Junior Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Hi Taro. I worked at Amazon as an SDE for a couple of years before I was laid off. Recently, I signed an offer for a 6 month contract at Amazon. I might get a one year contract at Meta soon though. I never worked at Meta before. I wonder if it is worth burning the bridge with Amazon to take the role at Meta.

I have a few reasons for wanting to take Meta.

• Amazon is only 6 months and it may not get renewed. I don't want to put a short role on my resume and be looking for a job again in 6 months.
• Long term, I don't want to be at Amazon. Amazon really hurt my mental health.
• I would like to join Meta as a full time a lot more than I want to for Amazon. Their culture reputation is not great either, but I really believe it's better than Amazon.

I have one reason for wanting to stick with Amazon:

• It's not like jobs fall out of the sky. I am returning to Amazon now and I may return there one day for a full time role even though I prefer not to.

In a previous mock behavioral interview, I was asked, "Can you describe a time when you missed a deadline?"

Would it be appropriate to share an example of when I came close to missing a deadline but ultimately met it, or are the interviewers specifically looking for a situation where I failed to meet a deadline?

From my understanding, it seems that companies would want engineers to deliver results on time, so missing deadlines would be viewed negatively. That being said, I am concerned that providing an example of almost missing a deadline might not fully answer the question.

I would really appreciate any insights on this topic. Thank you so much!

Hey folks, need some advice on a good side project idea, not sure if this has been answered before!

I’ve been trying to figure out a good side project to do, one that has impact and can get users as well as allow me to showcase my skills. I want to do one that involves the use of real time streaming technologies like messenger queues/kafka which are commonly sought after in the backend SWEs roles that I’m seeing. Also hope that this could me with some system design prep (eg event driven architecture etc).

I have some basic experience of real time technologies in my day job, but i feel this is insufficient as much of the heavy lifting is done by the data engineers in my team (so I basically don’t get sufficient opportunity to work on it).

I primarily develop web apps, so have no experience in mobile development.

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

As I watch , I see the slide where it mentioned MVP and just 1 Thing. And also, in the slide, the example of the app is . I have couple questions about this.

1. To come up with the idea of Just 1 Thing application, I believe most of the ideas are already executed before. Is that something I do have to afraid of or not? When I search on app store now, I see similar apps to Random Name Picker. And I'm afraid for how we grow the number of users as most of users choose to use something existing with top rated.
2. If we take number 1 question as a factor (most of users choose to use something existing), how to come up with the idea about something that someone has not executed before?

I want to build on side projects by myself but to come up with something specific with quality. I'm thinking about to do system design doc (define specific requirement, breaking the big task to small task (make it granular, etc)). Try to make a plan before make any execution.

Please let me know if this plan works for me or not. I want to execute on how I can serve something to users that we all think it's useful.

I've heard it's always good to try and understand your manager's perspective, their expectations, and what they need from you.

I assume most junior engineers wouldn't have prior management experience, so it would be useful/insightful for junior engineers gain some perspectives on the priorities and challenges a manager faces whilst running a team, so they can better help the team.

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.

Hi all. I am working at a contract role right now with a small startup that ends in less than 6 months. There is a chance to convert to full time, but they could also just end the contract.

I am confused about how to handle LinkedIn during this time.

Should I keep the open to work badge?

Currently I get a lot of reachouts on LinkedIn for interviews. I am not sure if that will change when I take the badge off.

• For early stage startups (< series A)
• Medium stage startups (B-D)
• Unicorns (pre-IPO - IPO'ed in < 2yrs ago)
• F500s
• Public Companies (e.g. adobe, wayfair, quora)
• FAANG

This is for strictly DSA not something like pair programming. This is also for Jr/Mid level interviews

I am inquiring on behalf of my wife. She currently holds an H4 visa and is expected to receive her Employment Authorization Document (EAD) around October 2024. She has a Master's degree in International Public Policy and Management, which is unrelated to UX/UI design. Recently, she completed the "Google UX Design Professional Certificate" bootcamp.

