Communication Q&A and Videos

We use JIRA for writing up tasks, which the respective engineers always make, but there is no sprint. So, we need more sprint retrospection.
All communications are done very vaguely via a Slack message, sometimes a word with little but no context or a screenshot.
I want you to know that I'm concerned about communicating this request for proper planning with my manager.

Hey there, for context, I completed my first year as Software Engineer.

I joined the company because I was in dire need without checking the company culture, following which I was not satisfied with the designation. I then started to look out for a job.

I got that offer after 4 months of joining with 33% increase in the salary.

When I told my EM he was willing to talk to the HR and match the salary but then the Head of the department didn't promote my role in the light that others in the team will think and ask why in 4 months I got my role upgraded.

The leadership conveyed that I might get the designation in the 6 months appraisal cycle.
In the appraisal cycle they denied my promotion saying my salary doesn't match the orgs designation and they don't know what to do.

I was not happy with the decision and since I didn't had any offers I kept working for the organisation hoping I will get it in the 1 year cycle.

Now I didn't get the review form for 1 year appraisal cycle. I think they will say in the lines of because your salary was revised at the 4 month you are not eligible for this cycle.

Though I don't feel my designation is the right one. But I have some other responsibilities as well like family, commute etc. I'm losing my motivation.

I need help in crafting effectively to EM and HR so that they consider my role and some appraisal so that they inline my career in the organisation else juniors will have a higher role in front of me.

From today I have also started looking out for other jobs, but I don't want to hurry in making decisions.

I recently completed a project where I was the sole IC on the project. The project mainly involved migrating logic from a legacy service but involved integrating with a service managed by another team. I was responsible for the design of solution, estimating a timeline and delivery of the project (writing the code and testing).

Unfortunately, I ran into errors last minute and had to communicate delays a day before the expected completion date. We also ran into a tricky error post launch but I failed to communicate an expected deadline after the cause of the bug was identified. My manager and I have spoken on potential strategies and the need to communicate expected completion time.

My question here: What can I do a better in the future? When driving a project, how are you structuring your work so errors are surfaced as early as possible? How are you communicating risks and concerns that come up during a project?

How early in the internship do you make your intentions of wanting to get a return offer clear and how would you go about doing so, do you just talk to your manager or your mentors as well?

I lied in the standup. I said that I completed a task but I didn't. I was not even close to complete that task.

After they ask me for a demo within 1 hour and then I had to say I was having some issues with the project and the meeting should be cancelled.

How screwed I am?
I feel I lost the trust of my team in my work. How can I recover from this situation?

I ran into this issue a few times so far:

1. I need to solve a problem.
2. 2 senior people (could be engineers or managers) tell me to use different solutions.
3. They do not talk to each other directly.

I'm the middleman, bouncing back and forth between solutions. Getting blocked at the PR level (sometimes before that too) by either stake holders.

It's demotivating, I do not get things done quick.

What should I do?

In a coding interview, can you explain the approach first and then when you move to code, not explain or talk?

I tried to talk while coding in an interview. But I found writing code fast and well was difficult then.

What does an ideal interview look like, in your opinion?

I cold emailed Tech Lead of a small startup (series A) and got the chance to have a coffee chat with them. How can I ensure that I have an effective coffee chat and it doesn't sound like an interview?

I found an open position for that company. So my real goal is to get a referral/hope that the HM is the contact. But obviously I don't plan to be upfront with mentioning a referral/the position and only bring it up towards the end.

But putting the referral bit aside, I am also genuinely interested in learning about their career, what they do, and understanding the technical aspects of the problems they are working with

Finally I would like to give value to them back as well, but there's only so much I can do as a junior. How can I give them value?

