Senior Salesforce Engineer at Series B Startup

My goal is to become extremely efficient at coding. I want to build a reputation as someone who is able to deliver tons of high-quality implementation and products very quickly. I want to build actual velocity where the actual rate of code per hour/day is really high as opposed to just being able to accomplish more from working extra hours.

What tactics can I use to level myself up in this way so that my old coding abilities feel unrecognizable when looking back 3-6 months in the future from my vast amount of improvement?

Alex and Rahul and the other senior people on Taro have consistently emphasized how important good software engineering fundamentals are to long-term career success as a software engineer. This is in contrast to learning the latest popular framework or area of development. Can people define what those fundamentals are and how one should go about acquiring/improving them? 

Thanks!

What are software engineering fundamentals?

Senior Software Engineer at Series E Startup

I work in as an iOS engineer. My current company is a startup that's scaling up fast. In classic startup fashion, testing was historically not a top priority here. As a consequence, we struggle with lots of manual QAing and low code confidence when modifying pieces of poorly tested legacy code.\
\
This has improved in the past year simply by unit testing every new piece of code by default and by introducing unit tests in legacy code as we touch it, boy scouting style.\
\
At this point, I think we need to step it up and I'm looking forward to formalising a testing strategy for our mobile team.\
\
Here are some ideas I have:

- In the realm of **unit tests:**
  - I want to introduce **API contract tests** because our back-end API lacks documentation. In these tests we'd unit test the way we build our requests to API endpoints, and we'd have a sample JSON response from the server to test that the app can parse it into our data models as expected.
  - I want to introduce **localisation tests** because our app supports many languages but we are always manually testing localisation. In these tests, we'd assert that the outputs of our formatting logic are the ones we want for different locales.
- In the realm of **user interface tests**:
  - I want to introduce **snapshot testing**, because right now the only way we can test that our views are rendered as expected for different view configurations (for example RTL vs LTR, empty content, loading content, content in verbose languages, etc.) is manually.
  - I want to introduce **UI tests** (sparingly, only for key flows) because we have no e2e tests. Currently, key flows are tested manually and frequently to prevent regressions, which takes lots of time.

What other testing strategies can I propose to establish some standard we can use to further improve our code confidence, reduce bugs, and rely more on automated testing?

How do the top tier tech companies approach mobile testing?

What do mobile testing strategies look like at top tech companies?

I recently started at my new gig as a remote tech lead. While I am on the West Coast, most of my team is either on the East Coast or in Europe (+11 hrs). Meetings start at around 7 AM PT and go on until 11:30 AM PT!

Here is my challenge: I am a morning person & like to do more deep & undistracted work during the morning hours (Coding / Reading / Writing) . Screen time in the mornings usually drain me out & my productivity dips post multiple zoom / G-meet calls. What are your thoughts on how could I balance my sacred morning hour time between meetings & impactful work?

Thanks!

How do I optimize my sacred hour at work?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon

Say a recruiter from Series C reaches out to you for a SWE role. 

What all are the questions that one should ask in order to do the understand the potential of the startup so that there is less risk of layoffs when joining there, given the uncertain times. 

I am aware of crunchbase website and looking at the news article that are linked there. What other homework one should during/before/after the interview process in terms of questions to ask, information to collect?

The limitation that is usually is the startups have very few employees so it is difficult to get concrete answers about the culture, WLB, actual work unless you are in their network.

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series B Startup

What can I do to get on the radar of senior engineers within the company and build respect for me overall? My company is also relatively small, so I'm fairly close with the CTO as well.

What can I do to quickly build my reputation as a junior engineer?

Growing To Meta Tech Lead And Then Entrepreneurship - By Jocelin Ho

If you use WhatsApp web, level up your experience with the Cooby (the company Jocelin is cofounder and CTO of) plug-in: [Cooby: Best WhatsApp Extension for Work](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cooby-best-whatsapp-exten/hcikfoejbgdmajlbhadhfchoekcoablm)

To level up your software engineering knowledge, follow Jocelin on LinkedIn: [Jocelin Ho - LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelinho/)

Jocelin's presentation is **filled** with gems (including a fun video by Mark Zuckerberg), so we're just going to share her core learnings here:
1. **You need to be versatile to survive** - One of the biggest misconceptions about software engineering is that it's mostly about writing code: This couldn't be further from the truth. In order to be a genuinely stellar engineer, you need to have a vast array of skills on top of coding like communication, the ability to smoothly process feedback, multi-tasking, and much more. Jocelin excelled at developing these skills, which is why she was able to get promoted from E3 -> E4 at Meta (junior -> mid-level) in just 6 months, faster than 95% of FAANG engineers.
2. **Don't get emotionally attached to what you built** - Tech is always fast-moving and chaotic, and this is accentuated when you work at a top company like Meta. Organizational priorities change all the time, and this can mean that your hard work gets thrown out. Don't take it personally and continue striving to deliver impact and grow.
3. **Don't be afraid to take the leap** - You will literally never be ready for that big career or life change, whether it's taking your first FAANG interview, switching to management, or starting your own company. Once you have conviction in knowing what you want to do, make that jump and focus on growing and adapting as fast as possible. It's not about where you are now but rather where you can go in the future.
4. **Live up to your own expectations instead of others'** - While we should always try to add value to other people's lives and help one another, this doesn't mean we should derive our happiness from what they believe we should be. You own your own happiness - Set goals that are both feasible and exciting for you and ignore all the noise. This is especially relevant in tech where there's so many brilliant people, and it's tempting to compare yourself to others.

Related resources:
- ["What's the core insight behind quick growth?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nJ762p255cGyuth36H6w/whats-the-core-insight-behind-quick-growth/)
- [[Taro Top 10] Junior Engineer To Mid-Level Engineer (L3 To L4)](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/iBKHYpkjd0BRWWLKQG2j/)
- [Presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BkaaiKQXXx6eUi5heaNiNmPgBriK9rr5UdTfHfd2K5k/edit?usp=sharing)

Question was inspired by [Alex's masterclass on side projects](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/jly45Gx6qR1kqQwBmJEy/case-study-building-an-app-with-1000000-users-to-get-into-facebook/). In it, he talked about how he was able to get his role at Course Hero because it was a scrappy startup when he joined, and was willing to take bets.

Do you have advice on how to find similar startups? And also connect with startup founders (and not get ghosted)?

Some consequent questions:

1. How do you know if a startup is scrappy or if it is shady/dysfunctional?
2. Are there any resources on Taro to connect with founders?

Thanks for any advice or help!

How to find and connect with scrappy startups?

I'm a self-taught, aspiring Android engineer, looking to land my 1st full-time role. I have around 4 hours a day to learn software development, and I'm wondering how I can spend my time the most efficiently. Here are the 2 core things I want to understand how to balance my time between:
- DSA (data structures and algorithms)
- Building projects for portfolio

How do I balance my time between studying DSA and fleshing out my portfolio?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series C Startup

Fear/stomach-turning when I think about asking people for help (especially in public channels) has been a major blocker for me as a junior engineer.

How do you overcome the fear of asking stupid questions / bothering people when you need help?

**I've done a lot of research on how to be a good manager, but now do I just "trust the process" or how do I ensure we are a high performance team over the next half?** 

I'm a newish EM at a Series-B start up of 150 people, \~25 engineers. So far I have positive feedback from my manager and reports that I am empathetic and supportive. What my manager is telling me now though is that we need to see results. Productivity and performance seem OK in my first months but it is too soon to really see my impact. My manager noted that since we have scaled up from 4 engineers to 25 and gone mostly remote over 3 years there may be a loss of a sense of urgency and the feeling of impact per dev. We are also split into many teams with a smaller scope per team.

The temptation when asked to "get results" might be to ask for constant updates from developers and punish them when fake hard deadlines are given and missed (we are a B2C company so there are rarely actual deadlines). So how do I motivate my team to work hard in a healthy sustainable way? How do I measure the progress and reward them fairly while creating a team focused culture and not one that is competitive and individualist? 

