Career Advice About LinkedIn

My goal is to level up to Staff someday, and I feel like I've gotten a lot of very high-level advice and examples that are hard to directly apply. What are some detailed examples of Staff level projects, and what about the execution/behaviors made them Staff?

Hey, I hope you all are having a good one.

I was curious how do you network on LinkedIn to find Internships/jobs.

Specifically:

1. What is a good approach to reach out to VPs/Hiring Managers recruiters in your target companies?
2. Being an Entry level/Mid-Level developer what are some ways you can provide value to them too?
3. What are some "Don'ts" of this approach

Thank you in advance.

I've been at a company for 5 years and have 4 different titles. I feel like it is distracting to show 3-5 bullet points for each - maybe just 5 total and also save more room for previous experiences, side projects, and volunteering?

I'm looking to build a social media mobile app (similar in flavor to LinkedIn but for a different use case) and considering various options. With some google search, I found that Flutter is faster than React native, but Flutter has less number of packages available. I didn't use Flutter before.

• What classes of features are much harder to build in Flutter than React native or vice-versa?
• In your experience, how fast is Flutter when compared to React native?

Recently, Alex mentioned that Facebook has deprecated React native internally inside Meta and is now using only native mobile development for all Meta applications. So, I'm wondering the reason behind this.

• How fast are native mobile apps when compared to react native/flutter apps?
• Do native mobile apps inherently support some more features (like running ML models on-device?) that react native/flutter apps can't support?
• Is it preferrable to use react native/flutter until the app reaches a certain scale and then switch to native mobile development?
• What's your rationale behind choosing between these options?

I'm currently at a Tier-3 company with 3.5 YOE and get ~5 recruiters reaching out a week. Some of the messages I can automatically ignore, while some are more compelling. I tend to ignore anything consulting-oriented and am more enticed by the recruiters for specific startups who say something like "come join our series A/B/C startup founded by engineers from Uber/Stripe/Meta! We have $X Million Raised!"

I can only imagine that folks working at Tier 1 or 2 companies must be inundated with these emails and messages all the time and from better companies.

What's good practice and etiquette for handling these? I'm aware of the masterclass on and since I'm aiming for Big Tech or Unicorn, it's somewhat helpful in being able to dismiss a lot of postings.

To make this more concrete, I have 2 specific questions:

1. Is it worth the time responding to recruiters if the answer is no?

2. If my goal is Tier 1 (MegaCap Companies) and I'm at Tier 3, would it be a lot more helpful to get there via Tier 2 (Unicorns and companies people have heard of)?

Open to any other thoughts!

Growing into a staff engineer requires the team to trust our skills and accept our leadership. It takes time to establish this.

Does actively creating blog posts, LinkedIn posts, and keeping GitHub activity green by doing side projects accelerate career growth and get the promotion faster? Or should I just focus on doing my work at my company?

What are some opportunities that you've got due to being an engineering influencer?

I see a lot of emphasis on being :linkedin: famous these days. While a lot of it is valuable content, I wonder what's the motivation behind it? What's in it for very senior engineers?

An exception is if you talk to them such as asking a question. Sometimes I get a connection request from someone with no message that can lead into a conversation.

What is the value in connecting with someone I will never talk to?

As I read through some of the technical design docs / OKRs on the team, I've noticed some fellow engineers put out some really thoughtful comments (especially the more senior folks), however coming up with such feedback observations is not always super intuitive. As a new-hire junior, I'm looking to build up this skill of conducting an effective design / OKR review.

What do you usually look for / pinpoint when reviewing a design doc or OKR for a new project? How can I still provide good feedback despite not having the same level of exposure / experience?

I hope you all find it useful, and I am happy to answer any questions here.

Reddit

The Phone Screen:
1 Coding (this was incremental non-LeetCode style)
1 System Design (Scalable Reddit)

Onsite:
4 Rounds

1. Coding (same style as TPS)

2. System Design

3. Behavioral

4. Hiring Manager

My Thoughts:

• Good recruiter | preps you well

• Good company vibe

• Felt like a convo not an interrogation

Cons:

• Evaluation criteria is unclear, no clear feedback

• Don’t know how I did

Airbnb

The Phone Screen:
LeetCode style

Onsite:
2 stages

1. Coding

2. PR review

3. System Design

My Thoughts:

• Recruiters have a good say! So have a good rapport with them

Cons:

