Thanks Alex for your thoughts. Impostor syndrome is a reality and it’s true that it’s easy to imagine problems that aren’t real. Keeping your focus on what you control, what is important and to communicate effectively with your manager is key.

Google

Senior Software Engineer [L5]

No matter what, there will always be bugs. As a software engineer, it's crucial for you to master this often underrated skill.

[Taro Top 10] Debugging

Promotion is incredibly important and acts as the foundation for your career at top engineering levels. This course will cover how you can master the promotion process by leveraging the tactics Alex taught to grow his mentees to high-performing TLs with $500k+ TC by their mid-20s.

[Course] Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer

Layoffs And PIPs

Finance

With the meteoric rise of ChatGPT, ML and AI are on software engineers' minds more than even before. How can we leverage AI to boost our workflow? Is it worth it pivoting to MLE? Use the resources here to find out.

[Taro Top 10] Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As a software engineer, you are more than just your code. As the person bringing the product to life, you are uniquely positioned to have a strong influence on its direction. In fact, it's extremely important for very senior engineers to get to know their PM and develop strong product intuition.

[Taro Top 10] Product Management For Engineers

Senior to staff (L5 -> L6 by FAANG leveling) is where 95%+ of engineers hit a growth wall. While junior to senior is fairly foundational, this all changes at staff where you need make big mindset changes to maximize impact.

[Taro Top 10] Senior Engineer To Staff Engineer (L5 To L6)

Communication is both simultaneously the most important and most underrated skill among software engineers. Understanding people (and getting them to understand you) is far more impactful towards your career growth than understanding code.

[Taro Top 10] Communicating Effectively As An Engineer

Book Club

The software engineer interview grind is almost always far harder than people realize, and the existing resources to help don't do nearly enough, focusing far too much on DSA and LeetCode. This course solves that by going into the far more important "meta" parts of a job search like the overall structure and mentality.