Below are some of the management ideas I'm using/working towards. I have lots of room to learn how to do each better, so advice on which to prioritize my effort at improving first would be great in addition to notes on what's missing and what seems off on the list:

**Individual attention**

- Working with each individual to set SMART goals for the next half
- Working with each individual to figure out what motivates them, and do that
- Figuring out what learning each person wants to do and giving them support there
- Regular, timely feedback (positive and negative)
- 1:1s where I do a lot of listening, help remove blocker
- Shielding from outside distraction and unhelpful pressures

**Team culture**

- Creating a lowercase-a agile mindset: people are first and it is ok to fail and we learn from our mistakes. We can fail gracefully by making small, quick launches where we get frequent feedback from the users, and feedback from coworkers on how we are succeeding/failing
- Making the team effective first, efficient second: 5 wrong things done in a quarter are worse than 2 right things that move the needle
- Setting team OKRs for the next half that the team wants to accomplish
- Encouraging team work on tasks, pair programming, positive code review culture, etc
- Improving the process to make it effective and fun around how the flow of work happens between planning, selecting tasks, marking things as done and tested
- Team demos with stakeholders to show off results and get feedback

Bonus questions about motivation: In 1:1s how do you figure out what motivates someone since they might not say extrinsic things like money even if that is what they are working for, or the opposite they might be happy at their level and just like the work they do with a good work life balance but might not say that directly either. Also if there is a team of 5 where 2 want money and 3 love the work for itself, how do you tailor their experience to that? The first two will still want fun/interesting work and the second three still want to get promoted and compensated fairly.

Thanks!

How to manage a team towards high performance?

Senior Software Engineer at Taro Community

I have around 15 years experience with background mainly in Java, Restful, Springboot etc. I was impacted by layoffs and I am on a H1B. Hence I have limited time before which I should choose a job. I do not have extensive time for preparing LeetCode in this short time span. I would like to know if there are mid-level companies (not startups, not big tech) that do non-leetcode style interviews. Like, a take home assignment, or some other demo kind of interviews.

Which good companies in the Bay Area don't do LeetCode style interviews for SWE positions?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series C Startup

Came across [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/x6k3wk/comment/in7nt1s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on CSCQ where the original poster asks about what these missing essential skills. One reply had me wondering, how I can actually learn these points:

- How to write things in a way that other people really understand what you're saying.
- How to structure code so that you can come back to it in 2 years and understand it.
- How to show off the work you've done.
- How much testing is the right amount, and not too much or too little.

How do I learn these essential skills that are not taught in school?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series A Startup

> Hey John, I hope you are well. I am really passionate about CS (specifically Software Engineering) and I want to pursue a career in it. But I can't help but be a bit concerned about the future availability of coding jobs due to Al (chatgpt4 and stuff). I understand it's hard to predict how things will be in the next 10-15yrs, but my main concern is that I may be putting in all this hard work for nothing. I'm concerned Al will make my future job(s) obsolete before I even get it. Any thoughts on this?
>
> \
> If you build full "product skills" and use the best tools for the job, which today might be hand coding, but later may be Al guiding, you will probably be fine.\
> \
> I see....by "product skills" do you mean hard and soft skills?\
> \
> Software is just a tool to help accomplish something for people many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools.

Source: <https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1637087219591659520>

Saw the above discussion on twitter and it got me thinking with advent of ChatGpt4 and Github Copilot X, what can I do to not get negatively affected by this change.

What are the various skills referred to as "**product skills**" mentioned in the above discussion and how should we go about developing them?

What are product skills and how to develop them in the age of ChatGpt and CopilotX?

I have been repeatedly told that I have a tendency to drop things when doing context switch between multiple tasks. How to manage my tasks effectively so that I can minimize this pattern?

I am doing backend engineering for last 5 years in small sized startups. I am doing relatively decent with good work/learning and good salary.

I am confused about future - since I have done bachelor’s only and that too from very very average tier 3 college in India so, do i need to go for masters from a reputed college to make my resume better for future. Is it even required to do masters or education from reputed college to grow in career or I am over thinking? Right now I don’t face any problem when I change companies but what about 10/15 years down the line. I am confused sometimes that do only skill matters or i need pedigree also to grow.

1. I have decent skills but I don’t have a good college name in my resume what to do from here to grow: go for masters or focus on job and skills?
2. If masters then: my another concern is do college degree in master really matters now as i will stop earning so, is it worth it or its just a FOMO?

Do I need to do masters in Computer Science to move ahead in career?

Software Test Engineer at Series B Startup

My goal is to transition into a SWE role, but something I've struggled with is making the building of software projects more digestible. A lot of the time I'll look at some project I have to build, and I just don't know where to start or how to figure out what to do. Any tips on how to make this process less scary?

How do I make software less overwhelming?

I wanted to ask how do startup interviews generally work and in what ways do they differ from interviews at Big Tech companies?

I've gotten feedback that I'm more on the quiet side and that I could be more active in meetings. However, I feel like I don't have much to add when it comes to meetings. I want to say something that's insightful and adds value to the conversation, but I'm unsure how to come up with that level of material, especially on-the-spot during the meeting. How do I figure out what to say?

I struggle to come up with things that add value to a meeting - What do I say?

I'm moving forward to team matching at Meta for E4 and wanted to ask the community if they had any suggestions for teams with the strongest potential for growth, especially for the New York office.

The recruiter gave me the following survey. I stated I'd be more of a "Product - Generalist" role. Would also be curious to learn more about "Systems - Generalist" as I did the System Design interview as well. \
\
In general from what I've seen, there's a decent amount of opportunity in Instagram, Whatsapp, and Reality Labs (from product announcements and earnings calls). I've also been told to avoid monetization as it's difficult to make an impact there.\
\
Would appreciate any advice or suggestions! Also would appreciate tips on what questions to ask Hiring Managers to assess how they grow E4s.

**What is your role? (select the one that applies)**

- Systems - Generalist
- Product - Generalist

**What type of work motivates you the most? (select all that apply)**

- **Infra**: Scaling challenges
- **UX**: Building user experiences
- **Growth**: Top of line impact
- **Integrity**: Ensuring platform safety
- **Social Impact**: Progressing positive change on key social issues

**Who do you want to build products for? (select all that apply)**

- **Consumers:** External, individual users of the Meta family of apps
- **Businesses:** External business account users of Meta family of products
- **Meta Employees:** Users of internal tools
- **Developers:** Internal and external engineers using Meta developer products and APIs

**Please select which Meta Pillar(s) you’d be interested in joining? (select all that apply)**

- **Family of Apps:** Enable optimized enforcement and support of account integrity to foster safe and meaningful communities.
- **Monetization:** Empower people and businesses to succeed in the global economy
- **Gen AI:** bring the transformative potential of generative AI to people and businesses
- **Reality Labs:** build tools that help people feel connected anytime, anywhere

**How would you rank your preference in terms of products?** **(feel free to use numbers)**

- Facebook App
- Monetization
- Privacy
- Messenger
- Instagram
- WhatsApp
- Reality Labs (AR/VR)

Meta / Facebook Team Matching - How to find the best team? (E4)

I have about 5 YOE and trying to grow from Senior -&gt; Staff engineer but noticing that the path is taking longer than I'd hope.

This is the case whether I try to speak to other companies and ask about interviewing at that level or try to grow within my own company.

**Within my own company:** Requirements unclear, seems to be more time based (just keep on shipping). Since we're on the smaller side, we don't have a clearly defined structure like FAANG.

**Externally:** Due to the YOE, usually discussion of Staff isn't even an option even though I think I'm doing Staff level work. In fact, they usually decline the idea before even having a chance to explain what I'm working on.

The projects I'm working on span the entire org (startup), I have multiple mentees, and org-wide impact. I will be honest and say that I don't think the projects I work on are necessarily insanely technically complex (not going out to millions of users, dealing with hyper concurrency issues, or needing to deal with large scalability issues), but they do have a large amount of scope and senior+ level management required to run them.

I think from the project management perspective, I have things nailed down pretty well.

So I wonder if I'm either missing...

- YOE - Just some sort of arbitrary minimum that is being placed across the board for certain levels to be achieved
- Technical expertise - I definitely admit that I'm not necessarily INSANELY technical. For example, I can admit gaps like: I don't know how to design a concurrent document editing system like Google docs, or I wouldn't be able to write a live streaming service without reading up on the proper documentation and understanding better how those systems work. **Are things like this a requirement to be a staff engineer? To just be more aware or know right away how various systems like this are designed, without needing to do research beforehand?**

I'm essentially trying to understand what my gaps might be, and the technical aspect is one I'm unsure about how relevant it is.

Would appreciate any thoughts, especially from Staff+ engineers, maybe sharing what they feel makes them a Staff vs a Senior and how much technical skills play a role vs other elements.

What makes a staff engineer from a technical perspective?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community

I've recently been approached by a startup founder and asked to complete a take-home quiz, which I did. It looks like the founder is leaning towards offering me the Head of Technology position. However, I have a few concerns and questions.

