Mid-level Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Hello Community,

I hope you're all doing well. I'm reaching out to this community because I value the diverse experiences and perspectives we share, and I find myself in need of some advice.

Recently, I've been going through a challenging period due to some personal and family issues. Without going into too much detail, these challenges have started to impact my work performance and my ability to communicate effectively with my team, especially during on-call responsibilities. While I strive to maintain professionalism, I've noticed that my current situation has made it more difficult to manage my work communications as effectively as I would like.

I understand many of you have likely navigated similar waters and may have valuable insights or strategies that could help me improve my communication during this time. Specifically, I'm looking for advice on:

• Balancing Transparency and Professionalism: How much should I share about my personal situation with colleagues or management to explain my current performance without overstepping professional boundaries?
• Requesting Support or Adjustments at Work: What's the best way to ask for flexibility or support from my team or management, ensuring I can manage my responsibilities without compromising the team's objectives?
• Maintaining Productivity and Focus: Any tips for staying productive and maintaining focus on work tasks during personal turmoil?
• Self-Care Strategies: How can I ensure I'm taking care of my mental and emotional health, so I'm in the best position to perform my work and communicate effectively?

I'm committed to overcoming these challenges and continuing to contribute positively to my team. I would greatly appreciate any advice, tips, or resources you could share based on your own experiences or knowledge in this area.

Thank you so much for your time and for any guidance you can provide. This community has always been a source of inspiration and support, and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Joined Meta 2 months ago as an E4 in a completely different tech stack and domain. Recently my manager informed me in a 1:1 and subsequent email with my skip and ERBP that I’m trending BE. It has areas I’m missing the bar on and ways to improve so I’m planning to work on those but is there anything else I can do to turn this around and be successful? Is it impossible to get a CME for H1 if this signal has been documented?

I don't know what to build. I'm looking for ideas. It doesn't matter the programming language or framework.

Thank you!

I joined Meta but Im wondering if I really will be growing if I am just working on small features for the first year or two

I'm looking for a good resources I can study from to strengthen my front end knowledge in react and type script. And may be built some projects to solidify the learnings. Would greatly appreciate any feedback/suggesstions.

He keeps assigning me projects where the visibility is low and it has made me immensely frustrated. I'm looking for a new job but in the interim any suggestions how to deal with my manager? This has been happening for quite sometime now. I talked to him about it last year and then he moved me to a development project which I did pretty well but after it was over he again assigned me low priority projects/tasks which are very tedious to do and not so rewarding.

I'm not sure talking to him will help me in anyway because he is aware of my interests but he keeps doing this and acts like this is the best he can do.

I read and implemented a lot of the advice from Taro on building my relationship with my manager. I also worked closely with him for a year to position myself for the promotion to Senior. Every two weeks, I would meticulously document senior behavior in my "brag document" that I shared with him through Microsoft OneNote. Every month during our 1:1, I would ask him for feedback on what I needed to continue doing or change to reach Senior. During performance review each quarter, I used all of this to officially document my growth, and secured 3 Exceeds with 1 Meets. By the end of Q4, he was primed to go to bat for me.

Then he suddenly got laid off a month or two before names are submitted up the chain of command for promotion. I imagine others might have or will encounter a similar situation. In addition to layoffs, company reorganization or your manager jumping into another opportunity might have similar effects.

It feels like so much of my effort over the past year was futile. What makes this sting even more is that I'm fully aware of my company's promotion cycle, which is once a year in March/April. Promotions rarely happen outside this cycle.

What are some tactics to navigate this current situation and a strategy to avoid this single point of failure in the future?

Here's what I've done so far

• Reached out to manager on LinkedIn to console him on layoffs. Fortunately he brought up the topic of my promotion and advised me to pass along a message to my next manager that we were working together on my promotion.
• My company is still undergoing reorg, and I don't have an official manager yet, so reached out to his manager, which is the Director. The "brag document" in OneNote came in handy since I shared it with him and passed along the message from my manager
• Started looking at other companies for senior roles. It's difficult to bear the thought of starting over from square one with a new manager within my current company and waiting a whole other year.

Here's my thoughts around strategy moving forward

• Maybe work with manager's manager, in addition to the direct manager, for promotions. Would work more closely with direct manager, but at least touch base with manager's manager once a quarter regarding the promo.