She recognizes two main challenges:

1. Her degree is not related to UX/UI design.

2. She has a three-year gap since her graduation in 2020. The reason for this gap is my H1B status, which has not yet led to an i-140, preventing her from obtaining a sponsor for a visa in her field. Initially, she did not plan to seek employment in the US, as she was focused on pursuing public sector jobs in our home country, Thailand. However, after meeting me during her Master's program and my subsequent employment in the US, she decided to stay here with me.

I would greatly appreciate advice on how she can break into the tech industry, possibly at a FAANG company, as a UX designer. If possible, please provide a plan or roadmap for her career transition. Your guidance would be immensely helpful.

I work at a relatively small private company, and we spend pretty much all of our time churning out features as customers request them. I'm wondering if it makes sense to also spend some time digging into data to better understand user behavior. I'm trying to find ways to add value to the company besides just feature work.

I often see advice online / receive feedback from so many different sources. That could be during manager 1:1, peer feedback, reading content on LinkedIn, etc. While I resonate with it, I often find it hard to track all the feedback / advice I receive and holding myself accountable to act on it or change my behavior. This is especially hard when the advice is not immediately actionable (i.e. situation based).

So my question is, how can I consolidate the learnings from all of these sources and make sure I act on it (or at the very least, remember it when a situation arises)?

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?

For my Behavioral rounds Preparation.

1. I curated all the questions surrounding leadership principles
2. I also created STAR answers for each question

I try to demonstrate that I have led Projected and Solved challenging problems on my own. But even with that interviewers seem to downlevel me from L5 > L4 (Amzon Levels). what qualities I should exhibit to get L5 level and how should I prepare for it?

Hi, I'm a frontend developer with 2 years experience at a startup company. I came from Seoul, South Korea and recently moved to the US (Washington State) and I'm trying to find a job.

I'm applying for a frontend job but personally it feels more difficult because I don't have a lot of connections. I wish there are people who can mentor and review my resume etc. The problem is "How can I even approach them in the first place?" I don't know how to start a conversation or how they will react. I am worried that I might take their personal time.

if you have any advice, feel free to give me.
Thanks for taking your time to read this.

Hi! I'm a new member looking to participate in the book club sessions for the Designing data intensive applications book. How can I get a copy of the book?

Hi team, as per my current situation there are cycles for promotion in August and in Feb. I am targeting the Mid-Level title and was told to wait until next Feb for Mid-Level instead of coming August.

I asked for data points and was told I needed more time to mature. I actually would have appreciated some actionable data points if there were any, so that I and my manager can track progress.
I have the following 2 pointers :

1. On a personal front I want to aim for the promotion in Feb and want to let my manager know my intentions and pick up work accordingly however I don't know how to put it across.

2. I would have liked if there were some actionable data points to nail promotion since my manager didn't mention anything explicitly, and I have read and watched guidance about your career is in your hands so wanted to know how can I extract these pointers from my Manager?

I ask these because 1:1's currently . And would have appreciated it if there were actual data points /action items

Would highly appreciate insights from folks on the platform . Thank you :)

Hello folks, hope to get some advice on my current situation.

I have started my job hunting process and a recruiter reached out to me with a open SWE role recently.

We had an initial chat and the compensation range for that role was lower than what I had asked for but the recruiter encouraged me to just go ahead and try anyway. I agreed to it, as I wanted to chalk up some interview experience, and managed to make it through the interview stages.

Today I was informed that I got the offer. However, the compensation is too low for me (which is expected). There's not much room to negotiate a substantially higher compensation because it is the budget given for that project (it's a contract role). The recruiter is still trying to encourage me to take up the role and potentially coming across as kinda...pushy. Any advice on how best to reject them? The recruiter has honestly been really helpful and friendly (eg. giving me tips on what the interview could ask etc) so I will still hope to be able to get the help of this recruiter for other roles, but at the same time i really don't want to offend him or make him think that I'm a picky candidate etc.