1. **How can I assess if the founder is someone good to work with?**

   From my initial conversations, I've noticed a few things about the founder:

   - They come across as overly confident, almost to the point of being condescending. Is this a common trait among founders, or should it be a red flag?
   - They strongly believe the product will be successful. I think this is a positive trait for a founder, but I'd like to get your opinions.
   - They think all backend jobs will be obsolete in two years due to AI. While speculation is fine, I believe there should be a balance with reasonableness.
   - They talk more about the history of AWS, the life of Elon Musk, and famous quotes rather than focusing on their own product.
   - They tend to underestimate the complexity of engineering feats. For example, they think developing services like DynamoDB and S3 was easy for Amazon because of their large workforce, which I find undermines the actual engineering challenges.

2. **How can I determine if the startup is likely to succeed?**

   - What aspects should I be looking at?
   - What questions should I be asking the founder or team?

Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Senior Software Engineer at Seed Stage Startup

I'm pretty new to my company, so I've been asking questions and looking for "hand-holding" to bring myself up to speed. I've been having trouble ramping up though - My velocity hasn't been the best, and I've also gotten feedback that I need to be more independent as a senior engineer.

This leaves me a bit confused - I know that in order to onboard, you need to seek out help aggressively and ask questions, but this seems opposite of the feedback around being more independent. How do I think about these 2 ideas? Should I just be working harder and spending more time figuring things out on my own?

How do I balance being more independent and asking questions?

I have worked at Meta my entire career (~5 years). I know that Meta is pretty "startup-ey" among the Big Tech companies, but I imagine that it can't mimic startups entirely and there's unique learning value startups can offer. Does switching to startups give big value to career development?

What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?

I might join a Big Tech company later on in my career, and I know that choosing the right company has huge financial consequences due to the large RSU compensation.

How can one set themselves up for success here and pick a company with a good financial outlook? What metrics should I look at and is there some sort of website to help with this?

How can you tell if a large public company is going in the right direction?

I'm in the processes of writing unit tests for a project that had none. At times I'll need help learning how to work with the mocking library Mockk. My manager has experience and when he has time and quickly unblock. The problem is he is usually at meetings and can only give me so much time. My team is small and from who I've asked only my manager has knowledge of this Library.

What can I do to not fall behind and continue to deliver tasks?  I've followed tutorials and articles and even chatgpt but sometimes those don't have the answers to my questions.

What should I do when no one is available to help?

I've been reached out to by a recruiter to interview for a fully remote Senior Dev position at a seed stage startup, with around 50 employees per LinkedIn.

Ive only ever worked for larger companies before, what sorts of questions should I make sure to ask during the interview process to make sure there's no hidden problems/wrong expectations? What expectations should I have going into the interview?

What sort of questions should I be asking during an interview for a startup?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [62] at Microsoft

I've been debating this though for a while. Is it worth it to go for a principal role 
(61 -> 62 -> 63 -> 64) or just go and build something your own

Career advancement or building a startup? Which one is harder?

I’m always impressed by software engineers with strong track record working at FAANG level for long term period (&gt;4 years) as working in these type of companies require dedicating yourself 100%+ to sustain and keep meeting the performance bar..

But I also felt that the “golden era” of working at FAANG have already passed. I think joining FAANG today will still give lots of learning but not as many growth compared to maybe 6-7 years ago when they are still growing very rapidly.

Do you have any tips for junior/mid engineers with 1-2 YOE who feels like their current role does not offer the golden era of FAANG level growth in terms of career opportunity? Feeling like this primarily due to team culture and engineering talent on my current role that is subpar compared to FAANG (I was previously an intern at FAANG and is now working at a startup).

Given the current market situation (layoffs, hiring freeze), getting into FAANG or the next FAANG would be quite challenging.

do you have any tips so that I can make sure I can give my best to whatever I have right now but still have FAANG level of career growth in non-FAANG company?

How to have FAANG level of career growth in startup?

Senior Quality Assurance Engineer at Unemployed

How do you assess the Financial Health and market stability of a startup before applying for a job there?

How do you assess company’s market position (especially startups)? 

My manager said to me in 1:1 that I take too much time to context switch from one task to the other. He said I can do a better job on my whole multi-tasking approach toward work.

Any tips on how to improve?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series E Startup

I transitioned into a backend engineering role 1 year ago after working as a data analyst for 3 years. The jump was definitely big to me, as I had to learn a lot of new concepts (OOP, clean code, architecture, devops etc). The transition was done through internal hiring where they did a live coding interview (2 easy leetcodes), a live system design interview, and motivational interview. I passed all of those and ended up in a high-paced team.

The team was severely understaffed. The manager was managing 3 teams that decreased from 20+ people to &lt;10 people and there was hiring freeze. There was no proper onboarding and all the seniors were too busy with tasks to help me properly. I did my best to read the documentations and set up 1-1s with more senior engineers from other teams that could help me. I finished several projects although carried over some to the next half.

My 1st performance review was "meet expectations". However, before my 2nd performance review, there was a manager change and this manager gave me "partially meet expectations" and then said that I would be put on PIP program. When I asked the manager what the program would be like and how many people completed this successfully, he/she couldn't give a definitive answer and said that HR would be in touch me.

I decided to quit and spend time to learn more fundamental concepts and take up a freelance project. It's been 2 months since then. Right now I feel like I'm learning a lot in these 2 months compared to my 1 year in that company, but I can't help but feeling very anxious with all these layoffs and the incoming tech winter. I don't have any self-confidence within myself that I would get any decent job, especially after getting an incoming a PIP, I'm just worried that when I'm interviewing at my next job, the career gap in my resume and the past potential PIP would deter me from getting any jobs. I'm also at loss on how to avoid potential PIPs in the future. Any advice to help me? Thank you very much.

Edit: For more context, I didn't come from a CS background (I studied Mathematics). My team was not a revenue generator. The company was especially hit really hard during covid and had 2 big layoffs. When I left, there are many products that are being shut down and a couple of senior-level product managers left as well without being replaced due to hiring freeze. During the talk of my PIP, the manager brought up his/her expectations on me that was 1 level (mid-level) above my current level (junior-level).

Software Engineer Apprentice at Series B Startup

I'm a React developer and for the most part am able to accomplish tickets assigned to me; however, what I struggle with is when I have a particular ticket that is heavily logic focused. 

For example, recently I had to implement a multi date picker for a booking engine and between the many different cases for user interactions and date comparisons, I feel it took me way longer than it should have. 

In order to optimize improvement in this area, would it be worth it to grind leet code style questions? or maybe codewars?

How to get better at problem solving as a Frontend Developer?

[Case Study] Hypercharging Your Growth At Early Startups (w/ Staff Engineer Seed Zeng)

[Click here for the presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZocNUZJL-feWAKoucVLUcaVxix2Xa1udEL4KpgQRBTo/edit?usp=sharing).

There are a *ton* of great points covered in this session, so we'll only share our Top 5:
- **Startups have massive scope** - In an early-stage startup, there is always an infinite supply of hard, technically deep problems. This allows you to have a lot of freedom choosing an opportunity that works well for you and build up a wide breadth of important skills. This is almost always *not* the case in Big Tech - [Check out this expert career advice on the difference between Big Tech and startups when it comes to learning](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9).
- **Don't say "I'm not qualified to work on this"** - The best software engineers are able to adapt to any situation their team faces and add value regardless of what framework or tech stack is needed. In order to do that, you must first flip this fearful mentality. [Here's our masterclass on how to learn quickly in tech](https://link.jointaro.com/S2h95sJvRU8Utjj6A).
- **Don't be afraid to make mistakes** - Recovering from a mistake is one of the most powerful ways to learn, and startups will generally have more tolerance for mistakes as stakes are lower compared to a more mature, massive public company where product issues can make the news. [Here's our advice on how to maximize your growth from mistakes](https://link.jointaro.com/THof1u97Z5t1ovCr9).
- **80% of the journey is just showing up** - Seek out important, complex situations and run towards them instead of away from them, especially with production issues. If you're earlier-in-career, you can learn a lot simply by being a participant in fixing these fires; from there, you can make yourself a core driver more and more. [Here's our advice on how you can be more independent debugging tricky technical problems](https://link.jointaro.com/xE8oMpCaDYjuMhCg7).
- **It's all about the people** - Your career growth is largely a product of the people you surround yourself with, and this is especially true in a startup where the team is small, bonds are deep, and everybody knows each other. [Here's our advice on how to network effectively within a company](https://link.jointaro.com/Hr1nr53D7sfQAEv3A).

To see (and hear) more from Seed:
- [Connect with him on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/seedzeng/)
- [Check out his podcast "Superposition"](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3N1cGVycG9zaXRpb25zaG93L2ZlZWQueG1s?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwjot6up4Zf7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en)

Related resources:
- [Session #6 - Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups](https://link.jointaro.com/2ZevbN54MPZPTocH8)
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9)

I've always had a fair share of projects, some of which are high priorities for the team and some of which are less so.  

