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

I just started at Meta in the business engineering org (formerly solutions eng). We have a lot of XFN work with sales and SWE teams, so lots of opportunity to coordinate projects and be customer-focused. I was a SWE at my past company but I'm hoping to eventually transition to PM as I believe it is better for upward mobility within a company?

In the previous cycle, I wanted to be promoted to senior, but my manager stepped in relatively late into the process to let me know that my promo packet had gaps. Because of this, I wasn't put up for promotion and I'm still at SW2.

This all caught me completely off-guard, and my goal is to make sure this doesn't happen again in the next performance review cycle. How can I make sure that my manager and I are completely aligned going into the next promotion process, and I'm not hit with any last minute surprises?

I am joining Amazon soon as SDE 2. At my previous job, I was a higher end SDE1. I have owned small internal services at my previous job. I would like to know what are some of the things that can be expected from me as SDE 2 @ Amazon ? I am expecting more ownership, but is that the only thing? I did ask the same question to my manager but he seemed very chill about it and said that he cannot say anything at the moment, maybe in our 1:1s we can discuss more clearly. Also, if you can let me know how the expectations vary across levels for Junior and Mid level and what can I do to hit the ground running and create a good impression from the very start, that'd be great. I am sure that you must have seen various E3 / E4s at Meta. If you can relate to what exactly was the difference that you saw, that'll be super helpful.

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 need to practice questions for multithreading/ concurrency topics
• What resources to use for the practice? What type of questions am I expected to use it - leetcode type, low level design type?
• I need a few examples to know what to expect for Rubrik interview? Or any company that says they would ask those questions in system design round.

Hey Taro team,

I spent the first 7 years of my career being a full time iOS engineer at a couple different companies including FAANG (max level reached was E4/L4). And then over the last 3 years I started a startup and have been a full stack engineer (being a founder, you have to wear many different hats and basically build anything and everything the startup required e.g. web app, backend) working with little scale and mostly solo.

After 3 years of running the startup, I'm now looking to get back into big tech as an iOS engineer again. Given it's been 3 years since I've done major iOS work (I have done a tiny bit and I feel like I still know iOS, at least UIKit, SwiftUI is another story), my question is this:

Is it advisable to first build and ship an iOS app to production (might take me a month), then do leetcode/interview preparation, and then reach out to companies to do interviews? Or should I just dive straight into leetcode/interview preparation and then reach out to companies?

Can you walk us through your thought process for Taro members also thinking through a return back to FAANG?

Hey all,

I’ve been in my team for over a year now and I’d like to change teams. In my previous companies it took a lot (of luck) to change teams (typically would only happen when orgs restructured). I’ve heard the process in google, and tech in general, is really straight forward and I’d like to get out of my org and try a different team. Would anyone be able to provide tips or guidance on how to change teams?

Thanks!

I'm thinking to glance over some materials about the tech stack that the new team uses before joining them. What are some other ways to best prepare for the new team so that my onboarding process can be as smooth as possible and start performing at my level or higher?

When it comes to describing your projects, what are the things you should emphasize vs. not? I want to be able to paint myself in the best light when talking about projects at work and during behavioral interviews, particularly those of Big Tech.

Context

I did a few interviews in the last months for some software engineer, and in the end it came down to 2 companies: Google (started loop as L4 but got downleveled to L3) & DoorDash (L4). I'm L3 at another tech company (smaller than these), already scheduled for promotion for L4 as I've been performing accordingly for some time. Per my understanding, levels (L3/L4/L5 or E3/E4/E5) are similar between these companies.

I have around ~4 YoE now and graduated 2 years ago, though only 1.5 YoE on larger projects at US companies (i.e. roles that I suppose would be closer to a FAANG environment), as I worked on smaller local products and consultancies before. This is my first time actually preparing for this format of interviews, so I'm kind of glad that I at least passed L3 for Google.

Offers

DoorDash already extended an offer and Google said that HC approved for L3, but still have to go through team matching. DD's offer has significantly more TC (like >30%).