I am not that efficient in switching language (afraid I might mess up the syntax for Eg which is not used daily at job) for an interview if I have been practicing in eg: Python for the last month

Today during office hours Rahul talked about this a tiny bit (sans the legal), but I'm curious as I've had many friends who worked at Google previously that discouraged me from applying to Google (like 10 years ago) if I still wanted to do a startup (this was long before Area 120 was a practiced thing). Recently, a friend (VC whose girlfriend works at Google) said many people still build venture/angel funds on the side while still working full time for Google. But of course, don't create your startup company using company property (a la Silicon Valley HBO lessons).

Questions

(1) What companies are flex about having things on the side - a side hustle (but you can't advertise it), examples being two different companies on both ends of the spectrum: Google, Apple etc.)? I've heard some FAANGMULA companies are more stringent than others (Apple being very much against this and super private and only sorta kind supporting open source, vs. others which are all for it and have accelerator/internal incubator programs at the company (Area 120), or even sponsoring ex-employees (a cohort of my class at Verizon Ventures one year was all MIT alumni, ex-Googlers that were sponsored by Google, paid their incorporation fees, I was one of the two weird VR founder people).

(2) I've also heard that from friends if you work at Google, you are not allowed to get paid for speaking gigs on your technical expertise or whatever your functional role is at that company (this differs from from Meta I've heard from other friends). Is this true?

(3) If you go into a FAANGMULA company, what info (legally) what information do you need to provide the the employer? What docs from the state/federal/govt or whatever) that says you have a a DBA, LLC, S/C-Corp etc. What do you need to disclose more specifically and what documentation and legal paperwork do you have to provide?

For example, I currently take consultations and speaking gig money and have revenue (royalties from my book I published years ago) and plan on having an existing app that generates money in the app store that is runs auto-pilot prior to coming into the company. Also note, that I'm aware that this product should not compete with the company's main product lines.**

(4) If you are going to start all this AFTER being hired into FAANGMULA, how do you inform your company employer formally (HR, direct report boss), and that your side hustle does and will not interfere with your primary role at the FAANGMULA company hour wise and that you will still meet all of your core duties/goals/tasks/deadlines for the company and this is sort of 'hack on the weekends thing?'

I recently interviewed with two 100-person startups and both of them have one round of "pair programming" interview. In that round, we do live coding with a very simple coding question. An example question is to design a Robot class that has integer 2D coordinates and listens to keyboard input to move up/left/right/down - Intro to Programming level questions. They emphasis on class methods design and how the solution code is structured.

During the interview, I feel like the interviewer has a clear answer in mind of how it should be structured, but I can't read their mind. I asked what's the use case of my class (how it's called, call patterns, future features, etc...) and the interviewers say something like use your best judgement or ask the question back. The interviewers don't seem to be interested in input parsing and edge cases (like how many edge cases could there be for such a simple question?). They also asked what would you do if you want to deploy it to prod, which feels more confusing (I answered a few metrics, logging, tracing and monitoring stuff but not sure if that's what the interviewer is asking for).

I failed both, but I want to get some learnings out of it. What are interviewers looking for in this round and how should people prepare for it?

I was hired as a mid-level engineer, but I'm performing at the level below it. I had about a year and a half of experience coming into my company but didn't get much from it due to multiple re-orgs. In hindsight, I was a poor hire for my role and have felt this way the entire time. I am not interested in the niche and motivation is a struggle at times. I stayed because the team was really strong and I thought I could focus on the coding and grow technically. That was a mistake.

Fast forward a year and a half later (now), my manager tells me informally that my delivery is ok, but the way I go about my work needs improvement and I'm not growing, so I am performing at a level below. I need a lot of help from other engineers. And that I need fewer comments on my diffs and to do more research on problems because I'm not problem-solving well enough to be at my level. He's completely right. The team is full of high-performers and I know that I'm doing poorly by comparison. But I'm already consistently overworking into the evening and weekends.

I'm also hitting the limit with my mental health. I am putting in effort, but am being told it's not enough. For example, I spend some time understanding X and think I understand it, but teammate questions me in a way that makes me apply that knowledge and I realize my understanding is not so good or I did not think about it that way, so I am ashamed because I have spent a lot of time working on the task, but have failed to deep dive into this part. Or my teammate asks me for my thoughts on how to make something better, but nothing really comes to mind. How do I work on this behavior?

Some other questions:

• Is this a sign to leave my team or company? And the profession? Despite my best efforts, I'm disappointing my team and it's taking a toll.
• I haven't been served a PIP yet, but is this a sign that it's coming?
• Naive take, but is it a bad idea/even possible to ask for a downlevel? The reasoning was that I'd rather keep my job than lose it.
• Any advice?

