Career Advice About Instacart

I have an opportunity to work on what could be an interesting side-project.

I was approached by a matchmaker friend of mine to help her with her website. Her website is currently used by ~80 matchmakers and the number of matchmakers is growing. Essentially, the site is a database of profiles that matchmakers can search based on various criteria.

After speaking with my friend, it's clear there are 2 main things that need to be done.

The first is a website migration. Right now the site is hosted on Salesforce which my friend says is expensive, so she's looking to host on something cheaper.

The second thing is she wants to develop a mobile app because so many of the matchmakers matchmake on the go and it's inconvenient for them to use a site that's not optimized for mobile.

This project has a number of great qualities

1. An area of interest (to me)
2. Real users with a real business problem
3. Potential to get paid for my work
4. Ability to make lots of connections and develop my network
5. Grow my technical skills through web-dev and mobile-dev

As it happens, a lot of the plusses are also minuses:

1. I'm a Data Engineer and have never done front-end or mobile-dev, so I'll have to learn a lot and it could be stressful
2. I'm 2 months into a 6 month contract Data Engineer role at Instacart (my first Big Tech job) and really want to be renewed if possible. Working on this orthogonal project in the evening won't allow me to work on work

Overall, I'm learning towards just punting on this, i.e. telling my friend I don't have time for this right now, helping her find someone, and if I change my mind later on, offering to help then.

Am curious if people feel strongly one way or the other regarding what to do.

Thought are welcome!

Thanks!

I know that moving companies is very powerful in terms of compensation and learning new things. However, I'm wondering if it's still effective in the context of trying to get to the highest engineering execution levels like director or VP?

I'll be starting at Instacart in a couple weeks as an L4 Data Engineer on contract for 6 months to start. I'm coming from a finance company where things move slowly. I was a high performer in my department while regularly working 3 hours a day or less. Much of my time spent at my old job was dedicated towards finding my new job - applying, interviewing, taking courses, etc.

I know I will encounter a culture shock when I start at IC and want to prepare myself as much as possible for it. Mentally, I am taking the approach that I will put in a solid full-day, 8 hours of work every day and perhaps work some weeknights and weekends as well, although I'd like to minimize the need to do that by being effective and prioritizing work during my regular work hours.

In terms of preparation, from Taro I have gleaned that there are 2 main areas I should be focusing on:

1. Code Quality and Velocity

2. Communication

For 1), I have bookmarked on the topic and plan on doing it before I start working. For 2), I have bookmarked and likewise plan on finishing the course before starting work. I actually plan on doing Rahul's Onboarding Course before Alex's Code Course.

Is there anything else I should be aware of? I have gone through already as well as looked over these threads:

I imagine the advice for me is virtually identical to the above threads, but if there's anything I'm missing, please fill me in!

Thanks!!

I'm going through In the lesson on , Alex talks about the value of long uninterrupted periods. Notably, he says that a focus block should be minimum 4 hours.

This got me thinking, what do these 4 hours (or longer) look like? Is it 4 hours sitting down uninterrupted at your desk? Is it 4 hours broken up by getting up every 30-60 minutes to grab a snack or chat with a colleague at the office? Do short walks outside () fit in them?

I'm not trying to be annoying or nerd-snipe, I just want to know what the nitty-gritty behaviour of the world's most productive software engineers looks like :)

For me, I feel like I have a mild case of ADD, so if I score a victory, minor or major, in my code, I get up and do a quick meditation, use the washroom, and/or stretch after ~30 minutes, but my hunch is more productive people sit uninterrupted for longer.

I just had my last date at my (now former) job. I'm set to start at Instacart next week. Whoot!

I'm wondering if I can/should ask to push back my start date by a week. The reasons to do so are:

1. I get 2 weeks of vacation to relax before I start my job. I'd like to do a bit of travel before I start and the extra week would be huge. I won't have 2 weeks of vacation for a long time, so it's a lot.
2. I get more time to beef up on stuff I should know coming into my job.