Doubts

I really wanted to join Google at first since I have tons of friends and family working there, but at L3, seems that I would be taking a step back just for the sake of being able to say that I worked at Google, so I'm actually biased towards going to DoorDash, here's my rationale:

• Significantly more TC
• Remote-friendlier
• Already worked (and enjoyed) with a lot of people that I would be working with at DoorDash (also likely why they accepted me as L4 instead of L3, because I had some 'advocates' there). While at Google I still have to go through team matching and I don't have a clue on what I'd be working with.
• Would start as L4, with a higher performance bar and expectations, and aiming for 1~2 years later would be looking at L5, instead of still looking at L4 at Google.
• Even if I got promoted quickly at Google, would likely be at the lower band of L4 salary, so not only 1~2 years of lower TC and possibly smaller scope, but likely even more.
• This is my first time preparing for this type of interviews, so even if I want to join Google a year or two down the line, I would have not only more experience under my belt for both behavioral and technical interviews, but also more time and resources to prepare.

What flaws can you find in my train of thought? I find this very confusing to take a decision, seems that it is a common situation as I searched for it a lot and everyone seems to call FAANG in general as "kings of down-leveling".

I'm currently employed at a startup where we're building bookkeeping tools. My work mainly involves Python, some database work, and a lot of business logic wrangling. Due to the small size of our app and engineering org, I don't have many opportunities to gain the necessary experience in distributed systems. I'm seeking advice on how to transition to distributed systems. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Hello!

I was assigned my first JIRA ticket at my first official dev job, which I started about two weeks ago. Given my situation, I want to know how long my manager expects me to work on the ticket, so I don't end up underperforming or not meeting expectations.

Some background: before this job, I worked at a very early-stage startup (one other person and myself for about a year), so I don't consider myself a complete junior. Additionally, I don't know my official title since I came in as a contractor and the contractor title does not match the FTE title, so I'm not sure what is expected of me.

Some of my thoughts: I've considered asking my manager directly how long he expects me to work on this JIRA ticket, but I wasn't sure if the question was too noob-like or too forward. I've also considered that so long as I'm making progress (which I am), I should be okay (until it's not).

So, all this to ask, should I ask my manager how long he expects me to work on my first JIRA ticket?

Hello, I'm trying to figure out what level is likely to be what my current experience translates to at TikTok.

I have: 3.5 yoe at a startup + public co. (not FAANG)

1.5 years as L1 and 2 years as L2 (L3 is senior, L4 is staff)

How to best answer this question in quarterly discussion with manager? Things are looking good on personal level. On team level also project plannings are seems to be aligned with team goal. How can I add value to this question?

I have 3 years of experience as a software engineer for a non-tech company.

It doesn't feel like the place where cutting edge development is happening. Processes feel incredibly slow.

I would like to move to a more tech oriented company, but I feel that I can't pass the coding interviews. I never felt particularly gifted. Studying CS at university felt like an uphill battle.

I spent roughly 3 months preparing for interviews (6-8 questions per week of LeetCode, completed all chapters/problems of Cracking the Coding Interview).

I'm almost 26 now. I'm still struggling to pass medium LeetCode questions in a timely manner. I'm wondering if my energy would be better spent somewhere else? Product Management? Consulting? I really want to find a job where I can be valuable. As a kid, I thought engineering was so cool. However, it feels like I am barely making progress.

I'm looking to leave my current team, as I don't find the work to be interesting: I spend ~50% of my time on ops work.

I want to choose the right team that’s interesting to me, but it's tricky as I don’t exactly know what I want to work on. I just know that I want to work on the back-end and on a team where learning opportunities are flexible. During team matching, what kind of things would you look for in a team?

My priorities are as follows:

1. Interesting work
2. Growth opportunities
3. Compensation
4. WLB

Hi everyone,

I received an offer from AWS for a SDE 2 role. I was planning on asking for an additional 50k sign on bonus for year 1. I would justify this ask with evidence of past work (saving on infrastructure costs, mentoring multiple engineers) and being willing to cancel other interviews (mix of onsites and first rounds).

I'm a boomerang and the offer is the same as my TC before I got laid off. I also read some Taro Q&A and negotiation videos but couldn't find a situation similar to mine. The email states:

This will be the highest offer we are able to put forward at this time.

Is this a trick to try to get me not to negotiate?