• I am not great with numbers so capacity planning part for storage, memory, cache, bandwidth takes 5-10mins as part of the initial requirement gathering
• Is there a way to keep it short or you just have to memorize some bytes and 1 million request/day = 12 request/second conversions?

I normally apply to companies on a warm basis, with warm contacts so I can always try to get feedback post-interview to land a job, or sometimes while I apply cold, limit these and prioritize warm ones. I've noticed a lot of new software coming out during the pandemic for mass applications, but I am not sure this will work for me as a non-traditional candidate who has mainly interviewed for positions in the non-standard way. I do realize that given layoffs, the numbers is game is one I might need to play more and could invest some money into this, but I know some software might be better than others. There seem to be so many new services out there, that the market is saturated and I'm wondering how effective this would be and if it's worth the money and that maybe I would rather spend my time (instead of just money) instead focusing on applying more thoughtfully through my warm networks and referrals, rather than mass cold applications via an AI bot or other software service.

Will I get screened/frozen out and auto-rejected for two years if my resume is crap because I hit 'apply' to a hundred companies?

Thoughts?

Hello, I'm currently actively interviewing and more than once, I found myself not progressing due to some knowledge gaps on things that companies seem to expect at my level.

I worked as a backend engineer for 3 years after a coding bootcamp, mostly in product features and APIs. Distributed systems is not something I did on a daily basis.

I have struggled with system design interview questions asking about databases, concurrency, search, among other things. How can I fill those gaps to the level I can pass these interviews?

Here's what I'm going to do, and I'm looking to get advice on whether I should do, stop doing, or do something else that I didn't list.

1. Stanford Databases courses (5 total):
2. Read "Understanding Distributed Systems" by Roberto Vitillo
3. Practice system design interviews with a partner

Thank you for your help!

I'm really excited about my new role as a mid-level backend engineer and have been soaking up everything on Taro about onboarding – it's been super helpful! My aim is to ramp up quickly by delivering small wins regularly and asking enough questions to move beyond the newbie phase. I've got a great onboarding buddy and plenty of support, but no one's handing out tasks. Instead, I get to pick from the todo-list. So, I'm wondering: should I focus on infrastructure tasks or feature tasks?

The infrastructure work is appealing because it's a chance to dive into microservice infrastructure, something I haven't done before (my last job was more traditional on-prem SOA). But I'm also thinking feature tasks might be better for getting a broader understanding of the system and services. I don't want to be a bottleneck for the team, and infrastructure improvements seem like they could be done in parallel without impacting critical deadlines, but it's also an easy way to get nerd-sniped I'd imagine.

Any input is appreciated!

I feel too much like a generalist.

I'm able to scrap something together with the new technologies that come up in my job. However, I never quite feel like an expert at anything. I have three years of experience, two of which were spent in a college rotational program where I switched teams every 6-9 months. When should I start to feel like an expert at certain things, if ever?

To give an idea of some of the things I have worked on/with:
Android / AOSP platform dev, OpenGL, debugging network issues, C++ middleware, testing frameworks

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 have been working as a backend engineer for almost 3 years now as a self-taught engineer, and I've enjoyed this field a lot as I go deeper into system design and strengthening my CS fundamentals as I don't have any CS background in university. In my previous 2 companies, I've got good reviews from my peers and managers, and currently I'm in a team where I'm the only woman and also the youngest.

From networking and discussions, I understand that I am super fortunate to have the current position that I have and I have a lot to be grateful for because I manage to be entrusted with a really big end-to-end project and be equivalent to my peers who are much more senior than me.

However, I'm just tired because every time I need help for brainstorming and pairing, my peers will help me, but not without bragging themselves in the end ("how come you don't know this?", "I managed to be able to do this for the 1st time", etc). Also, I sense some hesitation from my peers to ask me questions (at least publicly in group chats), even for projects that I've done in the past and for which only I have the contexts. I sense this because my peers would only ask me through private chats and sometimes they would even go to the length of asking their other peer who would then ask me because he doesn't know the answer

I really hope that it's an issue with my performance, because then I can fix it, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if it's because of my gender and age and they just don't wanna look more "incompetent" than a "woman" and a "junior". Everytime I do something good outside of work such as becoming a tech speaker or teaching a bootcamp and I share it, I feel like I'm being shot down with words such as "I've done better than that", "Why did you even take up that speaker gig? Are you pretending to be a senior?". I mean, what's with the bragging? The insecurities? If you're more senior than me and you have more experience than me, of course they all look simple to you. There is no need to bring people down when they're trying to grow.

