Building Relationships Q&A and Videos

I want to network with more senior engineers, especially those in the Taro community and within the companies I intern at, but I am scared to approach them.

I ask myself "what would make it interesting/fun/educational for someone to talk to me or mentor me?" (Rahul's advice ), but I can't really think of a reason why someone would want to talk to a college student like me. I don't want a coffee chat to feel like I'm just bombarding them with questions, but I also find it difficult to bring anything valuable to the table.

How can I effectively network with others with limited experience as a college student? What would make an engineer want to chat with and/or mentor a college student?

Whenever I talk to people (outside of my team) they call me humble but then also mention that I might be bragging by sharing my experiences. Even though I don't mean to. I feel like there's a perception improvement by not bragging but also still being able to talk about your accomplishments.

My experiences could be work related or outside of work like Travel, Adventures I've tried lately, etc

We currently have a problem with test flakes happening very often.

Someone is currently working on a systemic fix, but in the meantime, I've taken it upon myself to be the leader in categorizing and assigning people to take on some of the existing flakes as they happen. I am assigning based on who has the most context or who wrote the original test.

My question is: How can I assign these in a way that doesn't cause people to dislike me? I ask as someone who needs to delegate in my role but also needs to get buy-in for various initiatives so its important that people like me.

A couple of things I've tried:

• Trying to be as helpful as possible, showing that as I'm assigning these I've done a little bit of investigation myself to try to fix it (even without much context) or give any info I can gather
• Asking in a polite way (maybe)? Here's a couple examples:
  • "@person, I saw this one flake a few times and noticed you were the original author. Would you be able to take a look when you get a chance?"
  • "@person it looks like we attempted to fix this here (link to github commit) but it seems to still be flaking. If it's ok, I'm gonna assign this one to you."

Any better wording of the "ask" or advice around this situation would be appreciated!

I’ve recently had my first 1:1 meeting with my manager, and we touched upon several critical points that I believe will shape my journey here. Additionally, I learned that my assigned mentor is based on the East Coast, which adds an interesting dynamic to my collaboration and learning opportunities.

After the meeting, when discussing working hours through the chat, my manager inquired about my preference. Considering the timezone difference and aiming for effective collaboration with my East Coast-based mentor, I’m contemplating proposing a work schedule from 12 PM IST to 12 AM IST. This would roughly translate to 1:30 PM EST currently and 2:30 PM EST after daylight savings adjustments.

I’m eager to hear your insights on these matters, especially regarding the proposed working hours. Do you think this schedule is effective for cross-timezone collaboration? How would you recommend navigating these initial discussions and action points in a new role, considering the timezone alignment needs?

Your advice and shared experiences would be incredibly valuable to me.

I'm currently happily employed and I want to cultivate a strong network so that when I need a new job in the future, I am not struggling

I have watched the Taro course on referrals and cold emailing, but my issues is that I went to a small no-name state school and I don't know that many alumni. Also work at a 5-10 person YC backed startup so I don't interact with many people at my job

I understand networking is a long term game, but I feel stuck trying to build deeper relationships and especially trying to level up

I'd love something actionable on how I can add value to people and network that doesn't rely on my job/college

I'd also love to know how to leverage the fact that I work at a YC backed company to network with other YC backed startups?

Everyone wants to work at a YC backed company so I worry that the eng leads/founders get tons of spam email, so how can I stand out -- especially if they are a B2B company where I cant use their product and offer feedback or if they're more mature (series A/B) and I don't really have a lot of feedback

When anyone asks "How is it going", I just say "Good, how are you doing".
There are always awkward pauses. I am skeptical about speaking anything without preparation in advance. Want to communicate well with others (not only in office but outside office too) that may lead to long term friendship with at least one or two people. Any coaching you recommend for extreme introverts to build this skill?

I have realized that my current role is not aligning with my interests due to various reasons, including unsupportive teammates and limited learning opportunities. I am waiting for the right opportunity to transition to a different team and take on a completely new role. In the meantime, I’m working on building side projects with respect to my new role. This transition might take around 6 months to 1 year.

While I am here with my current team, I am trying to fulfill the minimum job requirements. My question is whether I should maintain a decent rapport with my current teammates during this time, such as having 1:1 meetings.