While I would very much like to ask, I'm inclined not to. Here's why:

1. I'm starting on contract with a fellow contractor and I believe that peer just started today. One week behind him is prob better than 2
2. The contract I signed goes until late December, so I'm not sure they can push back that date even if my start date is pushed back.
3. I kinda already agreed to the start date.

When it comes to negotiating pay, the rule is it doesn't hurt to ask. I know that and benefited from it! But in this case, I'm concerned it does hurt to ask as I don't want to seem unenthusiastic about the job or not looking forward to starting or someone whose word is unreliable.

What do people think? Should I ask or just chin up and bear it?

Thanks!

I'm on a team of 10 people, including my manager. During our weekly meetings, I struggle to pay attention to what's happening when other people give their updates. I only work closely with 2 of my 8 coworkers. For those 2 coworkers, I already have a weekly sync with our manager on a different day. For the time being, I don't have much to do with the other 6 people on my team.

I have 2 questions:

1. Should I try paying attention to others' updates or should I try and reclaim this time and do work during the meeting? One can make an argument that long-term, it's beneficial for me to know what's happening with the other people on my team, but in general, I'm under the impression that the greedy (short-term) approach is best.
2. If I should try and pay attention to others, does anyone have tips for doing so? I'm not sure how normal/abnormal I am in being able to pay attention to people, but I've always been a big day-dreamer. In elementary and high school, I was a good student in spite of day-dreaming during class because school was pretty easy and I was self-motivated to learn from the textbook. In university, I was still a big day-dreamer, but I was no longer a good student because school was hard and I couldn't just learn from the textbook. Now, post-school, I am motivated to pay attention to things that really count. e.g. when my boss wants me to do something, you better believe I'm motivated to pay attention closely to what he says. But by default, my mind doesn't want pay attention to anything unless it knows I need to do it. I can try taking notes, but often times there's so much additional knowledge and context the people working on the tickets have that my notes are kinda useless.

Ultimately, this team meeting is only a half hour per week, so it's a huge deal either way, but I'm leaning towards trying to continue working on my tickets during them (i.e. what I know counts).

I just got an email from my alma mater, the University of Toronto. They're letting me know they are shutting down my old email address, "@mail.utoronto.ca". They are offering to give me a new email account that ends with "@".

I don't foresee myself ever needing this alumni university account. I haven't used my old uni account much in the 6 years since I graduated. Still, the thought occurred to me, could it ever be valuable to have a different account other than my personal gmail one? I suppose if I graduated from a world-renowned school like Harvard or Stanford there would be a more compelling reason to keep an alumni account - after all, that carry status no matter what stage of career you're in. In my case, U of T does have some clout (it's generally considered a Top 20 school and is the largest school in Canada), but not enough that I ever think I'll use it again.

Does anyone have thoughts on using email accounts in general and on my situation in particular?

Thanks!

Building off my question on , I'm curious what the daily schedules of people at Taro look like. I know that this will differ a lot from person to person (e.g. Charlie is coding and Rahul is doing business) and from day to day. Still, if there is a most-common day (the "mode" of days), I'd love to know what that's like, perhaps at the half hour of granularity (just a suggestion, feel free to provide whatever you want). Alternatively, if you prefer to provide what your schedule was like in Big Tech, that'd also be great to know!

Like my focus block question, my motivation here is learning how the highest performers function at a granular level. I can't physically shadow people for a day, but this is the next best thing, and allows me to see how productivity, health, and personal time come together.

I know this is a somewhat personal question, but any details you're comfortable sharing are good to know!

Thanks!

I'm a lifelong Windows user, with a bit of Linux/Ubuntu experience as well. Now that I'm at a Big Tech company, I'm using Mac. I feel like all the Big Tech companies use Mac. Does anyone have tips for getting adjusted? Big important things to know would be great.

Here's my first idea: instead of using my Windows keyboard, I'm going to use the MacBook as my primary display and therefore use the mac keyboard as my keyboard. This will force me to use the native mac keys (Command, Option, etc) rather than the Windows equivalents.

Thanks!