Adding more salt to that, they often joke with stuff such as "I still have slots for 3 more wives" "Why are you not married yet? The rest of us are married already, you don't wanna be an old spinster" and sometimes they would talk in detail about what they do with their wives that morning. All of these are wearing me down and make it hard for me to focus on my job and my passion, which is the tech stuff. I'm scared and uncomfortable of bringing this up with my manager and my HR because I'm scared of being labelled "sensitive" and "weak" for being offended by things like this because of the culture that I'm from. The minority of my coworkers (who are males) have actually noticed this problem and have shared their concerns too with me, but it seems that my manager doesn't want to acknowledge this problem at all and he thinks that it's all perfectly normal and just a banal banter. How should I proceed with this? Any advice? (preferably from females who have gone through this and succeeded in thriving through this). I would like to switch companies as soon as possible, but given the current market and I only joined this company for less than 7 months, I don't think quitting now is an option

When I joined the startup, I was the most experienced engineer and I had two junior engineers working with me. At that point, I had the choice to make architecture decisions and the CTO would work with me to design new systems. The systems I created have worked well, it has been 1 year now and there are no issues with them.

The company has grown and we have hired a lot of seniors now. I have not been included in any new discussions like hiring, the product roadmap. Even on a project where I had taken the lead on it from a very long time (I was not assigned to it, I just assumed the ownership) now the CTO wants the opinion of another senior engineer.

I'm good at infra work and have setup infra when the senior engineers are not able to do it. I'm not sure about my level either as during the 1:1s I was level as an upper mid level while my colleagues believe I'm senior. It shouldn't really matter as I want to just write code and help others, but with a proper title, I think people might take me more seriously.

When speaking to the CTO about my performance, they believe that I'm doing good and probably I'm being too hard on myself. I do know I have dropped the ball at times as I have too much on my plate at times.

I'm just scared that I'm becoming becoming less relevant in the company & really want to increase my influence.

I have been on a half a year long break due to unemployment and recently secured an offer at Meta as a senior. I'm a bit stressed about hitting the ground running after coming back from a hiatus, especially because I'll be joining as a senior and am coming as a mid level engineer from a non-faang company. I have a month long break still left before my joining date and I wonder if there is something I can do to set myself up for success.

Additionally how would I go about finding a mentor specifically who has had a good amount of experience working at Meta already?

I have 3 years of experience (YOE) working as a Python developer. I've noticed a significant decrease in job postings for Python recently. I'm unsure whether I should consider switching to Java for better future opportunities.

In my research, I've found that Java is predominantly used in many large companies which is good for my career.

What do you think?

I work as a contractor for a big fintech in the USA. This fintech does not allow contractors to lead new feature development regardless of seniority (not explicitly, FTEs have separate sprint planning and meetings).

We (contractors) only work on research tickets and bugs.

This is frustrating. Should I change company?

As a fellow keyboard goblin, commit-ing away either from home or the office (depending on the alignment of the moon) it can be sometimes tricky to make sure you're also living a healthy lifestyle.

It can be so easy to fall into bad habits of eating at your desk, snacking excessively, retorting at the scorn of ultraviolet rays hitting your eyes upon waking up 10 minutes before stand-up etc.

How do you mitigate this?

My personal strategy:

• Maintain high water KPIs
• Using my lunch to do some laps outside of the office
• Going for runs (albeit lately, nearly exclusively on treadmills)
• Never buying bulk snacks (gotta increase the friction somehow)
• Having a health checklist with a list of items I've determined to be impactful

I have also played around with the idea of finding the health "meta" and tracking every single micronutrient via cronometer, basing my diet off of a nutrigenomic report compiled via my gene data, buying every single reasonable health tracker and using that as a success metric etc.

But the above won't be useful if I randomly decide, "today I'm going to only eat pbnj sandwiches bc I'm feeling lazy".

Consistency definitely seems key

I have received another offer from Company B that is substantially better than my current offer from Company A (which I have signed) in terms of compensation, responsibilities and team. I am curious to know what are some ways to approach this.

1. What is the best way for me to renege the previous offer without burning bridges?
2. Did anyone here show a competing offer to Company A (after signing) and try to re-negotiate or move the needle? Has it worked for you, if you did this in a polite manner?

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of, in the above scenarios? Please share your experiences, if you have done this in the past.