Alex Chiou Q&A and Videos

Promotion is one of the most difficult and nuanced topics, so there's no way any course can absolutely cover 100% of all possible scenarios. If you have any questions about , please ask them here! I'm happy to talk about:

• What gaps you may have to get to the next level
• How to create additional scope in your team
• Whether a prospective team you're considering looks good for promotion
• Why you're getting stuck at your current level
• Maintaining that dialog with your manager about promotion

Born in Ohio, raised in Bay Area, went to UCLA, came back to Silicon Valley to work at these places:

• PayPal (2014 - 2015): Got really good at foosball here
• Course Hero (2015 - 2017): First Android engineer/tech lead, engineer #25 or so. Built their Android app from scratch, grew it from 0 to 100k users and the team from myself to 4 devs total. Course Hero is now Learneo and valued at $3.6B
• Meta (2017 - 2021): Built the voice assistant on Portal (🪦) and then went to Instagram Ads and scaled story ads from a $1B business to $5B+. Mentored a whole bunch of engineers from E3 -> E5, had as many 1 on 1s as a manager by the time I left
• Robinhood (2021 - 2022): Revamped settings + profile, worked on Robinhood Spending Card, finally replaced my spaghetti Java skills with spaghetti Kotlin skills
• Taro (2022 - ???): Building random stuff with my buddies and to make engineers' lives better.

Other facts about me:

• I've built
• I own way too many board games
• Currently procrastinating life responsibilities with Genshin Impact, Marvel Snap, and Borderlands 3
• Somehow got ~75,000 people to

I probably shouldn't be doing an AMA when we haven't shipped threaded replies yet, but YOLO 😎

Hi all,

I recently finished the Masterclasses from Alex & Rahul where Alex & Rahul discussed building apps as side projects to put on resumes. Also in , Alex mentioned he monetized his app & got $100 from premium users.

AFAIK, anything above $400 must be put onto tax return. I'm thinking about developing a small side projects & put maybe ads / premium restrictions on some features. If I do this, how do I avoid conflicts of interest with my 9-5 job, especially if the revenue coming in may way surpass $400? I'm working for a large tech company that essentially do everything hence it's hard to find a business area where the company isn't involved in.

When I was young, I was taught that I shouldn't be too helpful or transparent with my friends/classmates/coworkers because I would be "helping my competition" or attract jealousy from others. For as long as I can remember people would

• Hide their grades or what universities they were applying to
• Hide what companies they were interviewing for
• Hide their compensation
• Not help others with homework/work projects/preparing for interviews

I get the impression that Alex and Rahul are pretty transparent people, so I wonder why. It's certainly different from what I have seen in my life.

Hey everyone, the feedback to was far better than I expected (thank you all!), so I wanted to follow through and help all of you out more.

The concept of a is hard to fully internalize. I know a lot of Taro community members who have gone through the full course and are still only coming up with complicated ideas, often not realizing that they are too complicated. Really championing this concept and applying it to actually come up with feasible ideas is really tough: I would know because I messed this up a lot as I was getting better at side projects, as I talked about extensively in the course.

. But if you need a boost and have to build someone else's idea, feel free to take one of mine!

That is the purpose of this thread: In the replies to this post, I will share the many, many Level 1 side project ideas I've had over the years in a structured format.

I’ve recently been applying to various jobs, just in case of an unexpected layoff (golden parachute). Lately, I’ve been motivated to upskill as a developer. I’ve now reached the two-year mark at my company. After the reorg, I have a new manager, team, and director, and I really like this team. My performance over the past six months has been better than it was with my old team. Recently, Google reached out to me for an interview, but I haven’t really studied data structures and algorithms (DSA) due to work. My performance hasn’t been great, and now I also have a phone interview with Meta.

On the plus side, my company's stock has surged, and we’ve received bonuses, raises, and promotions. In my last 1-on-1 meeting with my manager, he told me I should be more independent and that my performance is great (hinting at a promotion)—fingers crossed. My family and friends are encouraging me to interview with both Meta and Google, but I don’t really want to leave my current company.

Context

Thanks to Taro, I managed to get an offer from a frontier AI model company. When I saw the $500K worth of annual ISO component in the offer, I thought I nailed it. Until I digged further into the details.

Problem

I'd have to shell out $500K each year to purchase my vested stock options. My base salary minus tax and expenses would be around $100K. So I won't even be able to buy all the vested stocks unless I sell off my less-risky, diversified investments. This means I'd have to live a frugal life and worry about making $500K by the end of the year to afford the vesting grants. All this feels like too much risk accumulated around a single company (which is never a good sign). The startup offers stock buy back every 6 months but I'd lose out on long-term capital gains taxes if I sell off quickly without holding for a year.

None of the frontier AI startups have a clear plan to justify the sky-high valuation but I see a lot of senior, smart people flocking to these companies (which gives me hope). The reputation of the funding agencies participating in my company's funding round further raises my hope and begs to ask the question "How can so many smart people and amazing funding agencies get it wrong all at the same time?". The more I think about it, the more I am losing sleep.

Question

I am not the first person to signup up for a high-risk high-reward startup. What strategies does the employees at these companies typically follow to manage their risk?

Hi Alex,

I recently completed your course, "Get More Interviews: Write a Stellar Resume as a Software Engineer," and found it very helpful! I'd like to use your resume as a template to build my own, but I couldn’t find an editable version included in the course.

Could you kindly share it as a Word document or LaTeX file? It would be a great resource to help me implement what I learned.

Questions for Alex and Rahul which I know were covered in some videos somewhere in snippets, but maybe not all in one question. Taro has amassed a lot of great content in its courses and blogs -- how long did it take to create initial MVP of quiz app before the Taro founders quit their jobs to go and work on Taro full time as a startup entrepreneurs?

• When did the founders pivot?
• How long did it take to create initial content (blogs over the years, lots of videos, powerpoints etc.)?

It's impressive to see the amount of rich content, how long did it take for Rahul and Alex to conceptualize Taro (in its early form, name), what ways did they test the success metrics of various pieces of content for a single feature (video series, single video/blog etc.) - how well did they perform over a given period of time?