out why!

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer

Having The Proper Mentality

Better Code Strategies

Pull Requests

Common Messy Code Patterns

[Jordan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/) is a Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest and the Author of the [High Growth Engineer Newsletter](https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/), with over 150k+ followers across platforms.

He's worked at 5 companies of varying scale, learning the ins-and-outs of each culture and being the perfect fit to help you grow no matter which company you're at. He started his career at Gusto, where he went from Junior to Senior Engineer in just 2 years. Now, he works at Pinterest supporting Web Engineers across the company by scaling its Web Platform.

Jordan used to play video games professionally, is a proud cat dad (3x), and loves binging on Netflix dating shows.

- Taro members who complete the course receive a discount on Jordan's newsletter (see the [last video](https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-the-go-to-expert-as-a-software-engineer/more-resources/) in the course).
- Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/>

Jordan Cutler

Becoming a **go-to person** gets you promoted.

In this course, you'll learn what a go-to person is, why becoming a go-to person is one of the most impactful things you can do for your career, and how to become one. Jordan's experience in becoming a go-to person led to his back-to-back promotions from Junior to Senior Engineer in 2 years.

- You could be the "database expert," "Python expert," "caching expert," "frontend expert," "Typescript expert", etc.
- You can also be an expert in specific product domains, like the "onboarding flow expert," "payment portal expert," "home timeline expert," etc.

When people come to **you** for advice or feedback, you become a leader. Leadership is the prerequisite for a career to Senior and beyond.

What this course covers: 

- 📈 Why being an expert will help you get to the senior level

- 🔎 How to find the best thing for you to become an expert in

- 💻 How to become an expert in that area

Strap in for stories, visuals, examples, and exercises to figure out what you should become a go-to person for and exactly how to do it.

Become The Go-To Expert As A Software Engineer

Where To Build Expertise

How To Become An Expert

Summary

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood, where he was a high-performing tech lead making $750,000/year working \~30 hour weeks.

## FAANG Rockstar

Alex spent the biggest chunk of his career at Meta (\~4 years), a company that's notorious for [ruthlessly cutting low-performers](https://www.jointaro.com/question/lScy3l2NPIrWvRuHOjcF/how-does-stack-ranking-work-at-faang-and-how-can-i-be-proactive-at-a-base-level/) and demanding the world from their engineers ([literally forcing them to go from junior -&gt; senior within 5 years](https://www.jointaro.com/question/X3ccTVVCpuS1T76HI5fX/how-does-up-or-out-work-and-whats-the-transition-generally-like-for-e3-greater-e4-greater-e5/)).

Despite this, Alex got an "Exceeds Expectations" rating or higher in every single one of his performance reviews? How did he do it? Simple: *By getting far more done than most other Meta engineers*. During his later years at Meta, Alex got the following done every half (6 months):

- Landed \~270 commits (Top 5% code committer)
- Reviewed \~720 commits (Top 1% code reviewer)
- Got 100+ public thanks
- Mentored \~5 engineers to promotions (more than several engineering managers)

Alex was able to do this despite averaging \~40 hour weeks at Meta, rarely working weekends and late nights.

## Work-Life Balance Champion

Alex has always believed that the healthiness of your personal life and career are deeply interconnected, striving to live that reality by hyper-efficiently spending his time. From Meta to Robinhood and now Taro, Alex has:

- Spent time with his parents every week
- Found time to regularly hang out with his friends
- Done all the cooking for himself and his wife
- Done a bunch of other chores around the house
- Gotten consistent sleep and exercise
- Made time for his hobbies (any other Genshin Impact and Magic: The Gathering players out there?)

It may seem impossible, but you can indeed have it all, even if your goal is to be a high-performing engineer at a top tech company. You simply need to be smart with your time, and Alex is living proof of that.

Software engineers aren't paid an insane amount of money out of the goodness of tech corporations' hearts: It's because they need to consistently deliver while under the weight of sky-high expectations.

Now here's the problem: It is extremely easy to be unproductive as an engineer, *even if you're working incredibly hard*. There are so many software engineers out there who are working 80+ hour weeks but barely meeting expectations.

If you're frustrated with how little you're getting from your time, let's fix that and turn you into a rockstar who also has respectable work-life balance. After going through this course, you will:

- 💯 Know the **true** most important productivity booster

- 💡 Champion the right **mentality** to foster productivity

- 🏃‍♂️ Use the right tactics to **move faster**

- 🛡️ Have shields to prevent you from **wasting time**

- 🤔 Learn how to **debug** a lack of productivity

At the end of the day, time is the only resource that matters. With every minute of your day, you have an effectively infinite amount of ways to spend it, most of them inefficient. In a nutshell, this course will empower you to make the right decision with every unit of your time so you can get more done with less of it.

