Learning Quickly Q&A and Videos

What's the best way to upskill oneself in emerging fields?

for example, what would be the most effective and easiest way of upskilling in Data & AI projects in absence of any direct work opportunities that involve those fields?

Hello,

I am working as an Entry level engineer at mid size product based company. In my end year performance review, I got a feedback that I can work on improving my debugging and technical skills more. As well as, knowledge of other features and overall product as a whole would need to be increased as well.

My Tech lead has offered to mentor me by conducting 1:1 sessions to help me improve at debugging and help identify patterns and teach basic principles. 2 other senior engineers on the team also reached out and offered to conduct sessions regularly with me, for which I am really grateful.

For more context, all my teammates work remotely, so it is not beneficial to go to office. My question is, how can I best utilize these sessions with the senior engineers on team to improve more and skill up? That is, what kind of preparation/ questions should I have ready to make the most of these sessions?

Preface: I might sound a bit critical at some points, but I’m asking this question with the intention of learning, not to demean others as this question has been on my mind for a while.

A big reason why people join startups is that at startups you learn faster than you would at big tech. What’s not clear to me though is how this actually translates to having a successful career (especially when transitioning to big tech). Specifically, how does “learning more” in startups/getting more scope in startups translate to “materialistic” rewards such as TC, getting into big tech, getting senior swe faster etc.?

I've seen Seed’s presentation about . He’s clearly achieved amazing things at Klaviyo, but at least from his LinkedIn profile, he joined Meta as an L5 (senior swe) with 4 yoe - couldn’t you achieve this result simply by working at Big Tech for just as long? If that’s the case, then what’s the point of joining a startup?

I’ve watched Taro’s masterclass on choosing a good company (and many other startup-related videos on Taro), and for the pros for startups - specifically getting more scope - seems very superficial. Similarly, the cons for big tech (the inverse of startup pros- harder to find scope) seems also superficial.

What’s the best way to learn really good front end engineering? Specifically what frameworks / languages are useful, design patterns, and some projects to get hands dirty?

my motivation for learning front end is to build products that people would actually use :)

I am a frontend focused full-stack engineer with 7 years of relevant experience in the frontend engineering space and a total of 12 years of experience. I am not able to decide where should I invest my time when working on side projects. Should I start picking up mobile (Android/iOS) or continue to sharpen my skills in the frontend development space? To put it another way, should I invest my time in going deep in my current domain or should I invest time learning mobile UI development as that has gained more traction and is viewed as more valuable skill?

I think I am unable to decide whether to go about developing my skills in breadth or depth.

On most projects that I worked it was enough to have a high-level of how the higher picture of the code works and for the most tasks it was enough to copy paste and adapt existing code and for debugging it was also enough to have grasp the high level image.

However, I worked only on maintenance projects, that weren't very innovative. In order to have the chance to work on a good project how well should I know the tech stack?

For example for the stack: java/spring/elasticsearch/kafka/AWS, should I know the newest annotations or how the framework works under the hood, and probably be able to extend the framework, how to debug machine on VM etc?

Is there any sort of metric with respect to how in depth you should know your tech stack? Because in order to write code in a tech stack you don't need a lot of time to learn if you know the basics, but to write state of the art code I feel like you need years.

I've been in the IT industry for 3 years, working on various projects. For the past 1.5 years, I've been heavily involved in Python projects, mainly as a back-end developer using Django. My tasks typically revolved around building or updating APIs as per specific requirements.

Most of these projects were already underway when I joined, so I mostly inherited tasks based on existing project needs. As a result, I wasn't part of the initial database design or project structuring.

Now, I'm starting on my personal project using Django. However, I lack experience in structuring and designing a project from scratch, especially in organizing apps and defining models.

I took a look at other frameworks like Spring Boot and noticed they don't offer the same level of "batteries included" features as Django.

I'm currently dealing with two main challenges:

1. Impact of Learning Django First: I'm concerned that focusing solely on Django might limit my overall understanding of back-end development. Django's comprehensive built-in features might not be present in other frameworks, and that worries me.
2. Project Design and Structure: I'm puzzled about the best practices for structuring and designing a Django project, especially regarding app organization and model structuring.

I'm seeking advice on overcoming these issues and figuring out how to structure my project effectively. I'm also contemplating whether sticking with Django could potentially narrow my overall grasp of back-end development because of its extensive in-built functionalities.

Also, I applied to some companies and most of them are asking for experience in Java back-end development.