Other things I will do:

• Be respectful of their time
• Ensure I am clear about what I'm looking for from the coffee-chat (excluding the referral)
• Following the Taro guidelines on being thankful and effective communication strategies
• Avoiding asking generic questions

Finally Alex says, good communication is all about understanding the other person's incentives. wrt a coffee chat, what is the incentive for a tech lead? I'm sure a good part of it is paying it forward. But if anyone would be willing to highlight the incentive of a tech lead, I would greatly appreciate it!

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've been working as a software developer in federal government for the last 5 years with the last 2 being primarily within an innovation division.

Over those years I solo developed many internal projects; initially during downtime/upskilling time and later on doing it fulltime.

Each one of these I believe could of had a profound impact on internal processes and ways of working which would then have a positive knock-on effect to the general public.

However these projects never saw a big enough audience that could have that sort of positive impact.

No matter how much the users or executive would love the product/s - the endorsement would only ever go as far as a good CV piece or getting to work on what I wanted.

From what I've heard this is different in big tech. (ala Paul Buchheit w/ gmail)

But is it really like that and if so, how can you encourage institutions that are not known for risk taking and innovation to change?

I have been impacted by the recent layoffs. Let’s call it Company A. After that, I got an offer from company B. Since I’m on H1B visa, I had to sign the offer and join the company as soon as the visa transfer is completed. Let’s say a short time (less than 2 months) after joining company B, I got an offer from other companies - company C that I have interviewed in the past which offer better level, scope (project) and TC and if I decide to move to company C.

Questions:

1. How should I notify the manager at company B and explain them the situation?
2. How and when do I notify company C that I had to join company B to maintain my visa status?
3. I’m afraid that company C would think bad as I’m leaving a recently joined company B (what if the company C’s recruiter think if I will do same with them in future)
4. What if the company C does layoffs after joining them?
5. Is there a possibility to make sure anything(s) with company B to burn as less bridges as possible?
6. Communication tips are much appreciated
7. Any other inputs/questions I need to keep in mind

Thank you so much.

I'm starting an API migration project due to a licensing issue and am the primary point of contact for stakeholders.

I earned this responsibility by building a relationship with the downstream legacy team and leveraging their solution with ours, using our framework in a novel way. My manager quote said “not that you can you should own the xfn”.

This is my first time doing non-technical work. Here’s what I've done so far:

• Created a step-by-step plan and design document, captured requirements with due dates, and integrated tasks into Agile sprints.
• Maintain a living document for future technical challenges, and note taking for all steps I outlined.
• Outlined the battle plan to the po, my manager, and the senior engineer who all gave sign off.
• Plan to give updates and assist with troubleshooting for client teams.
• Set a goal to thoroughly test the solution, ensuring an adequate test suite is in place, aiming for it to work on the first try.

Questions:

• For cross-functional alignment, what steps should I take for communication and updates? We have a Slack group with all clients. If there’s a communication template that worked well for similar projects, it would be helpful.
• If there was one thing you'd challenge me to do in my execution of this project, what would it be? For context, I’m probably mid-level with an interest in learning how to grow.

Hey there!

I work on the only revenue-generating team at my company. In theory, we have a standardized set of products that we sell to customers.

However, the go-to-market team has been advertising more and more custom solutions to customers, causing engineers to be stretched thin to accommodate the non-standard changes.

As a team, we recognize that there are repeated features with these custom solutions, meaning that we could, if we had time, re-work our standardized set of products to include said features. Unfortunately, the engineers' efforts to convince management that we should spend time doing exactly that has failed.

Any thoughts on how to approach this issue?

Thanks.

I applied for a position and didn't get it but the recruiter said I could send him the role I'm interested in. I have sent him a position I was interested in and he responded earlier but when I reached out again I didn't get a response. Do you think it appropriate to call/ email him again when it has been a few months?

In my organization, there are SDE roles till level 4, and then on top of that, you become an EM. Many times, an SDE 3/4 (who is considered a technical lead) gives tasks or creates the sprint. But then when the junior engineer goes to an EM to show their work, the EM changes the entire approach or assigns vague tasks.