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer

Move Faster

Stop Being Lazy

Jocelin is a distinguished technology leader renowned for her profound commitment to product development, engineering, and leadership. As the co-founder and CTO of [Cooby](https://www.cooby.co/), a startup supported by Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) and Pear VC, she played a pivotal role in building both the product and engineering teams from the ground up, cultivating a culture centered on innovation and growth. Cooby's primary mission is to improve communication for sales teams using WhatsApp, which in turn enhances client relationships and business outcomes.

Prior to her entrepreneurial venture, Jocelin honed her technical skills at Facebook and Instagram. At Facebook, she made significant contributions as a Senior Backend/iOS Engineer, particularly on the Facebook Composer product. She later progressed to a Tech Lead role at Instagram, where she led the development of Instagram Story Ads and was also the tech lead of [Taro cofounder Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/)!

Jocelin's interests extend beyond traditional technology boundaries, with a particular fascination for generative AI and its potential to revolutionize various industries. She is passionately committed to developing cutting-edge technological products, leading technical teams, and creating solutions that profoundly impact people's lives.

Jocelin holds a Master's degree from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science from National Taiwan University, qualifications that underscore her extensive expertise and leadership in the tech industry.

Connect with Jocelin on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelinho/>

Jocelin Ho

Being a good tech lead is incredibly hard. While many tech leads don't do much more than ask *"Is it done yet?"* every week, good tech leads must add value to the engineers they're leading while getting an immense amount of work done themselves.

If you have earned the trust of your team and achieved the role of tech lead, you must take that responsibility *incredibly* seriously and strive to be a good tech lead. Because if you don't, people struggle.

This is what this course is here to help you with. After going through it, you will know:

- 💡  The **full definition** of an effective tech lead

- 💻  What **technological** skills tech leads must possess

- 🙌  How tech leads demonstrate true **leadership**

- ✅  **Practical tips** to start acting as a tech lead

As a tech lead, you don't have the formal authority that a manager does. Despite this, you need to exercise an equivalent amount of influence (often times more) on engineering decisions. In a nutshell, this course will empower you to be a true leader despite not being a boss.

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead

Mastering The Technology

Effective Leadership

Over the last decade, I grew from an Individual Contributor Software Engineer to a Senior Director running multiple engineering teams at a Fortune 1 Company. \
\
My teams and I built Tech for a business unit with over $35 Billion in annual revenue. \
\
Before this, I was an early employee at a Startup, and I built eCommerce, personalization, and growth marketing tech that helped us go from 0 revenue to over a billion in sales in 1 year. Then that startup (Jet.com) got acquired for $3.3 Billion.

**This is the 1:1 with your Engineering Manager you should've had**. I'm condensing decades of experience into 1.5 hours of wisdom to help you navigate your career.\
\
My career was going great, but then I decided to quit. I walked away from a big guaranteed salary in Big Tech. I'm an engineer turned entrepreneur focused on building a portfolio of [small bets](https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro).

Connect with Louie:

- SmallBets community: <https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro>
- Newsletter: <https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/>

Louie Bacaj

Before I quit my high-paying job to work for myself, I was the **youngest Senior Director in Walmart Engineering**. I earned the most promotions in the shortest time and climbed 6 levels in 4 years. **In this course, I've packaged everything I learned so you can quickly advance your engineering career.**

In this course, I'll tell you the things your manager wants to tell you, but can't. Either because it would make things awkward, or it would get them in trouble. These are things that I had to learn the hard way. This is the advice I wish I would have had years ago, that you will get now.

In this course, I am taking a whole year of One on Ones I would have with one of my reports and compressing them into an hour and a half for you. Plus I am adding a whole bunch of detail people aren't usually fully aware of about One on Ones.

After going through this course, you will:

- 👍🏽 Discuss various career options: startups vs Big Tech and IC vs manager.
- 📣 Demystify what good software engineers *actually* do
- 😳 Determine the critical soft skills you need to succeed as an engineer
- 🔟 Figure out how 10x engineers operate
- 📈 Learn the simple formula for promotion and how it relates to time and scope
- 🗣 Know what to do in 1:1s and performance reviews

BONUS documents (course cheatsheet, Louie's income progression, promotion guide cheatsheet) are included in the description of the last video!

