Onboarding Q&A and Videos

In my previous company, I joined as a junior (L3) and rose to L5 level. People around me listened to my ideas sort help for any new patterns. But now after moving to the new company, I am feeling insecure about proposing any new ideas or suggest any new stuff. Going over some videos at Taro, I realised I need to gain respect by improving my code quality and be communicative about my work.

In a few scenarios I try to put my ideas in a meeting or a group. But If I feel like I cannot fight/convince with my ideas. In such scenarios, I let someone in the team/meeting take over their idea. When we go for the implementation, I feel I should have pushed more on my idea over theirs.

I would like to understand how to become a better influencer.

I recently landed the role of a senior ML scientist at a well-known company. My previous experience has been mostly in software engineering with a few ML-related projects. I was expecting to be evaluated at IC3 or lower, but the hiring team evaluated me at a senior level. I want to make sure that I deliver at the level I was hired for. To that end, it would be greatly appreciated if anyone has any recommendations about what can I do to prepare myself for the job.

Edit: The role is going to be mostly R&D related but also take scalability, deployment, and monitoring into consideration.

Hi,

I have 5 years of experience but in 3 different companies as SDE1 and now I am joining a company as senior SDE. I was able to crack the interviews as they were generic but I am very nervous on how will I perform as senior SDE. My imposter syndrome is making it worse :)

Any important pointers that you will recommend for my initial few months to onboard smoothly and performing well.

Thanks.

I am looking forward to grow as senior engineer soon. I realised one of the improve my areas as I become senior is to be more independent and onboard to new projects effectively.

As someone who likes to understand things deeply, I am taking more time to get started and contribute to new projects when introduced to new frameworks/languages/tools. How should I become more effective?

I have communication issues. Especially in a new team, it takes lot of time to grasp what others are saying. During design discussions and post scrums -

1. When there are varying opinions and I still don't understand how to proceed next, what to say?
2. When there is an alignment and I am not confident if I have understand correctly, what to say?

Would you be able to share what a good onboarding doc looks like for a company like Meta for example with commentary and personal notes that are added from the individual which can be presented to the manager? the individual engineer adding personal notes and commentary into the document to pose a collaborative discussion with the manager and I would love to see an example of a good onboarding document with explicit expectations in writing.

Just finished the whole onboarding phase, but my team's product is supposedly very close to a quarterly release. Therefore, my manager/onboarding buddy are planning to just have me start off with test cases. What do y'all think about this? Would this be normal due to the timing, or is this a hidden sign of a lack of confidence on their end?

Hello I joined a new company as a senior swe earlier this month and have met everyone on my team but I'm new to big companies so not sure how to approach a skip level meeting?

The reason I'm asking is I've seen a lot of people and posts talking about skip level relationships.

1. Am I supposed to set up a meeting myself or wait for them to set it up?

2. Should I tell my manager I'm talking to my skip level ie his manager?

not sure if this is the right place to ask but recently i landed a new grad job at a fast growing startup and i am a bit anxious especially about navigating the first few months into the job where i have to onboard, build relationships, understand complex codebase etc

i do have a manager but am not sure how transparent i can be with him compared to with a personal mentor (eg if i don't feel confident about my swe skills i cannot explicitly tell that to my manager)

hence i am looking for a mentor that can help guide the first few months. i am only a new grad so would appreciate it if the rates are affordable :)

thanks!

I'm an e4 at meta with 3.5 yoe and if i had stayed here, my manager would have put me up for promotion in the mid year. However, i decided to switch companies and join anthropic. They hired me as a e4 equivalent, but i don't want to lose the momentum i built at meta, is there anything i can do to speed up my promo at anthropic given that i was so close at meta?

I just joined a team in AWS and the team has approximately 8 L3s (SDE 1s) out of 12 people some of whom have been Amazon for approximately 3-4 years. I want to make sure I am set up for promotion and that this does not become an obstacle for me. How should I navigate this situation?

I started a new role that I feel under qualified for. In my previous role, I was on the team for many years and naturally became one of the most senior people on the team. I was a full stack engineer and new a lot about React and APIs, however, my new role is completely different (mainly about infrastructure and terraform). In my previous role, I felt so comfortable and knew so much about where the code lies, how everything fit together, and all the people connections I had there.

How do I stop missing my previous role and move on? Also, how do I get up to speed with all the new technology I have to learn quickly? I already feel so behind and I keep asking for help because I don't know where anything is. I don't feel like a senior engineer in my new role and I'm worried what other people on the team are thinking about my lack of infrastructure experience.

Hi Taro Community,

I’ve often come across the term ‘Pair Programming’ within discussions here and in the broader tech community. However, I realize that I may not fully grasp the various contexts in which this practice is applied. Could anyone shed light on what Pair Programming entails and how it might differ across different settings or scenarios?

