Communication Q&A and Videos

I am a recent graduate who just started a new position at a small startup. Along my short journey thus far, I have connected with a few people outside my company whom I have asked for career advice and whom I think could be great mentors for me. However, I would like to formalize, or start formalizing, our premature (I have only spoken to them 1-2 times in total) relationship which currently consists solely of advice-seeking to a mentor/mentee relationship. What is the best way to approach this? It feels inappropriate and unprofessional to ask them to "be my mentor please!" Any advice is appreciated. I expect the answer here to depend on whether the mentor figure is outside or inside one's company since if they are outside (as in my case) it is much less of an expectation for them to give me their time free of charge.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get the email address of an interviewer after an interview so we can thank them for their time? Some companies have a catch all domain so it can be hard to guess email addresses.

I recently joined a team for a project and I want to be prepared for any feedback I feel can be unfair and sometimes insulting.

Should I just document everything?
I want to be prepared to expect the worst even though I feel I'm doing fine.

After speaking with the recruiter for the first screen, is it good practice to send a quick follow-up email to the recruiter saying "It was great speaking with you today. Looking forward to next steps!". Does this convey enthusiasm and focus or being a over-eager and insecure?

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 spoke with a hiring manager about a software engineering opportunity after passing technical interviews. One thing he told me was this split between configuration and hardcore development. When trying to clarify the HM's use of the terminology, I got the impression that the HM defined "configuration" as building on top of an existing platform and "hardcore development" as building things from scratch, which the HM appeared to confirm.

However, I'm still unsure if I presented my clarifying questions correctly. Should I try and probe for more details if the HM feedback is positive, or is my impression accurate enough?

As you climb up the career ladder (senior -> staff), this soft skill becomes more and more important. What are some ways I can keep honing it? Are there any professional courses I can consider?

I would learn to be effective and efficient at it, specially in scenarios such as public speaking, team meetings, project status, emails etc.

Also, English is not my first language.

I felt under-leveled and undervalued in my existing org so I interviewed in a top product company and landed an offer. Once I viewed the master class on Taro. I feel it's more than the compensation it's the team and leadership.

How do I politely deny the matched offer?

Pre-covid I used to do a bit of public speaking internally at work and sometimes at events on behalf of work.

Now I'm super rusty but have some opportunities coming up that'd also involve a technical talk component (which I have even less experience in).

What are some ways you've improved your public speaking as well as the quality of your presentations as a whole?

How to define the priority and work on your projects?

How to setup clear expectations for yourself and your team?

I had a round with a recruiter from a Big Tech company today. She reached out to me on LinkedIn, but it wasn't for a specific role, it was more of a call to determine what team would be best for me.

The call lasted about 25 minutes, where she asked about my background and explained the interview process. Then she asked me if I had any questions.

I felt constrained in asking questions because I felt like the questions I would ask a Hiring manager or member of the team to find out more about the team would not be questions the recruiter could answer. Also, she is recruiting for many teams, so how much can she really know about the team?

Should I have taken the opportunity to ask questions?

My usual go-to questions are:

• What are the company’s/team’s greatest challenges right now?
• What can you tell me about the team or group I’d be working with?
• How has the company changed in the past year?
• What are your favourite and least favourite things about working here?

The first 2 are team specific and are ones I felt the recruiter might not be able to answer so well. Indeed, when I asked what the company's biggest challenges were, she said that's very broad question, and I don't think she could answer for the team. She already told me basic info about the team, so I couldn't ask my 2nd question.

I could've asked the latter 2, but they feel kinda forced, especially during an intro call.

Should I have asked anything? I'd like to make a good impression on her, but I also don't know how important that is since she's going to take my profile back to the team and they'll determine if they want to proceed with me.

I've heard that a good question could be "How did you find me?" or "What made you interested in me?" since it forces them to come up with strong points about you and thus gives you a more positive image in their mind. Practically though, if I ask "how did you find me?", they might say "simple LinkedIn keyword search" rather than "I love your background using X, Y and Z tech!"

Thanks!

• How am I to approach 1:1s with juniors devs in the team
• What does it mean to gain social capital in this interaction
• How to establish influence without authority in this interaction (even if there is scope for authority)

DoorDash has a tradition where your manager sends a "Dashiversary" email to the entire company on your work anniversaries. The manager creates a Google doc and collects notes & photos from your colleagues and cross-functional partners, then adds his/her own note at the top of the email. Given the impact of Deep Thanks, what should I write in these notes to leverage these opportunities to build relationships?