How do I show my impact on the team/org when I'm assigned projects that are low on priority? 

Less-priority projects often receive less effort from Product, Design, and other functions. Things get delayed because of other higher-priority projects. Do you have any pointers on navigating such scenarios?

How to establish impact when assigned on non-priority projects? 

I’m currently working as a Data Engineer for a mid-sized (1500 people) investment-services corporation. The company has been around for a long time and makes money, but it definitely isn’t a tech-first company (e.g. it refers to the software side as “I.T.”, has tons of meetings, approvals needed to install almost anything on my computer, including VSCode).

I want to get into FAANG as a software engineer because I want to move away from the business/data side of things and closer to the engineer side of things. On my current team, I’m the lone data-engineer (will be joined by another in a few months) and as someone with <3 years of experience, I know that my growth is being stunted. 

I’m currently grinding AlgoExpert to prep for interviews.

How should I think about the circumstances under which it would be worthwhile to quit in order to prep (full time) for FAANG interviews?
Here’s what I can come up with in terms of current pros/cons of quitting:

Pro’s of quitting:

- A LOT more time to prep for interviews, can probably increase my output of questions by 3x
- Can do a lot more interviews without worrying about my job and scheduling
- Do less business/data stuff which I plan on moving away from anyways
- Get closer to a FAANG salary faster, which will likely be around 2x of my current salary

Cons:
- Don’t know how long it will take me to get a job
- Don’t know how easy it will be for me to get interviews without a job
- Psychological benefits of having a job
- Some learning on the job
- Low-stress job, nice manager, no overtime
- Already take an hour or two of my current job time to do AlgoExpert
- Make some money right now

How does the answer change (if at all) if I manage to land interviews with a bunch of different FAANG companies (say 5+) and I’m struggling to schedule all the time for interviews, prep for them, and do minimal work at my current job?

Thoughts are appreciated!

Junior Software Engineer at Series D Startup

I'm pretty early in my career (~1 YOE), so I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out. A lot of the advice on Taro is around finding your strengths and investing more in those, but I'm unsure on exactly how to do that. I feel like I'm just going from ticket to ticket and am quite busy in general, so I don't know how to think about all this. Any tips?

I've been working remotely for a startup for almost a year now and noticed that all my interactions with my co-workers are purely transactional. Software engineering is a team sport and I have never experienced such apathy towards the people I work with. Is this the default in remote work? How do folks who are 100% remote find ways to build relationships with other engineers?

How to build meaningful relationships with your co-workers if you work remotely?

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 13] - Cold Messages

You're applying to tons of software engineer jobs, and it's not working out. In your desperation, you come up with a genius idea: You'll reach out to company employees directly with a cold message. That'll work right? Guess again. This lesson teaches you:

- Why cold messaging isn't as effective as software engineers think
- How a reliance on cold messages often mask a deeper personal problem for the engineer
- The necessary conditions for a cold message to have a high likelihood of working
- Why cold messages are far more effective with startups and near useless for Big Tech
- How to write an excellent cold message, demonstrated by a thorough example of a bad cold message vs. a good cold message

Entry-Level Software Engineer [SDE 1] at Amazon

As I think about my career a few years from now, I wonder if I will continue to learn and grow at Amazon or if it would make sense for me to switch to a startup. I do care about compensation as well so that may be a limiting factor in jumping to a startup. What advice do you have for someone who may be interested in working at a startup vs. Big Tech? How many years of experience should I rack up at Amazon / in Big Tech before moving to a startup?

How many years of experience should I rack up at Amazon / in Big Tech before moving to a startup?

Please also explain the word 'scope' by giving an example.

What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?

[Case Study] Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups

**Huge** thanks to [Henry Prior](https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryprior/) for joining us and sharing his perspective and insights!

This was a *massive* session, so here are just some of the highlights:
- **Henry's core learning**: Bias towards action. You aren't really going to truly understand what is and what isn't fruitful to you until you just start trying things.
- **Story #1** - At his first startup job, Henry found a project to upgrade from Tensorflow 1 to 2. This ended up moving the metric he cared about, but he found out later that the business impact wasn't great. The company's clients were non-technical and didn't really care about the company's model being ultra-accurate.
- **Story #2** - Found a reinforcement learning project at his next company where he did all the modeling on his own and worked closely with an infra engineer to ship. The work was very complex and had huge impact, saving ~25 hours per week in Data Scientist cycles. He got massive recognition from the company, and this project was a big part of his move to senior.
- You have a lot of autonomy in early stage startups. Take advantage of this and actively look for large problems to solve, doing so as early as the interview process. It's not like Big Tech where you are generally given a good amount of direction on what to do (at least until you get to staff).
- *It's in your best interest to be completely authentic when interviewing with a startup.* It's not like Big Tech where you're putting on a facade to meet their interview requirements. A startup might not be the right for you due to a lack of work in your interest area: Big Tech in contrast has a little bit of everything.
- *If you're going to get into machine learning, you should understand the underlying math first.* This puts you in a much better position to work on the modeling part of ML vs. the more tertiary tasks like data wrangling. The math is a combination of probability/statistics, linear algebra, and calculus.
- **You can't study your way to being good at system design.** Resources like books and blog posts help, but system design is something you very much have to get good at by doing. Instead of just leaping into the code, start planning out your tasks and doing technical writing. From there, share your material with your team and get feedback.

Related resources:
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/yzWgzTF4WFzfXjS29)
- ["Does it make sense for me to choose a specialization like ML? If so, what's the impact?"](https://link.jointaro.com/jV34Jz7cJqQv2MpD8)

"How did you decide to quit your job and make a startup?" - 9/13/2022

If you're interested in starting your own startup, check out our curated playlist for it here: [[Taro Top 10] Entrepreneurship And Tech Startups](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/ArtlSzF17v7cad1K6TJG/)

- Alex has wanted to start his own thing for a while - Ever since his side projects started getting serious traction in 2015-2016 (25,000+ users each).
- The initial goal with [Tech Career Growth Community](https://www.linkedin.com/company/techcareergrowth/) wasn't to make a business out of it. The pandemic was happening and people were suffering - We just wanted to help people.
  - Tech Career Growth then grew beyond Rahul's and Alex's wildest imaginations.
  - This made them start thinking what they could accomplish if they worked on it full-time instead of part-time.
- For Alex, there are the core reasons why he decided to make the jump back in early 2022:
  - **Diminishing returns on "preparing" to make a startup** - He had the 0 to 1 experience from doing side projects and building Course Hero's Android apps from scratch. Meta was great helping him build soft skills.
  - **Tech Career Growth taking off** - Alex had more fun working on this community than working his full-time job at Robinhood (which is saying something as he *really* enjoyed working at Robinhood!).
  - **Getting into an incubator** - In late 2021, Alex and Rahul got into OnDeck, which gives the old YC deal of 125k for 7%.
  - **Life timing** - Alex is 30 as of the publishing date of this video, and creating a startup only gets harder as you age due to increasing responsibilities outside of work.

If you're interested in how Alex published ~30 apps that got ~3 million users combined, check these out:
- ["Finding a mobile app idea - How to do it?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KJ4VXh6rUhKbWeiJoRDe/finding-a-mobile-app-idea-how-to-do-it/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/AI4zi759PSGn6RwIFT6f/masterclass-how-to-come-up-with-100k-users-app-ideas-you-can-build-for-free/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OEuX0KMhcnNSTJ50Voee/masterclass-how-to-build-and-grow-tech-products-to-500k-users-for-free/)

Lastly, here's a great discussion on how hard startups are compared to leveling up at a "traditional" job: ["Career advancement or building a startup? Which one is harder?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/EquWmWjZhqiiujyltreJ/career-advancement-or-building-a-startup-which-one-is-harder/)

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 25] - Practical Coding

Practical interview coding rounds are the purest form of software engineering and what software engineers generally hope the interviews are (at least when they complain about data structures and algorithms problems online). This lesson teaches you:

- What a practical coding round is and when to expect it
- What kinds of companies give practical coding rounds
- How to prepare for practical coding rounds

To get the absolute best practice for practical coding rounds, check out our side projects playlist: [\[Taro Top 10\] Building Impressive Side Projects](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/vKUWMgmmaEvzcYUXZs4B/)

Senior Software Engineer at Series C Startup

Given the current economic volatility and uncertainty as well as the hard-to-measure business value of cost centre teams (like infrastructure or platform), would it be sensible to join such a team?

Is it safe to join cost centre teams like infra or platform?