• Even if they say they are moving forward with you, delays can happen

• Feedback takes time

LinkedIn

The Phone Screen:
LeetCode style

Onsite:
5 rounds

1. 2 Coding

2. System Design

3. Behavioral

4. Hiring Manager

My Thoughts:

• Good pay

• Company brand

Cons:

• Recruiting experience was all messed up / chaotic

• Didn’t feel structured

Square

The Phone Screen:
LeetCode style

• Hiring manager round

Onsite:
5 rounds

1. 2 Coding

2. System Design

3. 1 Behavioural

4. Hiring Manager

My Thoughts:

• Team match is done before

• Manager was nice

Cons:

• Unsure how they level/hire candidates

• Too focused on company values

Atlassian

The Phone Screen:
Karat style – This was a combo of coding + short design

Onsite:
3 stages (you need to clear each stage to go to the next)

1. Coding

2. Low-level Design

3. Behavioural (Hiring Manager)

My Thoughts:

• Some interviewers were good

• Recruiters were communicative

Cons:

• Very long interview loops

• Some interviewers were unprepared

Netflix

The Phone Screen:
Discussion about architecture, design, and past projects

Onsite:
4 rounds

1. Design

2. Pair Programming

3. System Design

4. Leadership

My Thoughts:

• Very product-focused

• Interviewers really cared about engineering

Cons:

• Vague expectations

• Very high bar for systems

There's a couple more, but this post is getting too long. Check out the full spreadsheet for the rest of them:

This isn’t really a career question but does anyone have a good recommendation for resources to learn ios app development for a complete noob? I have a lot of experience building backend distributed systems, but other than building one android app back in college 6-7 years ago as part of the coursework, I haven’t really done any mobile app development ever.

I post every question anonymously here on Taro so that my company is not revealed.
I fear if any of my posts are viewed by my colleague on LinkedIn they will start looking at me from a different perspective.

I'm an Android Engineer and I recently did a course on AI for Business Leaders from Udacity I feared sharing it on LinkedIn because my team will start judging me.

I don't even know whether sharing a post will make any deep difference, but I want to shape my career around intelligent systems and reach out to a similar audience in the coming years.

I'm currently building a side project. I completed my idea of a MVP for the project and I'm looking to market it at some point to get some real users.

I have some ideas on posting on reddit and linkedin, but I'm a little nervous as I've never posted on linkedin before.

My project is a web app.

Should I put "incoming masters @ university" on my LinkedIn if I haven't started yet, but am applying to internship positions that are seeking this profile? I'm in a complicated situation where I'm also unsure if I'm going to end my undergrad exactly this summer, or if I should be extending it. Some internships I'm applying for I just say I'm graduating undergrad in 2025. I have one last summer internship at a company that I'm very interested in returning (interned there 8 months last year and the team has budget) but I also want a backup plan in case I don't get a return offer - I'm afraid that if I put incoming masters, they might not give me a full time return offer. The plan is for me to continue with the masters as a backup plan if the job falls through and nothing else pops up

Hi how can I ask a colleague for positive review on LinkedIn. My colleagues have worked with me and know what I can do they often say positive things about me.

Yeah not sure how to ask for LinkedIn recommendation. The thing is it would be really helpful to me. In interviews I don't have 10 years of experience just 2 years. But my colleagues know that I learn faster than usual and what I did in 1 year was really a lot compared to average. But someone working at another company interviewing me they don't know. LinkedIn Recommendations from my colleagues can really help me.

But I am worried about asking them for positive review on LinkedIn they might think that I want to leave the current company. Actually sometimes they kind off subtly tell me to leave the company, well some of them.

My mentor at work tells me if I want higher salary it's best to look for different job than stay at 1 job. This will get higher salary faster and I shouldn't tell the manager he told me this. I want to ask my mentor for a recommendation for linkedin.

Also after I ask my mentor this he/ the team might start treating me differently calculating for me likely/potentially leaving the company more so than staying. Giving me less scope.

So how to approach this in a professional way.
Hey, can you give me a LinkedIn recommendation?
Why? So people that haven't worked with me before also know what I'm worth.

Why? you intend to leave this company?
Uh....

My team will often collaborate with other teams, often times working with them extensively to provide the proper help. However, when those teams achieve their big wins with our support, I sometimes feel like we aren't getting enough credit for our contribution, getting just a sentence or two instead of deeper attribution.

I like these other teams, so I don't think it's bad intent on their part. However, my team goes the extra mile thanking others, and it would be nice to see that same behavior in all our partners. What can we do to better facilitate this?