Career Advice About Startups

I have 2 core goals:

1. Learn from the best engineers and pick up as many skills from them as possible
2. Become a founder

Given that, should I work on side projects full-time and apply to incubators or continue doing internships like my current one and doing side projects on the side?

I'm in a difficult situation right now and feel I need some time off to recover and manage, but am also concerned with optics.

I've been interviewing for new roles recently and spent my time off over the holidays (~2 weeks) preparing for a particularly stressful onsite interview. The team I was originally interviewing with no longer has an opening and I'm stuck waiting for headcount to open up and find a new team.

The stress of this situation has been taking a toll on me mentally and physically, and I've been dealing with a lot of health issues over the last month. I think it would be best for me to take at least a couple of weeks off to help reduce my stress and focus on maintaining my health. This isn't extremely extended, but amounts to more like a month off when factoring the recent 2 weeks off for the holidays.

After writing this out, it seems more cut-and-dry that I need to just ask and cite the health issues. I'd be curious to hear how others have navigated asking for extended time off.

As someone with a background as a Senior Software Engineer at Meta, I’m curious about the team matching process at FAANG and similar companies. In my experience, team matching at Meta wasn’t heavily influenced by one’s past experience, except for specialized roles. However, I’ve heard that at companies like Google, it might be more challenging to join teams if there’s a significant gap between one’s background and the typical requirements of the role. Can anyone share insights or experiences regarding this?

I also regret missing an opportunity with Meta’s global traffic routing team, which was a great fit for my learning and growth (published cutting edge industry practices) but I was afraid of failing. As I look to re-enter the FAANG space, I’m concerned about the difficulties of joining high-growth teams when my background differs significantly from the norm. Any advice or perspectives on overcoming this challenge and seizing similar opportunities in the future would be highly valuable.

Large tech companies used to provide a sense of stability and financial security, but with falling stock prices and layoffs everywhere I wonder if joining a hyper growth late-stage startup with a growing business and hefty pre-ipo RSUs is a better choice?

I am working at a 2 year old startup that has just launched its product a few months ago. The launch was considered a failure because the product has so many issues and customer complaints. Some customers even stated that they prefer the competitor product.

After being here for less than 6 months, I observed that the company has a culture of rushing everything with lack of planning and resources/manpower to execute their vision. None of the upper management has business experience in this exact product, they only have experience in tangentially related product. Also, prior to the formation of the current engineering team, the company hired an overseas vendor that overpromised a 6 months project that dragged out into 2 years. That is the main reason the current engineering team I am part of is built: to replace the vendors. The investors are known to be very profit-oriented right from the start, and they are also funding another startup that has the exact same product as my company, although this startup will not be launching anything until next year. The combination of inexperienced upper management and culture of rushing things lead to product failure. Thankfully, I think the atmosphere in the office is still pretty positive and laid-back. People are not pointing fingers and they still do their best to recover from their mistakes and prepare for future initiatives.

My manager has stated from the very first time I join the company that he prioritizes quality over speed, and given our previous product failure by the vendor, I agree that this is the solution. However, the Product Manager doesn't agree with this and he pushes us to prioritize speed over quality, even if that's the exact mindset that leads to our product failure. The rest of the upper management seems to adopt the same mindset of quick fixes and rushing, and the most alarming part is that we don't seem to have identified our core users, so I'm not sure if our previous launch has actually taught us anything. Also, I noticed that the Product Manager is lacking competencies in some key areas. I expect a PM to be someone who can not only have a vision on what the product would grow into, but also someone who can do analytics, business projections, and prioritize the most impactful projects for the team. In our daily interactions, he seems to be someone who just passes words from one person to another without doing any substantial management. This is slowly leading to resentment from my manager towards the PM because the team is slowly being overwhelmed with unimpactful tasks that hinder our future milestones.

My questions are:

1. Which direction should I follow? My manager's or the PM's (majority)?
2. Should I consider this a sign for me to look for new company? Or is this still normal and workable? If yes, what kind of role / actions should I take in this situation?
3. How should I convey this in my 1-1 to my manager?

I am a recent graduate who just started a new position at a small startup. Along my short journey thus far, I have connected with a few people outside my company whom I have asked for career advice and whom I think could be great mentors for me. However, I would like to formalize, or start formalizing, our premature (I have only spoken to them 1-2 times in total) relationship which currently consists solely of advice-seeking to a mentor/mentee relationship. What is the best way to approach this? It feels inappropriate and unprofessional to ask them to "be my mentor please!" Any advice is appreciated. I expect the answer here to depend on whether the mentor figure is outside or inside one's company since if they are outside (as in my case) it is much less of an expectation for them to give me their time free of charge.

Context:
Over a conflict, an aggressive conversation occurred between the engineering manager towards the business lead. From the point of experience, there are ten years more on the side of the BL. Everything happened over Slack over the weekend.