This impacts the velocity of the sprint. I do want to understand: How do I put it out to the upper management such that this doesn't happen? Also, should an EM make technical decisions in this way?

Hi,

I am not sure maybe I am going crazy but I think my manager doesn't want my growth. I have been at the company for more than 2 years now. My team was doing very basic stuff. Recently our team direction changed and we got interesting work. My manager was on vacation and that work is now led by some other engineer in the team. I didn't say anything. Also, time and again he tries to find fault in front of the whole team and he does with me only. How should I deal with him?

So within my own area of the codebase and tech stack I own, I'm very comfortable and confident leaving feedback and sharing thoughts. However, I know that in order to grow to senior, I need to expand past my immediate area into other spaces like the components and services built by other teams in my org like sister teams. For those areas, I'm unsure how to share my thoughts since I'm not an expert in those codebases. So let's say I come across a code review from one of these more "separate" areas from my own and the engineer behind the diff is more senior than me - How can I leave my feedback in a way that respects the situation?

A bit of context, I've read the EM videos on Taro, and I feel the one that I have is not on the same levels. They lack of many things. I fear to provide the proper feedback because my promotion and appraisal is on the line.

They got promoted from SDE 1 to EM because of the funding

1. I would recommend my manager to others?
   ~ For people management yes, for technical stuff no
2. My manager assigns stretch opportunities to help me develop in my career?
   ~ I don't really understand this question
3. My manager communicates clear goals for our team
   ~ No they don't, don't have any documentation, a system design decisions are made on ad hoc basis, team is not aware about the changes.
4. My manager consistently shows consideration for me as a person
   ~ yes people ops are good
5. My manager effectively collaborates across boundaries(eg team, org)
   ~ Nope, there are certain teams expecting the manager to steer the ship but since there is no planning many of the things are pending
6. My manager gives me actionable feedback on a regular basis
   ~ Nope 1-1 is there is no feedback for me
7. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about my career development in the past six months
   ~ Yep promotion and appraisal talks as I'm identified as top IC + team lead who is proactive
8. My manager has the technical expertise required to effectively manage me.
   ~ Nope, they lack
9. My manager keeps the team focused on priorities, even when its difficult
   ~ This they do but always the output has no value only there is a hype and fear to get things done, no business value is generated
10. My manager makes tough decisions effectively
    ~ They reorg the team only thinking them as a resource rather than how much context and individual has made in the project
11. My manager provides the autonomy I need to do my job
    ~ They do and then I plan it accordingly but when a junior goes to manager he changes the scope and context
12. What would you have your manager change?
13. What would you recommend your manager keep doing?

But, overall I fear to write what I wish to communicate to the leadership.

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?

I've noticed that when recruiters reach out on LinkedIn, their main objective is to get me on a phone call to discuss the role they're looking to fill.

From my point of view, there's always 3 things I want to know before speaking with them:

1. The job description (usually provided)
2. The remote work/in-office policy (usually provided)
3. The compensation (usually not provided).

I just had a recruiter reach out looking to get me on a call, and in asking for the above 3, he provided the first 2 and not the comp. range. I messaged him back asking point-blank about comp.

My question is, should I be this direct? Or are there advantages to getting on the phone call with the recruiter first (advantages to me, that is, not to them).

Thanks!

I recently gave my first presentation ever and I was so confident about how to do it but when I saw so many people looking at my screen for the first time and going through my work with a fine-tooth comb I just froze and didn't know what to do. I've been on the team for a year and 6 months but never had to present before because I'm so used to coding heads-down.

Lots of "ums" and "buts" and a few awkward pauses and I just wanted to crawl under a table and hide. I feel so defeated because everyone will judge me and my calibre and hold it against me as an L3 who doesn't know what he's talking about. I could feel 50 eyes looking directly into my soul.

How do I recover from this? Are my chances at promo delayed? Did you experience this early in your career?