Additionally, I would like to know what kind of teammates are worth connecting with, and how much time and effort should be invested in maintaining those connections when I know this is not the right place for me.

I've noticed that a lot of people don't use their real names on Taro and prefer to be anonymous. I'm assuming this is because they are concerned people at work will find out what they are saying when talking about career moves and such. Are there other good reasons to remain anonymous or semi-anonymous (if someone wants to find out who you are, with some research they can)?

like most questions, I'm sure the answer depends on who you are, but would love to hear the plusses for each side.

My brother is very worried about getting a return offer at Meta - he'll be interning there this summer. He reviewed the videos on , but is still confused on who he would assign to review diffs/vouch for his performance other than his EM.

Hey everyone! I’m looking for some advice on how to make our meetups more engaging and valuable for everyone who attends. Sometimes we don’t have a clear topic, and while the conversations are fun, they can feel a bit repetitive or improvised. Maybe having some structure or an agenda would be helpful, or do you think improvisation works well too? What are your thoughts?

I’d love to make sure everyone gets the most out of their time and leaves feeling like it was worth attending. Any tips on how to keep the conversation fresh, structured, and meaningful would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

1. For my current project, we have a standup call in the morning and end of the day check-in
2. Check-ins were decided by the manager
3. I understand it helps unblock faster but it is creating more anxiety than helping me since I do focus work either early morning or after 4pm. Hence, have no good updates for the team. I also seem to only focus outside of the official work hours 10-4

For those of you who have had a few dozen (or more) colleagues over the years, how do you "maintain" your professional network?
Some things I've tried are:

• Engaging with LinkedIn updates is fine, but don't find this too useful.
• Slack/WhatsApp or equivalent groups to stay in touch in ad-hoc manner. Failure mode is larger the group, the longer idle periods of inactivity. Also easy to tune out since it's hard to find topics which most/all folks are interested in.
• Coaching session calls every so often with a smaller group of trusted peers.
• Schedule 1:1 calls to catch up: Failure mode is it's hard to scale.

Look forward to hearing what has worked for you...

I would love to hear what others here have learned while working with their PMs past and present. I have brushed shoulders with a few and only closely worked with two PMs in our sort-of-cross-functional team, in my career thus far. They are both likable people but it took me a long time to realize that their feature requests were poorly scoped, lacking crucial details, and oftentimes had no acceptance criteria. In hindsight, I am not sure why none of the IC's with years under their belt never really spoke up about that (which led me to believe that was just the way things were).

Fortunately, our goals with Product are better aligned these days and our relationship has been healthy, so we are pretty comfortable give/taking feedback during Sprint Retros, so much of said issues have diminished. However, the lack of clarity in the tickets is still present from time to time, and now when I notice this, it fatigues me to know that I will have to set aside time to hop on a call and ask them for information (which in my mind, should already have been in the ticket?). I see most of my teammates having to do this as well, but I have not noticed their irritation over it. Sometimes, I wonder if I am wishing for an ideal that is rare or does not exist.

Mini rant aside, I would love to know some of your guys's good/bad experiences with Product and how you navigated through them. (i.e. What made it smooth/difficult to work with them? What steps did you take to mitigate the issues?) Thank you!

I’ve gone through Taro's courses on communication and asking questions, which were insightful, especially in showing how juniors can learn from senior engineers with deep expertise. However, as an MLE, I face different challenges and would appreciate some insights or thoughts from Alex or Rahul.

For context, I majored in math and hold an MS in ML from a top 3 university, so I'd say I have a solid grasp of both the mathematical and practical aspects of ML. Machine Learning can be deeply mathematical, often requiring formal training to fully get it. Some SWEs who transition into MLE roles may lack this foundation, and while they might have been excellent SWEs, the gap in math knowledge can hinder their abilities as MLEs.

Here are a few challenges I face with some SWE-to-MLE seniors:

1. Sometimes, my tech lead asks questions that suggest a lack of understanding of ML basics. While directly correcting them doesn’t seem right, what’s the best way to handle this?
2. This becomes a bigger issue when they set project goals that are mathematically infeasible. Without a strong math background, they rely on intuition, making it hard to guide them away from misguided directions.
3. Their informal grasp of ML can also complicate design documents by introducing unnecessary features that don’t align with the project’s objectives.
4. As seniors, they can get defensive and dismiss alternative ideas, which is frustrating, especially when I would need to work on a project with a high risk of failing.