Due to this, today, the entire engineering team had a 1-1 to skip meeting with HR to give our statements about the issue.

What usually happens after this meeting?

As a founder of an early-stage startup, what are the top things you look for in your first five engineering hires? Are you searching for people who can handle a bit of everything, or do you prefer specialists in key areas? How do you balance technical skills with ensuring they fit well with your company's culture and vision?

Besides their technical know-how, what personal qualities are most important to you in these early hires? Do you value problem-solving skills and creativity over past experience in similar roles or industries? How crucial are soft skills like communication and adaptability, given the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of startups? And finally, how do you make sure these first hires will not only meet immediate project needs but also grow with the company as it expands?

I have worked primarily on the backend, but my company now has assigned me features concerning our Android app, which is built mainly on XML for layouts & Java.

How can I get started on this, be productive & contribute effectively?
Thanks.

I've only ever coded in js/ts; however, as I seek to grow my skills in react-native I've been trying to learn swift to deal with bridging. However, after coding a few hours in swift when I swapped back its like my brain stopped working and simple stuff I couldn't remember the syntax. After working in it again it kinda went back to normal; but, is this something that is normal or goes away with practice?

I am looking for new opportunities and based on what I am seeing on Taro. My strategy so far has been.

1. Create and polish resume
2. Prep for DSA and System Design
3. Apply to jobs.

This is the end of week 2. 8 Applications, 2 Rejections and not heard back from the rest.

So far I have been applying through LinkedIn and Otta only. I have intentionally avoided and not reached out for personal references. My thinking has been, that I don't want to waste the guaranteed interview opportunity if I am not ready.

My target at the moment is that I should be able to complete 90% of the grind 75 leetcode questions and at least a few system design mocks.

My questions to the community:

1. What are other good job listing services?
2. Is my approach sound or should I change my strategy?

With every rejection, I try to remind myself what said. "We can only do what is in our control; that is to continue preparing."

I am building an iOS team as the lead engineer. Here are the iOS roles I'm looking to fill based on my assessment of the product's requirements:

• Number 2 (capable of handling 60-80+% of my tasks as my right hand)
• Designer Engineer (specializes in dealing with design layouts)
• Real-Time Data Engineer (specializes in dealing with real-time data)
• Automated Testing Engineer (specializes in code coverage and unit testing)
• Bug Squash Engineer (generally a more junior engineer to address menial tasks)

What are your thoughts and anything I might be blindsided on?

I've been working for around a year now, and I feel like there's a big gap between where I am now and where I should be in terms of skill level. I'm getting good feedback at work, but there's just such a huge gap between the senior engineers on my team and me - It all feels really daunting. How do I know if I'm good enough, and what can I do to feel better here?

At the startup I’m currently interning at, there are no automated tests. Miraculously the entire system works. The codebase is small - my guess is around 50K LOC (they manually test everything). Since the engineering culture is pretty free flow, I’ve been able to set up unit and integration tests for code that I write from scratch (eg I can unit test classes I write, etc). I’d say I’ve written about 2000 - 2500 lines since starting in early June with a 60-40 split between code and unit tests. My company doesn’t do diff stacking, but I’d imagine I’d have 3-4 diffs based on the coding velocity course.

However, I’m having a bunch of trouble when I’m starting to integrate my code into production. I get a bunch of nasty linker errors (I work in C++) that require some workarounds and a lot of digging. As a result I’ve had to spend 2-3 days with these errors.

My gut feel is that these errors will continue to pop up as I continue coding, so should I just stop setting up automated tests and just manually verify, or is setting up tests worth the long term payoff? Since I’m interning every second matters.

I don't feel like I've grown as an engineer lately and it feels like I lack cool stories for promotion packages and behavioral interviews. I came to the conclusion that I don't get to work on projects with big enough scope.

The last time I worked on something that made me feel like I was growing was a whole year ago. There was another good but slightly less significant task 5 months ago, but I had to come up with it myself out of boredom (all the other alternative projects/tasks felt weak by all 6 axes of scope from Alex's "Nail your promotion course").

I'm unsure, if in my teams we actually don't get meaningful work, if the issue is with my frame of mind, I just have not been bold enough to volunteer for exciting work. But I'm sure that it's worth bringing up with my manager.

The only reason I hesitate to do it, is that I just got transferred to this team and assigned to my new manager one month ago. I feel like it may be too early for this kind of conversations, as I have not established myself enough. What do you guys think?