[Timeless Career Advice] Startup vs Big Tech

One of the fundamental questions you face as an engineer is where to work. Should you join a startup, medium-sized company, or Big Tech? What are the pros or cons of working at a tech or non-tech company?

Connect with Louie:

- SmallBets community: [**https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro**](https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro)
- Twitter: [**https://twitter.com/LBacaj**](https://twitter.com/LBacaj)
- Newsletter: [**https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/**](https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/)

I'm still navigating a career switch to SWE, and I tend to get pretty overwhelmed when looking at code. I already ask a lot of questions, and I want to be more self-sufficient because my full-stack team members are pretty busy. (They are all kind and would all be willing to to take some time out of their day.) 

How can I get faster at reading code on my own while balancing a team transition? I'm at the point where I understand the high-level purpose of parts of our codebase but little as to how the moving pieces all fit together. 

While I understand that there is likely no magic threshold to determine the point at one needs to ask for codebase navigation guidance, a good rule of thumb would be helpful when possible.

How do I balance slow code spelunking on my own vs. asking questions to speed things up?

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 32] - Understanding Startup Interviews

A huge portion of software engineers will be unable to get into Big Tech on their first try, and that's completely okay! The good news is that startups are quite awesome and can often lead to better career growth compared to FAANG. This lesson teaches you:

- The general perspective of startups when it comes to hiring software engineers
- Which interview types are more common for startups and why
- Which interview types are less common for startups and why

To dive deeper into acing startup interviews: ["How to prep for interviews at a startup?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/iNwnJg9G2DCXrLFdIwmV/how-to-prep-for-interviews-at-a-startup/)

I got feedback from my manager that I can do more to increase the scope of my influence within the company, and this involves getting more recognition and visibility from leadership for my projects. How can I do this?

How can I get my work better recognized by leadership?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Startup Company

I have a couple years of experience, so I'm thinking if it makes sense to go down the engineering manager path. I'm well-positioned to start this journey at my current company as well; I'm a very early engineer on my team, and I have the ability to build up the team and mentor those new people. However, I'm unsure if this is the right way for my career to go and how much of my job I want to be people management - How can I figure this out?

How do I figure out how managerial my career path should be?

Hey Taro team,

I spent the first 7 years of my career being a full time iOS engineer at a couple different companies including FAANG (max level reached was E4/L4). And then over the last 3 years I started a startup and have been a full stack engineer (being a founder, you have to wear many different hats and basically build anything and everything the startup required e.g. web app, backend) working with little scale and mostly solo.

After 3 years of running the startup, I'm now looking to get back into big tech as an iOS engineer again. Given it's been 3 years since I've done major iOS work (I have done a tiny bit and I feel like I still know iOS, at least UIKit, SwiftUI is another story), my question is this:

> Is it advisable to first build and ship an iOS app to production (might take me a month), then do leetcode/interview preparation, and then reach out to companies to do interviews? Or should I just dive straight into leetcode/interview preparation and then reach out to companies?

Can you walk us through your thought process for Taro members also thinking through a return back to FAANG?

FAANG to YC startup, back to FAANG again?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Consulting Startup

Hello! 

I was assigned my first JIRA ticket at my first official dev job, which I started about two weeks ago. Given my situation, I want to know how long my manager expects me to work on the ticket, so I don't end up underperforming or not meeting expectations.

Some background: before this job, I worked at a very early-stage startup (one other person and myself for about a year), so I don't consider myself a complete junior. Additionally, I don't know my official title since I came in as a contractor and the contractor title does not match the FTE title, so I'm not sure what is expected of me. 

Some of my thoughts: I've considered asking my manager directly how long he expects me to work on this JIRA ticket, but I wasn't sure if the question was too noob-like or too forward. I've also considered that so long as I'm making progress (which I am), I should be okay (until it's not). 

So, all this to ask, should I ask my manager how long he expects me to work on my first JIRA ticket?

How long should I take on my first JIRA ticket?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Financial Firm

When it comes to describing your projects, what are the things you should emphasize vs. not? I want to be able to paint myself in the best light when talking about projects at work and during behavioral interviews, particularly those of Big Tech.

How can I most effectively talk about my projects?

Onboarding Tips Within Smaller Companies

Some relevant tips if you're onboarding as an engineer in a smaller company:

- Smaller companies will have less process and, therefore, a less formal onboarding. This means it's more important to get stuff done quickly since you can't rely on a bunch of classes or hand-holding.
  - A good benchmark is to land code within a week
- In a smaller company, a lot of knowledge will be in the heads of a few people
  - Your goal is to find the tenured people and ensure you understand their worldview and prioritization.
- Don’t assume processes or people exist. Especially if you come from a larger company, you should not assume that there is a well-defined QA (Quality Assurance) team or design team.

I'm currently employed at a startup where we're building bookkeeping tools. My work mainly involves Python, some database work, and a lot of business logic wrangling. Due to the small size of our app and engineering org, I don't have many opportunities to gain the necessary experience in distributed systems. I'm seeking advice on how to transition to distributed systems. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

How to transition from back-end development to distributed systems?

I never got the full experience of working from an office due to the pandemic. I am currently working from home and making the decision to move out of state to be at my companys HQ. I hope this will help boost my career by being near my co-workers, asking questions, participating in "water cooler" conversations and even helping out with non-technical tasks like filming a commercial (example of something I heard happen at the office).

Is there any tips you would recommend for someone to make the most out of their time in an office? I am planning on being there for at least a year and I was told I can have the empty seat right next to my manager.

How can I make the most out of a return to office?

I recently had a conversation about promotion with my manager. It seems I am primed to move from L2 -> L3 which I am happy about, but I was more curious on making the bigger jump to senior as that’s when the scope and responsibility become greater. According to him I already demonstrate senior level qualities whether it’s being completely reliable in shipping features, scoping out work and planning projects, to working with engineers outside my team to work on broad initiatives to benefit the whole org. All of which I have already done to some extent. 

I asked him after I move to L3 and prepare for senior if the years of xp is still a hard requirement and he said yes. And that being a senior after 3/4 years in the industry is a bit quick and needs at least 5-7. In that case if the years of xp is so important, should I even operate at a senior for 2 years if I can’t even be considered for it until some arbitrary time has passed? It seems like extra effort to be paid the same.

How much does years of experience actually matter to be a Senior SWE?

Senior Software Engineer at Startup Company

It's just my first month and my manager said I had to improve a lot 
because his expectations for a senior engineer is much higher, not just technically but also behaviourally. 

I'm feeling anxious because I was in a pretty laid back company before and the rapid pace of a startup took me off-guard. I'm trying to push through by working longer hours but I don't think I'd be able to reach my manager's expectations. 

It's causing me anxiety just by thinking about my job. 
Is it ok to leave a job even if I don't have anything lined up yet? I'm trying to review to get a new job but the long hours are taking up my personal time. What could be my options?

I'm overleveled in my position and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Staff Software Engineer [Lead MTS] at Salesforce

Knowing that, how should I tailor my career path - What companies should I work for and what skills should I get to set myself up for success against this goal? Should I continue working at Salesforce or should I go work for a different company?

One of my dreams is to start my own venture someday. How do I tailor my career accordingly?

The business side of my company is constantly asking for data queries. I want to take this on and become the "data guy" for the company, seriously helping everyone with analytics and user understanding.

We're using Firebase, but the company wants to move off of it. I'm considering building a custom solution using something like D3.js, but I feel like that would take too long to learn.

How can I best navigate forward achieving this result?

I want to become the "data guy" in my company - How can I do that?

I've been behind a couple times shipping tasks and projects, and I've gotten feedback that this is something I really need to get better at. One aspect to this is that I take a lot of iterations before I fully understand something - This extra time slows down the planning and overall execution of my work. How can I improve in that regard, and is there anything else I can do to get better at setting targets for my work?

I have trouble coming up with accurate estimates, leading to missed deadlines.

My goal is to get to this level someday, so I would love to understand more. In particular, how does this dynamic play out at Big Tech/larger tech companies?

What are the commonalities and differences between tech leads and engineering managers?

Software Engineering Intern at Series B Startup

I'm currently doing my 2nd internship, and I have time to do another one before I graduate (I'm currently doing a traditional ~4 year university Computer Science degree). What can I do to lock in a great additional internship for that last slot?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series B Startup

**Context:**

I'm a mid-level engineer looking to grow to the senior level. I'm currently leading a team of 2 other engineers on a large migration project that's revamping a big part of our API architecture. This is a platform team so the biggest objective of this project is to make the lives of other engineers easier.

