[**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 lightning fast growth was reflected in his compensation as well: He went from making $85,000 at PayPal in 2014 to $750,000 at Robinhood in 2021 as a high-performing tech lead, increasing his pay by \~800% in just 7 years.

## Bringing People Together

The main reason behind Alex's success is that he's always been incredibly effective at asking quality questions, getting deep support, and earning trust. He got a verbal offer from the VP of Engineering at Course Hero just 1 hour after [he crushed the behavioral interview](https://www.jointaro.com/course/master-the-behavioral-interview-as-a-software-engineer/). He [hasn't needed to apply to a job in 7+ years](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/referrals/). He was always asking for questions and favors at Meta and came out as a top performer, getting an "Exceeds Expectations" rating or higher every half.

## Expert Mentor

Alex grew 5 new-grads \[E3\] at Meta to high-performing senior engineers \[E5\] in just 3 years, catapulting their compensation from \~$200,000 all the way to \~$500,000. A core reason he was able to do this was because *he taught all of these mentees how to ask questions effectively*.

Alex has also been on the other side of the table countless times, answering 10,000+ engineering questions across his career with [\~2,000 of those living on the Taro platform](https://www.jointaro.com/p/alex-chiou/). This has given him the razor sharp perspective necessary to teaching engineers how to ask great questions that get great answers quickly from people like him.

Alex Chiou

In order to succeed as a software engineer, you need to absorb a lot of information quickly. After you absorb that information, you need to continue absorbing even more of it for the rest of your career as the tech industry is constantly changing and what's best practice today can easily be obsolete just 5 years later.

In order to become an information super-sponge, you simply have to ask questions and request a lot of support from the people around you - There's no way around that. However, a lot of engineers are scared that asking questions will make them look dumb, and guess what? *They are right.*

However, they're not entirely right. It's true that if you ask a low-quality question, that can damage your trust and reputation among the team. However, it's also true that if you ask questions properly, that loss will never happen. If you're scared of asking questions, let's fix that. Let's not only make it so that your questions don't make you look worse, they actually make you look *better* as an engineer. After going through this course, you will:

- 🧠 Have the right **mentality** behind asking questions

- 💡 Turn questions into a **strength**, not a weakness

- ✨ Understand the difference between a **high-quality** question and a **low-quality** question

- ⚙️ Ask stellar **technical** questions

- 🙏 Ask for **favors** effectively

Software engineering is incredibly hard - You simply can't flourish in the tech industry if you don't get help. With the tips from this course, you'll never need to be afraid getting it.