Hi,

I am a mid level engineer. Recently I was given a task which had a tight deadline. I started looking at the task and was stuck as the results from the code run were not as expected while testing. I was unfamiliar with this area of code so tried my best to understand the code and investigate the cause of unexpected result. I raised this with the team and also raised this as a blocker. I mentioned that I did not have confidence in going ahead with the task without understanding the cause of the unexpected results. My team was unhappy with this as the code has been working okay so far without any issues and the unexpected results were likely because of a gap in my understanding. The team assumed that I did not want to do the task whereas my hold up was not wanting to proceed without having a clear understanding of what's going on.

Should I have approached the situation differently? How to work with an unknown or hardly known area of code on a tight deadline?

I have had issues in the past with the team because of performance and other reasons. I have recently improved my performance but fear falling back to the old ways.

Thanks

Git/version control is an important skill for people in tech. What are some ways to get good at it? It's often easy to do things in a hacky way when there is a git command that does exactly what you want to do that will save you a lot of time in the long run. Also, understanding the fundamentals of how Git works can go a long way.

What are some good tips? Other than , of course :)

Even though starting to work for a big company like Meta, Amazon, Google, etc. I believe is a hard to achieve (I haven't work for) somehow it looks pretty straightforward. Learn for interview, get the job, level up. Yes, I am sure it's hard and not many will do it but still you know what should be done (yes, may don't know how). But let me tell you a different story:

I work in a not that famous country in the EU and non of the top tech companies is there. Actually 90+% of the companies are outsourcing companies. As a SE with 10 years of experience in the outsourcing world I can tell you how it works: you work on a legacy code which is so old and so bad (hundreds of people have tried write code there) you can't see good practice at all, no code reviews (sometimes there is bad it is very rare), no unit tests, performance review is only about client's feedback and so on, you got the point. It's about the money only and nobody cares if you are good or not if the client is happy. In very rare cases I have started something from scratch but all of my colleagues were so bad progmmers like myself that we messed up all. It's a deadlock. After 10 years I realized I am a bad programmer and I've seen so many bad practices that I have no passion to do anything anymore. Now to the questions:

1. Is it possible to apply best standards in an outsourcing company like those in FAANG and if yes, how?
2. How can I fill all the gaps I have at the moment? Can I fill all the gaps with side projects only? How can I fill them when nobody will teach me anything new. Nowone will review my code and like @Alex said, they are the main source to learn :) How would I know is the code good or not? Could it be better?

The ultimate goal of my career (and maybe in life) is to fill the gap not only in my skills but to create a company (product based or outsourcing) where everyone who join to have a chance to become a great programmer. But before helping others, I need to help myslelf. This is how I found Taro.

I don't have a CS degree but I am working as a junior engineer. I am currently in the process of learning software engineering concepts and building foundational knowledge of systems (haven't really gotten into it but that's my next plan).

With the whole AI frenzy going on, my attention keeps diverting from one area of focus to another. It's hard to prioritize the things that I want to learn, and I am getting quite overwhelmed. Why? Because I've 1 year of experience and as a result of this constant flip flopping, I don't think I have really gained foundational knowledge of a certain topic which is appalling.

I failed out of my computer science program at university for this exact reason - did way too many hackathons at the cost of gaining a foundational understanding of topics. I want to do things right this time and not fall for the same trap where I sacrifice becoming good foundationally.

Has anyone faced this issue before? Looking for some advice on how to manage expectations and learning to grow as a developer.

I am the only experienced Full Stack developer in the team and I felt that the management got a bit excited when they found out. For the first week I was asked to represent my team to the UI review committee to get the UI approval, I had little or no background of the feature but it was kind of rushed out.

Second week, I was told to write the design document of a feature which I was not aware of. I started digging deeper into it, but after 3-4 days I was told there is some other team who is working on something similar so I should stop working on it.

Third week, I was told to again start working on it but then was told to put it on hold. Within the same week I was also told to write the Engineering document for the FE development for the team, this was a bit surprising for me seeing there is almost everything custom at SF, I felt I needed some time to understand the ecosystem, it is the work in progress.

Hi Taro Community,

I’ve encountered an interesting situation at my company, where I was the sole member in India until recently. In March, we hired an internal manager in India, whom I now report to. In our latest 1:1, he mentioned that I wouldn’t be assigned direct coding tasks possibly until September or October. For now, my work involves renaming elements within the codebase, and while I understand the rationale behind these changes, I’m missing out on more substantive coding work.

Given this context, I’m seeking advice on how to proactively engage with and understand our codebase. Without being assigned direct coding tasks, what are some effective ways to delve deeper into the code, learn its intricacies, and prepare myself for future assignments?

• Should I take the initiative to review and study different parts of the codebase independently?
• Could I propose small, self-initiated coding projects to demonstrate my understanding and initiative?
• How can I use this time effectively to ensure that when coding tasks are assigned, I’m fully up to speed and ready to contribute meaningfully?

Any tips or shared experiences on how to navigate this period would be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your help.