**Questions:**

(1) How can I measure and demonstrate the business impact of this project, given that it is aimed at internal teams?

(2) What metrics could I be using to quantify the technical impact of this project?

How can I demonstrate the impact of migration projects in a platform team?

I recently joined a startup (just finished my third week about to start my fourth) and I set up a one-on-one last week with my manager to hopefully create a mentor-mentee relationship. That went well and now I’m looking to create a growth plan and a way to measure my performance. We’ll be checking in on a weekly basis so I can get a sense of my performance and how I am growing as a engineer. 

Given that it is a Series B startup with ~25 people, our goals will be shifting a lot which makes long-term growth plans hard to create. For context, since I joined, my 60 day and 90 day projects have shifted somewhat. So how do I create a growth plan that is flexible and what should it include (Concrete goals vs. more behavior orientated goals)?? Should the growth plan be used separately from judging my performance or would it be the measuring stick for performance?

Would really appreciate some insight on this.

How do I create a growth plan with my manager/mentor and what should it include?

I'm totally buying the idea of why we should specialise eg. in Android, like Alex mentioned a number of times, because you're more employable for a large company if you're really good at one thing.

I'm less interested in large companies, I want to continue working in startups and at some point start one myself. I've got a background in ML and have been picking up "full-stack" web development over the past year, to be able to make simple products myself. I like the whole lifecycle of a product from talking to users, to design and engineering. Things I like the most though are backend and machine learning development.

Do you think it still makes sense to specialise given my career goals, or perhaps the advices given here were only for big-tech engineers?

Generalist vs specialisation if wanting to get into startups

How can H1B (visa) holders do a startup?

As an H1B holder, it can be hard to imagine starting a company. However, many H1B holders (and other visa holders) are able to navigate the startup landscape, maximize opportunities, and turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality. This talk covered practical insights for people on visas.

Our speaker is Harsh Goel, a software engineer turned entrepreneur who has started two startups on an O1 visa. He will share his experience and also the visa experiences of other founders he has interacted with.

Harsh provided advice based on 5 levels of involvement: 
1. Doing side projects that don't make money
2. Doing side projects that make money
3. Doing a startup while working -- what you can and can't do
4. Going full-time into a startup without funding
5. Going full-time into a startup with funding (>$200K)

Harsh also covered insights on how to quickly qualify and apply for an O-1 visa, a **nonimmigrant employment-based visa classification for individuals of extraordinary ability in sciences, education, business, arts or athletics**; or individuals of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture and televisions industries.

To qualify for an O-1 visa, you need to show evidence of being recognized in your academic field. You must show credentials both in achievements and in your place of employment.

- There are 3 categories of achievements, and this turns out to be very easy to manufacture. Things like judging a hackathon or speaking at a conference (no matter the size) are common ways to demonstrate this. With some hard work and time, **most people can meet this criteria for an O-1**.
- You also need "evidence that the employment requires the skills of someone with 'extraordinary ability'". This requires letters of recommendations from peers or managers at work. If you lead a team within a Big Tech company, **you probably have enough to meet this criteria as well.**

Learn more:
- More events on Taro: [https://www.jointaro.com/events/](https://www.jointaro.com/events/)
- Harsh on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harsh-fyi/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/harsh-fyi/)

As a senior engineer, I want to make sure that my time is spent effectively. That being said, how do I evaluate the business impact a project has and prioritize all the different things on my plate accordingly?

On a side note, how do I make sure that the scope of projects are matching my level or exceeding it?

How do you determine the impact of projects?

Sanjay Siddhanti (Senior Director of Engineering at AKASA)

I'm doing a [**live Ask-Me-Anything (AMA)**](https://www.jointaro.com/event/ask-me-anything-ama-with-a-senior-eng-director-sanjay-siddhanti/) soon: I'll use this thread to collect questions and will follow up to answer anything we don't cover within the hour. 

I'm Sanjay ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaysiddhanti/) / [Taro](https://www.jointaro.com/p/sanjay-siddhanti/)) -- I'm a Stanford grad (same as Rahul), where I got a BS in Computer Science and MS in Biomedical Informatics. I've built my entire career in the Bay Area, with the past 5 years at AKASA, an AI healthcare company to help revenue cycle teams.

I'm the Senior Director of Engineering at AKASA. I joined AKASA in 2019 as one of the first employees when we were a seed-stage startup. I originally joined AKASA as an individual contributor, and quickly switched over to management. I built much of the company's early technology as an IC and later as a tech lead / manager. I also started and managed multiple engineering teams at the company, including Platform Engineering, now an org with 20 engineers.

Happy to answer questions about:

- How engineering leaders think about the role of Senior, Staff, and Principal ICs
- How and why to transition from IC to management
- The differences between an Engineering Manager vs Engineering Director
- How to hire and retain great talent
- How to succeed in a startup environment

I can also discuss how to introduce effective development processes (code reviews, agile development, postmortems, planning, etc) in early-stage companies and how to evolve these practices as a company grows.

I'm Sanjay, Senior Director at a Series B Startup. AMA!

Background: I completed my engineering degree from a tier 3 college in India and have been working as a software engineer in an early-stage startup in the UAE for the past 7 years.

I have always had a desire to start my own company, and though I attempted it twice in the past, unfortunately, those endeavors didn't succeed.

I neither have worked for a renowned company nor attended a prestigious college. Consequently, I also lack a strong professional network. This makes me wonder if pursuing an MBA from a reputable college would be beneficial for my entrepreneurial aspirations.

Is getting an MBA helpful for a software engineer who wants to start their own company later on?

I've received the equivalent of EE in all the areas of assessment. I'm disappointed with my performance review as I did not get promoted or get a reasonable raise despite my great performance. I (along with many of my peers and my manager) feel that I've already been performing at the next level for the past 6 months. Now it seems that I've to keep performing at the next level for 6 more months before actually getting promoted to the next level - this seems unreasonable to me.

What are my options apart from looking for other opportunities outside my current company?

How to deal with dissatisfaction with my performance review?

Senior Software Engineer at Consulting Company

Everyone knows that the tech industry revolves around the Silicon Valley, but I'm in a different metropolitan area in the US. I'm thinking about my next move company-switch wise, and I'm wondering how much it's worth being in the Bay Area for greater access to opportunity and career development in general. Also, does this vary based on whether you want to work for Big Tech or startups?

Does not being in the Bay Area hurt your career as a SWE?

FAANG Is Too Cushy? How Big Tech Engineer Founders Often Fail

Eric Bahn, a VC from Hustle Fund, talks about the common failure modes of founders who previously worked in Big Tech.

Some of the questions we discuss:
- Does success in a Big Tech job translate to founder success? Seeing how things are done "properly" in a FAANG (or equivalent) company is very valuable. However, the skills needed to start from scratch are very different.
- How Rahul thought about leaving Meta after 4.5 years to start Taro: **when you start a new product or company, no one cares about you**. It is very, very hard to get people to care about you, to even give you the time of day. That's why having distribution networks are so important.
- How long is *too* long in a Big Tech company? If you've been at a FAANG company for 6+ years, is that a negative signal for your ability to start a company? Obviously this depends on the situation, but it's important to be aware of the perception.
- What are the most common failure modes of ex-FAANG founders?

------

- Connect with [Eric on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbahn/)
- This is a re-post from [Rahul's YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/63b6A8A3kAU)

I'd love some ideas on how I can provide value to potential mentors and other folks who are further in their careers than I am. I want to form a relationship with these rock stars but I also want to make sure they are getting something out of it as well. 

Would appreciate any advice from folks who have successful and mutually beneficial mentor-mentee relationships! Thank you!!

Ways to provide value to people further in their careers who help you?

My main goal right now is to level up, and that next level for me is making the jump from junior to mid-level, hopefully within 2-3 years. To better understand the evolutions I need to make, what are the main differences between junior and mid-level when it comes to SWE?

What does a competent mid-level software engineer look like?

How To Prepare To Leave Big Tech For A Startup

If you’re like [Rahul](https://www.jointaro.com/profile/tTjEXHcTZEYDGh8oUFU2Dy5VFVG2/), you were intent on leaving the bubble of Big Tech to pursue the startup life for a long time. If you have 6 months or 1 year left working in an established company, what can you do in anticipation of your startup journey?

One of the best things you can do is validate the idea of your startup with a side hustle. **Be careful that you’re not using company time or resources or you may later get sued.**

Generally, there are 3 types of projects an engineer can work on: 
1. A project purely for learning, to try out some technology or framework that may have come out recently. 
2. A small business. Also known as an indie business, a micro-Saas, or even something as simple as selling a digital product like an eBook. 
3. A VC scale startup. **This should be reserved for very few companies.** When you take venture capital money, they are looking for a massive return on investment, something like 50x or 100x. That means you’ll be accountable for strenuous growth targets.