Hey folks,

I'm currently facing a tough decision - whether to ask for a raise at my current company. I am unsure if it's the right time to do so or not. Here's a little context to help you understand my situation

My timeline in the company:

• In 2023
  • I joined the company as a Sr SWE II (L4)
  • I joined the company nine months ago on August 23'
  • I made it to the second review cycle of the year (mid-October), and I got a "Consistently meeting expectations." My manager then said that he was very impressed that I managed to get so much done in that short time and that he could see strong signs of a Staff Engineer (L5) in me.
  • I shipped the most important project in Q4, 2023, on time. I even ended up as the technical lead of that project (the Staff engineer in that project got pip-ed, but that's another story)
• In 2024:
  • I mentored a Sr SWE I (L3) on her first project as a lead.
  • I'm the lead of the web working group
  • I'm interviewing candidates almost on a weekly basis
  • I'm one of the owners of the Design System initiative
  • I just got a "Consistently exceeding expectations" in our current review cycle. I've been praised for how easy it is to work with me, my technical quality, my communication skills, and my thoughtful PR reviews. And that I should keep working on my influence across the organization.

How things are right now:

• My previous manager quit to join another startup, and I got an interim manager (we're hiring another manager for my team)
• I ended up talking about salary adjustments with my previous manager the other day (there, I didn't ask for a raise; it was just a casual conversation). He told me that the company does a compensation review every January and that I wasn't considered for the one that happened in January 2024 because I didn't join earlier than July 2023.
• The next performance review will happen in mid-Oct 2024.
• I will be leading a new tiger team (6 engs) until the end of Q2.

Questions I have right now:

• Is this the right time to ask for a raise?
• I've never asked for a raise.
• I know for a fact that an L3 has a pretty similar (<5%) salary to me, and I know that another L4 has a >5% salary than me.
• Should I wait until I finish this new project, the next performance review, or my first anniversary?
• We're in the hockey stick growth stage.
• I also really like working here, and the market has been bad lately.

Thanks!

Hey! I am joining a startup as a Staff Engineer. I understand, titles can be inflated at a start up. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get to staff at big tech, without a supportive team.

My eventual goal is to be a staff engineer at a FAANG, or a very high achieving Senior at a FAANG. I want to use this startup "Staff" as a way to really hone my skills, learn and grow. Purely focussing on my love for coding, software engineering and learning, and not motivated by money.

Keeping the above in mind, how can I ensure, I have staff level scope ( & not just a title) at this startup.

And any tips for successful onboarding at a startup helps, from your personal experience.! ( Yes, I went through Rahul's course already :) )

It is a series B start up, with 70 people.

Hey Taro

I am at this phase in my engineering life, where I want to move to a Bay Area/NYC-based startup in Series A/B or even seed. As an immigrant (with visa sponsorship needs), in times like this, it is quite difficult to get interview calls at all (I have submitted about 200+ startup applications!). If you have insight on how this could be hacked together (I am not super particular about problems the startup solves), I'd love to hear!

Thanks!

I work in a high-growth, scaled startup where my organization builds revenue-generating platforms and forms small teams to create new verticals. However, we face challenges such as fast-tracked, inexperienced engineering managers (EMs) who disrupt work-life balance and often expect overtime or weekend work.

Feature requests are typically communicated via Slack messages or one-liners, with frequent status updates focused on completion. There is significant bias and favoritism, yet I can operate in such an environment. Although I know the best long-term solution might be to move to big tech or a more stable team, I’m seeking advice on how to behave in this current setting.

I avoid responding to negative remarks within the team because the EM’s typical reaction to any request is dismissive, suggesting that bugs shouldn't happen or that tasks should be managed independently. I was down-leveled upon joining this team from a similar toxic environment but have since been promoted to SDE 2. My senior, an SDE 3, also struggles emotionally, which makes me question whether this is common in leadership across companies of similar scale and situation.

How do you handle working in such an environment? I am currently taking a course on managing up, which seems relevant. I focus solely on my tasks and avoid reacting to negativity, which is appreciated, but I’ve stopped working weekends due to shifting priorities and deliverables. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

• How am I to approach 1:1s with juniors devs in the team
• What does it mean to gain social capital in this interaction
• How to establish influence without authority in this interaction (even if there is scope for authority)

My manager has 3 pods reporting to them, and my pod is pretty small at just a couple engineers. Because of this, I'm not entirely sure what I can take on to start making progress towards Staff. What projects can I work to fill in this gap? For additional context, I work on the back-end, but I can do full-stack if needed.

I’ve been doing iOS development for the 3 years I’ve been with my company. Now that I’m trying to become a lead engineer, I’d like to broaden my impact beyond iOS and help with other parts of the stack.

Since I’m a senior engineer, I now have access to other code repositories in the company. How can I start to go beyond iOS and have impact across domains?

I just wanted to raise a feature request for a dark mode for the Taro app.

Whether it's mentoring a junior or writing documentation, I'm not sure how to best balance the level of information sharing with the speed of development - especially regarding new features or projects. At the moment, I share information as it's required or wanted, but I feel like it's easy for people to dismiss learning anything new, which leaves me uncertain as to whether or not I should push for others to learn about work or handle it on an as-needed basis. If this is related to a team's culture, then what kind of practices should I be advocating for?