I complained to my skip manager about my colleague's (their manager) code review standards, but ultimately discovered deficiencies in the quality of my own pull requests. As a result, I believe I have lost credibility. How can I regain trust and credibility in this situation?

I believe I have a good relationship with a coworker. My manager thinks we don’t. Should I ask the coworker to record a formal feedback that we have a good relationship, or are there other standard or recommended data points or actions for making this case?

• How to get involved in strategic initiatives that align with the company's long-term goals? This could involve working on new product developments, exploring new technologies, or improving internal engineering processes.
• Where to find those projects and with sponsors?
• Building effective alliances takes time and consistent effort. How to be patient and continue to foster relationships even when immediate benefits are not apparent?

My team has 1 E5 iOS (me), 1 E5 Android, 1 E4 iOS, 1 E4 Android, and several backend engineers. We also have a few web engineers, but I don't work with them.

I optimize for quality even if it takes more time, while my E4 iOS optimizes for speed (often cutting corners, skimping on testing, neglecting edge cases, etc.). My E5 Android's quality is somewhere in the middle of my E4 iOS's and mine, but he takes a lot longer than me on comparable tasks.

My E5 Android tends to push tasks onto others, with the excuse that he "doesn't have time". For example, our team's manager wanted our mobile engineers to learn the backend, so she specifically assigned a backend task to the E5 Android engineer. However, in a 1:1, the Android engineer asked me to take that backend task "if I have time" -- I had finished my iOS tasks early, so I technically had time, but I was hoping to work on a side project to demonstrate E6 scope. When I mentioned that I didn't have time because I was writing a 1-pager, he asked me to share it with him. Then he said we should focus on finishing our existing projects before starting new ones and added a lot of negative comments to my 1-pager, which made it more difficult for me to get buy-in from other engineers.

My team's EM had told me I could DRI a particular project I was excited about. However, the E5 Android convinced our PM that we should finish existing projects before starting new ones, so they forced me to deprioritize the project I was excited about to work on some boring E4 tasks. My E4 iOS was busy with another project, so he didn't have the bandwidth to take those tasks. However, I was hoping the E4 could take those E4 tasks after he finished his current project.

Do you have an tips on how to navigate this? I get the impression that the E5 Android pushes a lot of tasks onto the E4 Android as well, based on the latter's annoyed look in meetings when it happens.

My team will start our H2 scoping soon. Apparently the E5 Android engineer already set expectations with my team's EM that Android will take a lot longer than iOS for that project that I'll DRI.

Hello everyone,

I'm reaching out to this community seeking advice and insights as I consider a significant career transition. Currently, I am working in software engineering, but I've recently completed my master's degree with a core focus on Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Throughout my academic journey, I've developed a strong passion for AI/ML, and now, I'm eager to pivot my career in this direction. While I've gained substantial experience in software development, I believe that transitioning to a team more aligned with AI/ML will allow me to fully utilize my skills and contribute more meaningfully to the field.

I understand that networking plays a crucial role in such transitions. However, I'm looking for guidance on the best practices for connecting with AI/ML engineering managers. I am particularly interested in learning about:

1. Effective ways to initiate conversations with AI/ML leaders, especially when coming from a different technical background.
2. Strategies to demonstrate my competence and enthusiasm for AI/ML, despite my primary experience being in software engineering.
3. Insights into the challenges and expectations specific to AI/ML teams that I might not be aware of coming from a different specialization.

Additionally, I'd love to hear any personal stories or experiences about making a similar transition. What were your challenges, and how did you overcome them? How did you leverage your previous experience during this shift?

I appreciate any advice or connections you might offer. Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you're open to a conversation.

Thank you for your time and support!

Best regards

I am trying apply to companies via referrals by reaching out to people on LinkedIn who work there already. Some people give me a yes but never get back after that. I understand that it's a transaction, but I don't know what value i could offer them in return for a referral? Or how I could get them interested in referring me?

Any tips?

Thanks!

I'm more of an extrovert, while my tech lead is more of an introvert. I feel like our relationship isn't as open and honest as it should be, particularly around sharing feedback. They often times have major feedback for me, but it will come too late, either deep into project execution or as late as performance review.

How can I make this relationship more fluid, so I can get feedback to improve earlier?