Whichever path you choose, go in with your eyes wide open about what your motivations are and whether you’d be happy signing up for the likely outcome. 

An input into the decision about *when* to leave the Big Tech life is to look for some indication of commitment for the customers you’re serving. Are your customers offering you their time, money, or reputation for your product? That’s a promising sign. 

Another reason to leave is that you feel that there’s a narrow period of time when your idea could succeed, e.g. new regulation or a groundbreaking technology.

------

Connect with [Eric on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbahn/)

Senior Software Engineer at Series B fintech startup

I'd like to ask for your feedback on my side project - a full-stack simulation of a ride-hailing app such as Uber or Lyft.

App: <https://rides.jurajmajerik.com>\
Blog: <https://jurajmajerik.com>

A bit of background first. I've been wanting to publish a personal full-stack project for a while. These were my main reasons:

- I wanted a platform to explore concepts and tools I don't get to work with in my day job, helping me accelerate my learning.
- I've wanted to break into big tech and thought this project could help me stand out among many applicants.
- I enjoy writing and wanted to get better at it.

Why did I choose a simulation of the Uber/Lyft app? I always found something very attractive about these apps - they're visually appealing and dynamic, with colossal architectures behind them. I thought it would be very cool to re-implement some aspects of such an app. I have also been reading the Uber engineering blog and got a glimpse of the complexity these companies are dealing with.

My final goal with this app was to have an animated map with cars picking up customers, driving them across the map and dropping them off at their destinations. Customers would post ride requests and the system would match them with the nearest drivers. The simulation would run on the backend, and the frontend map would show the action in real-time.

I started working on the project last autumn. I've spent around 300 hours working on it and you can see the result in the links above.

### My ask

I'd love to get your feedback to improve or extend this app and my blog, keeping in mind my objectives:

- I plan to apply to big tech companies this summer, and I'd like this project to help me with my applications.
- The project targets both recruiters and hiring managers. With recruiters, the goal is to pass the initial screening and get me to the interview stage (of course, I'll also be trying to secure referrals, but I might not always succeed). With hiring managers, this project might help me score extra points in my final evaluation.
- I might be applying to companies such as Uber or Bolt, but this project is not supposed to impress just the ride-hailing companies.
- I prefer not to put much more time into the project at the moment, as my focus right now has to be on the coding interview prep.

Possible additions or improvements include:

- Splitting the system across multiple machines (perhaps 3), making it truly distributed.
- Adding various components used in large-scale systems such as load-balancer, rate limiter, or message queues. Indeed, these components are not actually needed for the app to function. But by doing so, I could demonstrate my ability to work with them (albeit not necessarily demonstrating deep expertise).
- Adding comprehensive documentation with system diagrams and explaining the choices I made.
- More rigorous testing by adding integration tests (right now, I only have unit tests).

As for my previous background - I've been an engineer for \~4.5 years, most of my experience is from a small startup (series B). I consider myself a full-stack engineer but going forward, I aim to specialize more in the backend. Therefore, the project should strongly communicate my backend skills. For my next role, I also prefer backend positions to full-stack ones.

Recently I watched the great masterclass from Rahul and Alex on side projects. It made me realize that while my project might be interesting from a technical perspective, it has no users. In fact, this app doesn't allow any user interaction by nature. However, what I'm lacking in terms of users, I'm hoping to make up with the degree of technical complexity. Please also share your views on this aspect.

Many thanks if you've read this long post to the end. I'll be very grateful for any tips on how to make this project more appealing 🙏🏼

Side project feedback - Uber/Lyft simulation

I'm looking to level up and am currently designated as an SWE-2, where I take end-to-end responsibility for an Android app. I have a couple of juniors who report to me. I also took responsibility for writing backend APIs.

I even led a feature using guidelines of system design playlist and made a brag journal for promotions. \
\
What are the exact behaviors to become one level up as SWE-3 (Mid-level)?

What are the behaviors of a senior software engineer?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community

I'm in my early 20s and started a startup with my friend from college shortly after we graduated. We got into Y Combinator and worked on the company for about 2 years in total before shutting it down recently. I didn't go to a name-brand school, and didn't work full-time anywhere after graduating, but I did a few prestigious internships, one of which being in Deep Learning.

I've heard larger companies and recruiters in general don't like former founders, and I mostly did sales/product for our startup. We built a few web-based products and a few AI infra/AI apps, but nothing crazy and nothing with massive traction. We spent most of our time pivoting and doing user interviews/sales.

I want to get an engineering job rather than PM, because I have internalized the value of being technical when being a founder and don't want to give entrepreneurship up yet. There aren't too many entry-level positions open, and I was hoping to not have to go into an entry-level role, but simultaneously I'm not sure I have enough experience to feel confident in being self-sufficient as an engineer.

Before starting the company, I had a return offer at one FAANG company, and a New Grad SWE offer at Facebook that I let expire. I emailed my recruiter to try to reinstate it, and she implied that I would not be eligible for New Grad since I was too far from my graduation date.

Ideally, I'd like to work in AI at a larger company since that's where all my experiences in college were and where I see the most opportunity (ideally OpenAI or FB). Otherwise, probably back-end/infra at a post-IPO startup/FAANG or worst-case post-PMF startup. I have a few questions:

1. Should I only apply to entry-level engineering jobs, and am I even eligible for them? If not, what level of experience should I apply to and how do I convince them I'm qualified?
2. How should I write my resume/describe my experience+title (especially for larger, more bureaucratic companies which are less open to former entrepreneurs)? Should I even include that I was a co-founder?
3. How custom should I make my resume for each different kind of job I'm applying to (new grad swe, new grad mle, ai eng, at faang+ vs. growth stage startup)?

How to write resume and apply to jobs after being a failed startup founder?

Entry Level Software Engineer at Taro Community

I rececntly joined a series D startup as a software engineer 2. Prior to that I have about a year and half of experience, where I didn't get to learn much due to remote work and an absentee manager.

Since the beginning of this new job I have been feeling very anxious, as if I don't deserve this new role. I feel the team will figure out they made a mistake hiring me at an SE-2 level. The leveling in this company is different compared to big tech so SE-2 is not same as Amazon SDE-2.

Coming to my actual struggle, the product in itself is infra heavy and I have very limited understanding of DevOps. I am feeling overwhelmed with everything I need to learn to understand even basic tickets, and I end up just starting on the tickets directly instead of taking up say a docker/kubernetes course or even going through the numerous onboarding video recordings. Add to it that a good part of my team is on PTO this past month so I was getting stuck with no-one to unblock me.

I would love some tips to figure out a framework to follow, things to do when I get stuck, or better practices that show I am not repeating my mistakes. Right now I am documenting the patterns (say how to test a plugin) that keep repeating.

Feeling overwhelmed with everything I need to learn at my new job

Software Engineering Intern at Taro Community

**Preface: I might sound a bit critical at some points, but I’m asking this question with the intention of learning, not to demean others as this question has been on my mind for a while.**

A big reason why people join startups is that at startups you learn faster than you would at big tech. What’s not clear to me though is how this actually translates to having a successful career (especially when transitioning to big tech). Specifically, how does “learning more” in startups/getting more scope in startups translate to “materialistic” rewards such as TC, getting into big tech, getting senior swe faster etc.?

I've seen Seed’s presentation about [hyper charging your career through startups](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/yu7Y0b4gD7AiTiCJ5tVi/case-study-hypercharging-your-growth-at-early-startups-w-staff-engineer-seed-zeng/). He’s clearly achieved amazing things at Klaviyo, but at least from his LinkedIn profile, he joined Meta as an L5 (senior swe) with 4 yoe - couldn’t you achieve this result simply by working at Big Tech for just as long? If that’s the case, then what’s the point of joining a startup?

I’ve watched Taro’s masterclass on choosing a good company (and many other startup-related videos on Taro), and for the pros for startups - specifically getting more scope - seems very superficial. Similarly, the cons for big tech (the inverse of startup pros- harder to find scope) seems also superficial.

How does “learning” and “more scope” in startups translate to career success?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series F Startup

In the team-matching phase, I connected with a team focused on a monolithic backend built in Django with GraphQL. My manager recommended I learn Datadog and Sentry, and I’d love some tips on onboarding to these technologies as efficiently as possible. This is for Nextdoor working on team that owns Feed, Events, Groups and Messaging.