Specifically, I’m curious about:

• The essential elements that define Pair Programming
• Variations in approach when it comes to Pair Programming in a remote vs. in-person environment
• The benefits and potential drawbacks of this method from your personal experiences
• Situations or types of tasks where Pair Programming is particularly effective or, conversely, not recommended.

Understanding this could greatly influence how I collaborate with my team and contribute to our projects. Any insights or personal anecdotes on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your help.

My company is a mid-sized unicorn and they’ll be hosting an in-person gathering with some recent new grad SWEs (they have only worked at the company for 6 months) to talk with incoming NG SWEs such as myself. I’m wondering what questions I should prepare? I’ve thought of the following:

• Logistics (living situation, commute, etc.) - it’s boring but I think it’s fair to ask since most new grads will be relocating for the first time
• What would you have done differently in your first 6 months here?
• What’s the most important thing you think everyone should know?
• What does feedback with your manager look like? How is your relationship with your manager?
• What are some things you think we should do beforehand to best prepare us for the job?
• I know that the company has a very customer-centric engineering culture. Do you recommend us to spend more time prioritizing talking to customers or spending time doing engineering work?
• (Company prides itself on fast career growth but also doesn’t have leveling) How has your ownership grown over the time you’ve worked here? Have you had the chance to demonstrate leadership? What metrics do you use to measure career growth?

Is there anything else that I’m missing? The company promotes SWEs directly to tech leads/managers and doesn’t have leveling. Ideally I’d like to ask questions to get a better understanding of how to get to these positions fast. What types of questions would give me an understanding of how to "play the game"?

Hi everyone,

I recently joined a new company and am in the process of onboarding with a new team. After a week, I’ve noticed several challenges stemming from our team lead’s transition back to an individual contributor role. Currently, there’s no clear roadmap, sprint retrospectives haven’t been conducted for a while, and regular 1:1s with engineers are missing.

While the company is trying to hire a new engineering manager, which might take at least three months, I’m considering stepping up to fill in some of the management gaps. I’ve always been interested in moving into a management role, and this situation seems like it could be a good opportunity.

Do you think this is a good idea? If so, how should I go about offering myself for these responsibilities, or should I wait to be approached? Any advice or experiences shared would be greatly appreciated!

I joined Meta around 2 months ago. After I started to ramp up on my team & initial project, there were major reorgs that happened in the past 10 days. Now my project was deprioritized and leadership is figuring out where to reallocate resources towards.

I'm still very new on the team, so I wasn't super ramped up or invested in the first project. But now I feel as if I'm in limbo and it's potentially slowing down my ramp up and learning period. What should I be doing to navigate this environment as a new hire?

Hi Taro Community,

I joined Microsoft in February, and interestingly, my manager started just a month later in March. As we’re both relatively new and navigating uncharted areas, I felt the need for more structured technical guidance. During a recent one-on-one, I suggested the idea of having a mentor or a designated technical point of contact. Initially, my manager acknowledged this need and planned to discuss it further up the chain.

However, the feedback I received later was that since we are in the process of building a new team here in India, we should first attempt to resolve issues internally. Subsequently, for additional insights, I’m advised to engage with the chat group, which includes around 100 members.

Here’s where I find myself in a predicament:

• My manager, being new himself, sometimes faces similar uncertainties, which complicates our internal resolution approach.
• Posting in a large group specific guidance doesn’t always yield practical advice due to its broad focus.

Any insights on managing these dynamics or personal experiences would be incredibly helpful as I look to establish myself and contribute effectively in my new role.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

I'm halfway through and am wondering if his advice in the course changes given that I'm on a contract 6-months to start. What triggered this thought was he says in the video that you should consider yourself "Fully Onboarded" by Month 6 (and therefore take more time before asking questions). Since my contract is 6-months to start, I imagine I should strive especially hard to onboard quickly, but that the advice in the course doesn't really change. There are, after all, human limits to how quickly you can onboard and those don't change whether you're FTE or on contract to start. I believe my situation might be closer to that of an intern. So maybe I should go through ?

Appreciate the feedback!

I am transitioning from a fintech background to a senior telemetry engineer role on an autopilot (self-driving) team. I would greatly appreciate any advice or tips on how to excel in this new position. Are there specific technical skills, workflows, or strategies that you would recommend focusing on to perform well?

Hi Taro Community,

I will be interning with a team that has weekly meetings. There will not be a daily standup. How should an intern best behave during team meetings?

Some potential ideas:

• "Talk and Observe" - intern actively listens to the conversations of other team members and asks relevant questions
• Speak less than the others in the team, but be humble, focus more on learning, and ask good questions