Timeless Career Advice for Software Engineers

What Is The Software Engineer Job?

Overlooked Skills

Earn Your Promotion 

Performance Management

Rahul Pandey is a seasoned engineering leader and entrepreneur with a proven track record of excelling in every environment — from fast-paced startups to top-tier tech giants. He started off his career by interning at four different companies including Walmart and Meta, gaining a deep appreciation for thriving under different pressures and constraints.

After his internships, Rahul went on to have a deep array of impressive work experience. Before Taro, he was most recently a Staff Engineer and Engineering Manager at Meta. He also led impactful initiatives at Pinterest and cut his teeth at Kosei, a nimble startup which was later acquired by Pinterest. Across his career, Rahul has worn many hats: writing production code, scaling teams, defining engineering strategy, and shipping products used by millions. 

Beyond his professional roles, Rahul is a prolific content creator, sharing insights on software engineering and career growth with thousands of subscribers on YouTube. His unique advantage? Rahul has consistently built systems to stay productive and focused — not just in high-stakes corporate environments, but also while growing side projects and fostering a healthy work-life balance.

Struggling to stay focused despite your best intentions? Always feeling like you’re busy but not truly making progress on what matters? If you’re a builder or creator who’s tired of spinning your wheels, this course is designed for you. This isn’t about shallow hacks or fleeting motivation. It’s about designing a way of life that helps you consistently make meaningful progress on your most important goals.

Inside the course, you’ll learn how to move beyond willpower and instead build durable systems that keep you on track, even on tough days. Whether you’re struggling with prioritization, getting stuck in distractions, or managing your energy across the week, you’ll walk away with practical strategies that actually work. Here are some of the core topics covered:

- 🔁 How to kickstart momentum every day by reversing the typical motivation loop (“action leads to motivation”)
- 🛠️ Building a personal system that makes the right actions easy and the wrong actions hard
- 🎯 Identifying the right work to focus on for maximum impact, not just working efficiently
- 🤝 Using social accountability and written artifacts to stay organized and avoid mental clutter
- 📅 Structuring your calendar and decomposing tasks to eliminate ambiguity and sustain flow

20 Years Of Fighting Procrastination In 1 Hour

Mindset

Get Unstuck

Organize Your Day

Optimizing Workflow

Final Words

Finding a job as a software engineer sucks. From "gotcha" data structures and algorithms (DSA) problems to recruiters ghosting you, the tech interview grind is often miserable. This learning path walks you through the many ins and outs of the tech interview grind from polishing your resume to cracking FAANG interviews to negotiating your offer.

Land Your Dream Job In Tech

Establishing Mindset

Getting Interviews

Passing Interviews

Sealing The Deal

The Staff Engineer promotion can feel impossible: it requires a level of initiative and ownership that engineers rarely demonstrate. However, the reward is immense: Staff Engineers are clear leaders in their org, often commanding $500K+ in total compensation (TC). This learning path teaches you how to break past senior to this incredibly coveted level.

Nail Your Promotion: Senior To Staff (L5 -> L6)

Expanding Your Influence

"Senior Software Engineer" is a title with a beautiful ring to it, and it's one that every software engineer aspires to. Top-notch senior engineers are incredibly coveted by tech companies, especially Big Tech, as there's simply not enough of them. Here’s all you need to know to make this critical career level up.

Nail Your Promotion: Mid-Level To Senior (L4 -> L5)

Technical Foundation

Leadership

Congratulations on breaking into tech and becoming a junior engineer! Now how do we make it so people stop calling you "junior" as soon as possible? 😅. Use the resources here to grow from junior to mid-level fast.

Nail Your Promotion: Junior To Mid-Level (L3 -> L4)

Foundational Skills

Expanding Your Value

Not targeting a specific career goal like a promotion or fancy new job? No worries, we’ve got you covered. These courses cover the timeless skills every engineer needs to succeed, regardless of what company they work for, which tech stack they specialize in, and how many years of experience they have.

Become A Better Engineer

Fundamental Skills

Learning Fast

Empowering Yourself

Data structures and algorithms, otherwise known as "DSA". Dread it, run from it, LeetCode still arrives, especially if you're trying to get into FAANG. These problems are notoriously frustrating as they're both hard to understand and not relevant at all to what software engineers actually do on the job (including at Big Tech). They’re a necessary evil that we must deal with, and this course is here to help.