I've been working through a course on CodeSignal that covers GraphQL and Apollo Server, but it’s primarily JavaScript-oriented, using Apollo with Express. Since I already have a Django side project, I’m interested in how to apply what I’m learning specifically to Django and Python environments.

Additionally, I’m aiming to streamline my onboarding with some guidance around these points from my manager:

1. **GraphQL basics** – Use it with a simple Django web app to surface data.
2. **Datadog and Sentry** – They use Datadog for real-time monitoring and Sentry for API error tracking. Any specific tips or resources to dive into these tools effectively?

For context, I am currently a Data Engineer who uses Python and SQL and am transitioning to a Backend SWE role. I do have experience building things, here is a side project I have built from scratch. www.tunemeld.com

How to Efficiently Onboard to New Technologies Before My Role Starts

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Tier 3 Company

I was recently persued by a big tech startup on LinkedIn for a full-stack JavaScript role. In the phone screening they asked if I would be open for their new grad program. As I have been working at my current company for 4.5 years (3 years part-time during university) it simply didn't feel right.
They ended up going with someone else after the phone screening which could've been for multiple reasons, but was it wrong of me to not consider the new grad position? Should I consider new grad positions at big tech companies if it is my goal to work in big tech, even though I have some previous my experience?

Is it weird to apply for a new grad position 1.5 years out of university?

How often does everyone pair program here? And how do you regard them?

I am at a startup and since I have started, first as a junior, my pairing frequency is about 1-2x per week. I do not consider myself a junior anymore (at least not at the company, but maybe on Leetcode >_<) and find these sessions more valuable as volleying ideas flow more. I was wondering what it’s like for others and if it is a day in the life thing at big(ger) tech; is it kind of seldom or frowned upon or do some of you use it as a measure of skill, etc.

Hope everyone is having a good start to the week!

How often do you pair program and what do you make of them?

Market Expansion: The Similarity Between Startups And Content Creators

Steve supports several hundred engineers at Amazon as a Principal Engineer. After finding himself giving out the same advice repeatedly, he decided to package up his insights into a YouTube channel. However, similar to Rahul's content, the applicability of his advice turns out to be much broader than just software engineers.

Steve is focused on having the maximum impact on as many people as possible, which means that he welcomes the “pivot” into the broader audience of knowledge workers.

This is a common pattern within content creation and startups: you start by focusing on a specific niche and being hyper-focused on serving them. But you realize that the product or content you created is actually applicable to a much broader set of people. 

- [How to evaluate a startup?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/UCG4XxyEOTjjyg4pEuwY/how-to-evaluate-a-startup/) 
- [“How much am I hurting my career with this startup?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/dqCvmYhI9WE0k33orZEP/how-much-am-i-hurting-my-career-by-staying-at-a-startup-pressure-to-work-for-big-tech/)

Connect with Steve: 
- [Taro](https://www.jointaro.com/profile/aZJL3ucq9dQnscO09F4JDRkgPo72/)
- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@ALifeEngineered)

Background: I studied Bachelor's in computer science from a Tier 3 college in India and joined a reputed early-stage startup (Bay Area based) as an Operations Manager in India. I worked there for two years, and during that, I got exposure to technology. I gained tech skills by myself and moved to another startup as a Backend Developer.

I have been working as a Backend Developer for the last five years. All the companies I have worked for and left were in the early stage, so until now, I didn’t progress much in my career and still hold the designation of Software Engineer. I am earning and learning decently in Dubai, but I feel like stuck and not moving forward as I don’t see my future, at least in the current startup. I work as an Individual contributor, and management is pretty naive here.

I don’t understand what to do to move ahead from here:

- I don’t feel much enthusiasm for engineering as my other colleagues and friends feel, so I feel like doing MBA and trying Product Management. But I am also not sure as I have already changed my career path once, and I am already 30 years old, so, not sure if doing it is a good idea or not. It's costly as well, so not sure it's a good investment. My wife is also doing an MBA, so I feel maybe FOMO is causing me to try it and get out of this zone.
- One question that keeps me curious is why most of the engineers who are already working in Engineering don’t go for MBA.
- Another option I feel is to try a Master's in computer science as its relatively cheaper than MBA also, I have been doing tech for the past five years so it can be a supportive degree, but I don’t love tech so much that I want to spend whole life in it, so I feel may b its also not a good idea.
- I have a very limited professional circle as I have worked in very small startups and studied at Tier-3 college, so I feel like MBA/MS can help.
- I feel like maybe I can also try FAANG instead of MBA and MS and see what happens from there, but I like my current work with elixir and enjoy it, so I don’t feel much happiness while doing preparation.
- Also, I feel it's been three years here. We are two backend developers here, and we have good money. I get decent work with Elixir. I can stay here at the same startup, and maybe I will grow in future here only, which I strongly feel will not happen.

So, this is the problem I don’t understand where to go in my career from here. I am sure, for one thing, I want to try my startup again (I have tried twice, once in college and once a year back and closed before it started) in future.

I am curious if there are any strategies or techniques for better problem understanding. Personally, I struggle with comprehending problems, whether they are coding or business related. I often need to read through the problem multiple times to fully understand it, which may be due to my attention span. I sometimes feel stupid, but I am confident that there are techniques I can learn to improve my understanding of problems without belittling myself.

How to understand any problem more effectively?

Hey, I just posted a question related to me considering to quit my job here: 

[Should I leave my company due to effects of commute? (](https://www.jointaro.com/question/SGpd7h8RnPNm27YuiqxD/should-i-leave-my-company-due-to-effects-of-commute/?revalidate=true)[jointaro.com](http://jointaro.com)[)](https://www.jointaro.com/question/SGpd7h8RnPNm27YuiqxD/should-i-leave-my-company-due-to-effects-of-commute/?revalidate=true)

**TLDR:** I am seriously considering quitting my job due to the commute, I live in SF, have 1+ years of experience and am looking to work in the city/remote. I have 6+ months of savings and am a U.S. citizen. Effectively, I'd say there's a 95% chance I'll quit my job in Jan 2024. 

Considering this, I'm evaluating the current tech job market. 

**Generally, my impressions are that while the overall economy is doing quite well, the tech market is in a bit of a lull w/ potential layoffs in 2024-2025.** We had the major overhiring of 2021-2022, then the layoffs in early 2023 and now are in a period of stasis relative to the bull market of the past 10 years+. I believe this is also due to the end of zero interest loans making capital expensive. This then leads to profits being more emphasized, then cost-cutting in large corporations (employees being a major cost, so layoffs occuring) and then difficulty for startups to raise money. 

Additionally, I recently read The Pragmatic Engineer's take on [Spotify's recent 17% layoff](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-72-spotifys-shock-cuts). \
\
*"**Unfortunately, I suspect Spotify is early in having a realization which other tech companies will also have, next year.** With the zero interest rate period (ZIRP) over, it’s expensive to borrow cash. Spotify making a loss meant it was effectively borrowing money in order to operate. Turning a profit is more urgent than when capital was cheap. But how do you turn a profit if you cannot significantly increase revenue? You cut costs, and the biggest costs for most tech companies are employees, sadly.*

*As a result, Spotify could well become profitable, assuming it generates similar revenue in future. And this is exactly the plan; to keep doing the same as before, but with fewer people.*

*In this way, Spotify’s cuts make business sense in the context of business growth slowing, persistent loss-making, and a hiring spree in 2021-2022 which didn’t boost revenue. These cuts may be surprising for many at Spotify, but probably not for the leadership team. The only question is how many other companies are in the same position as Spotify, but with leaderships yet to draw the same conclusion from the economic conditions.*

*This is probably a good reminder that the tech jobs market remains volatile. If you have a stable job, it could be a good time to put aside some earnings for a nest egg, stay engaged with your network, and to position yourself to work in areas seen as profit centers, not cost centers."* \
\
What are your impressions of the tech market right now? \
Any recommendations of how to navigate the market or resources to utilize?\
Anything advice years-of-experience specific (Junior engineers vs. senior engineers vs tech leads vs. etc)?

How is the market right now for junior engineers?

Senior Software Engineer at Series F Startup

I have realised over the years that I have gained good amount of technical knowledge but I lack great communication skills (in terms of expressing my thoughts). This was okay till I was working as software engineer as my task involved more of coding work which does not require explaining things to large audience. Now as a Senior Engineer my task revolves around making design choices, explaining pros/cons of selecting an approach etc. I realised that even though I am confident on my technical approach, I sometimes fail to express myself and the approach in the right way during the discussion which led to times when my approach is discarded and others as selected as they express themselves better. I need some suggestions on how to improve on this aspect as this will be crucial part going forward in my career.

How to develop better communication skills?

What to ask in an interview to spot a good manager or red flags?