I recently got to an onsite round of a company for a backend engineer role (I have got no front-end experience so far) and they mentioned having a product architecture round which assesses how I can articulate user stories, come up with functional requirements and how I effectively collaborate with the tech lead of the team.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to prepare for such a round?

I found some helpful videos on YouTube and I would like to hear from the Taro community on what's the best way to prepare and approach such interviews and if you all have any personal tips/ways to structure how you tackle various things in such interviews.

Just watched this short course before work today, and found it very relevant. I'm a veteran developer. I'd like more content and wisdom on how to have the confidence to ask questions so I can onboard effectively when there is a steep power imbalance. I'm feeling pretty exposed in a new position as the information I need to get a solid foundation is not readily available, and my leaders technical writing is so brief as to be unusable for new starters (its expert writing for experts, not expert writing for the less knowledgable).

I know you said if you went into more detail it would be 20 hours, but seriously, that would be extremely valuable content for me.

The difference between a great place to work and a mediocre place to work is often the quality and willingness to of colleagues both senior and junior to communicate and share. The worst places are when colleagues on the same team don't really work together on problems and only communicate through PRs. Such feedback is too late IMHO and leads to waste and low motivation.

Hi everyone, I was wondering if it is unethical or rude to not respond to some recruiter messages at all or to random people asking if you're available to start a business on LinkedIn? I have a lot of them and know what's it like to be ghosted by companies as an interviewee so wouldn't want to offer the same treatment, on the other hand it takes me a lot of time to craft even a single answer, what's your take on this ? To be honest some offers are also low-ball offers that it makes me not want to respond at all :)) but I wouldn't want to be rude to people.

On H1B visa. New to US. I need some information on what other H1Bs are doing related to finances, buying a house, green card etc. Unfortunately, only people I know are the ones from my office. I have tried meetup apps and still have not gotten anyone with experience in the topics that I have mentioned. I have some senior collegues who are/were on H1B. Is it okay to ask these personal questions? All we have are office team lunches. When to bring up these questions? How to keep in touch with them even after we leave the team/company?

I have been tasked to port a project of porting a ML project that has been running on someone's laptop to the cloud and make it production ready. It is very difficult for this person to give the full picture of the process.

This could be due to he is not actually remembering very well, given that the project has been actually done 1 year ago, or he doesn't like to lose the single point of failure / control situation.

I actually don't care about the reason and I want to get this project to success.

How may I deal with this situation?

Current blocker is that I am unable to properly estimate the time it may take for this project.

I am in a new team. I was given a task to provide estimations on a project that involves various components. 2 components were owned by a different team and they were transferred to my team. I have no idea about those components. My senior engineer told me to contact a person to get estimation from someone in a sister team who previously worked on that component. This person gave me estimates as 8 and 10 weeks and didn't get response when I asked if he could share some details. I didn't try to deep dive as these components are again getting transferred to a different team. Nobody in my team has knowledge about these two components.

In the meeting where all teams in the org were present, reviewing the estimates. My senior director asked justification for the estimates, the person who gave me the estimates told I have written the estimates. So I told I don't have details and written the estimates as per this person.

I often get stuck in these type of awkward situations. This is clearly not an onboarding task. How can I deal with these situations and how I could have communicated better?

Offering advice or solutions without being asked, especially when you may not be fully informed about the situation, can come off as know-it-all behavior. Offer help or advice when it’s requested or when you're sure it's needed.

When people talk to me, I have a tendency to pause. This has led to feedback that colleagues wish I could answer their questions faster. The problem is that I need to pause for some questions as I need the time to think and formulate a good response. Is there a way I can incorporate this feedback without sacrificing my answer quality?

In my previous company, I joined as a junior (L3) and rose to L5 level. People around me listened to my ideas sort help for any new patterns. But now after moving to the new company, I am feeling insecure about proposing any new ideas or suggest any new stuff. Going over some videos at Taro, I realised I need to gain respect by improving my code quality and be communicative about my work.

In a few scenarios I try to put my ideas in a meeting or a group. But If I feel like I cannot fight/convince with my ideas. In such scenarios, I let someone in the team/meeting take over their idea. When we go for the implementation, I feel I should have pushed more on my idea over theirs.

I would like to understand how to become a better influencer.

I've just completed my onsite with a big tech company. The recruiter told me I can expect to hear back by the end of the week. We had a call where she asked me about any other offers I have and timelines. In this dynamic, does having other offers or at least telling the recruiter I have other offers make it more likely I will get an offer? Should I tell the recruiter I have other offers? I told the recruiter that I can wait till the end of the week but am expecting other offers next week.

Should I try and communicate urgency toward getting an offer sooner rather than later?

And to generalize this question, is there anything else I should do while waiting?