EDIT: after spending a day on Mac, I think I got the hang of it. It's not too different, some of the key combos are different, but I think that's about it.

Need help urgently, I will have a team fit interview with Hiring Manager within 24h (final round, Instacart MLE). How to perform well in the team fit interview? Thanks all.

I'm a Data Engineer at Instacart. Every day, I get a lot of emails relating to PRs that are up for review or have been reviewed and are being merged. I'd estimate ~30, but prob as high as 50 some days.

The emails can come from my anyone on my team (~10 other people) or department (probably ~30 other people).

My strategy for dealing with these until now has been to only look at and review code that comes from 4 other individuals. These 4 people are the ones who I work most closely with. I asked my manager about doing code reviews for anyone else and he said to just stick to the core 4 other people I work with (including him), which makes sense given that I have plenty of work to do and those 4 other people produce a fair number of code reviews to do.

My question is, is there any value in me receiving emails for all those other people in my department who's code I don't care about (at least for now)? Should I try and either unsubscribe from or auto-archive their emails so I don't have to delete/archive those emails every time I access my inbox?

Just wondering what people's strategies are for this.

Thanks!

I'm halfway through and am wondering if his advice in the course changes given that I'm on a contract 6-months to start. What triggered this thought was he says in the video that you should consider yourself "Fully Onboarded" by Month 6 (and therefore take more time before asking questions). Since my contract is 6-months to start, I imagine I should strive especially hard to onboard quickly, but that the advice in the course doesn't really change. There are, after all, human limits to how quickly you can onboard and those don't change whether you're FTE or on contract to start. I believe my situation might be closer to that of an intern. So maybe I should go through ?

Appreciate the feedback!

I'm currently considering switching jobs. My goal is to grow to staff eventually. Because staff-level engineers are required to have a deep understanding of the business and create scope based on business goals, having a good understanding of the industry seems to be a good skill to have.

All of my experience is in e-commerce. I have owned products that range from consumer-facing to the internal admin and management side. Therefore if I continue with the e-commerce industry, I will be able to take advantage of my existing experience. One company I can think of would be a good fit is Instacart. However, I believe coming up with creative business ideas and having the focus to dive deeper into the business require curiosity and interest. I've never had an interest in e-commerce and I also came to find the e-commerce industry not exciting. I also have concerns that e-commerce tech companies usually only can provide opportunities and compensation on the lower end of the spectrum, due to the nature of the industry still relying on the unit economy of physical goods, and is usually subject to lower margins. But on the flip side, I also understand that interest sometimes comes after you are good at something, so maybe my existing knowledge will help me to be good at coming up with business ideas, and I could grow interest from there.

Alternatively, the industry I'm interested in the most is fintech. I am into finance, for example, I once built a budgeting tool (similar to Mint) over a weekend for my personal use. However, I've also heard fintech can be pretty tedious. Fintech companies usually integrate with banks, and banks have generally older tech. Outside of finance, I cannot think of any industry I'm particularly interested in. However, I have a general interest in working for tech companies where the product is the software, not using software to sell something physical.

May I get some advice on how I should go about considering the industry as part of my job search journey?

I was given the task to scope out some tickets for next year and to assign time estimates to them.

How should I go about doing this? I have 4 tickets to time-estimate.

At a high-level, I'm thinking that I should be working to the tasks down to simpler parts which should also be simpler to estimate. But how granular should I go into decomposition? Looking at my (more experienced) colleagues' work on estimating their tickets, there estimates for their tickets are anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks.

They also jotted down a few bullets on assumptions and some of the decompositions involved.

So decomposition I would guess is step 1.

Before I even do that though, maybe I should be speaking with the stakeholder assigned to the ticket so I can get a better understanding of what's involved.

So I need to a) talk to stakeholders; b) decompose the ticket into chunks; c) come up with an overall time-estimate.

Did I leave anything out?

The fundamental challenge here is that it's hard to predict the future and know how long something will take before doing it.

Thanks!

My onboarding buddy is getting a business phone for email + slack. He says it's important for keeping good WLB and mental health.

Is this standard practice?