It's my first time job hunting so would really appreciate advice! Thank you so much

Hello I wanted to ask anyone whats a good place to look for hackathons Im looking for event so I can really get the grasp of working with others and across meeting new people

So it's been 3 months at my startup.

The day I get there, I see that our product is way worse than advertised (ie. saying we had 20 core features when we actually had 2). That's okay I guess, the team was just selling their vision during the interview process.

After 1 month, one of the cofounders quits. The next day, another one of the cofounders quits. I'm panicking, but I realize I'm stuck here because it's my first job. (looks bad if I leave so early)

After another month, we get an impromptu Zoom invite. 1/3 of the engineers have been fired. Everyone is working 60+ hour weeks at this point to keep the same velocity. The firings were not due to lack of funding btw.

And just the other day, we had mid year reviews. The CEO says my engineering speed is slow. (he claims to be able to do in 1 day what I do in 1 week) However, he's never been a SWE before so not sure how he knows.

My gut tells me to leave, but where will I go? Hopefully I can strive for a FAANG company or somewhere that has a strong engineering culture, but I feel pretty trapped right now.

Reflection:

I think part of the issue may be that the CEO wants FAANG-level performance + ridiculous work hours while providing only 60-70% of the actual comp of these firms. Something about expectations and leveling seems to be amiss here

Personal Context:

I have no problems getting interviews (thankfully, even as a new grad) because I spent a few months contributing to open-source. Just debating if it's worth cracking out the LeetCode for a few companies

Hi, a little bit about myself: I am an entry-junior level software engineer. I just graduated from a coding bootcamp 2 months ago. But before that, I had been doing self-studies. I mainly build with JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Express, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. However, I have knowledge in Python, Redux, OAuth, Jest, Docker, Kubernetes, and some services in AWS. I have been sending out a resume that has a long list of technical skills, but I'm concerned that the very long list might make me appear overreaching and amateurish. That said, I wonder if I should make different versions of my resume.

P.S. I have sent out almost 500 applications, and only 4 reached out to me. I made it to the final round with one company, but didn't make it past the final round.

I was watching the course on "" video from the coding course

As an MLE how narrow should my focus of a tech stack be? and what constitutes as a tech stack?

99% of my work is in Python, but at 1 job I did 90% of my work in PyTorch

At my current job I'm doing 40% sklearn/keras (it's a simpler version of PyTorch implementing same things, but is mostly used for ML stuff where models need low customization) + Pandas

Rest 60% of my job needed me to start working with Polars which is pandas but faster and is more heavy weight (similar to PySpark/Dask)

Is that too much branching? or Should I be narrowing my focus?

TL;DR it's ideal to hone in on 1 tech stack, but changing circumstances need me to use different frameworks depending on the problem. Is that bad?

Security teams are typically infrastructure teams rather than product teams. Security teams make changes to existing products to make them more secure, which are usually trivial changes, not intellectually stimulating.

The interesting part is the planning happening before. For the first few months at Google, I did routine security fixes, which was boring but impactful. Then I found a project that allowed me to develop a more complex system for about 2 months, but that project has shipped to production and has concluded.

I am working actively with my manager to find projects that would allow me to write more complex software that will also help me grow technically. So the question is: how do I find these projects?

What I am doing now: stay up-to-date on new threats and what other security teams are doing at Google to see if I can draw some inspiration from them.

I've heard this advice a lot, and I would like to get more clarity on what that concretely means. In particular, what does a junior engineer being proactive look like? Can someone provide examples?

I’m a junior eng trying to break into big tech. I’ve done 1800 LC problems and am highly ranked.

I’m looking for senior+ engs at big companies who can help me with resume reviews, referrals, and general other advice. I’ll happily help you train at Leetcode and answer any questions.

(Based in US)