Career Advice About Startups

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! 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.

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?

I know that we have to draft the answer in such a way that they have to have LPs imbibed in them. But how can we get to know if the story is good enough for passing the interview round?

I am struggling to draft these stories for SDE2 interview loop. Any help will be helpful

I got offers from 2 companies. Company A is a unicorn while company B is a well-funded series B startup.

I need to go back to my country to serve in the army for a year. Company A doesn’t have an internship program and has essentially asked me to either pick the army or the company (also in-person). On the other hand, company B has an internship program and can do remote work. My goal is to be able to return to the US and work full-time after serving in the army. I might be able to get a 1-year deferral from my home country, though that would take a lot of effort and chances of success are low. I’m a dual citizen with Canada so managing TN visa is easier compared to H1-B.

My military duties start in late Aug 2025. I have several options I’ve come up with:

1. Give up entirely on company A. Intern at company B for summer ‘25 and hope for an RO for ‘26 new grad while going to the army.
2. Work at company A for 3 months. Work remotely at company B while I’m in the military and use company B to get back into the US. The workload would be extremely high and I doubt that it’d be sustainable. Hopefully crush it at company A such that they’ll want me back (not sure how likely this’ll be). Worst case at least company A would be a brand name on my resume and my work experience at A would be more like an internship (would this be a viable argument?).
3. Defer my military duties to Aug ‘26, work at company A from Jun ‘25 - Aug ‘26. When I come back, hope that I do well enough to return to company A.
4. Defer military duties to Aug ‘26. Intern at company B for the summer ‘25, then work for company A from Aug 2025 - Aug 2026 (so barely hitting the 1-year vest). Start military duties in Sep 2026. By then I (hopefully) would’ve gotten an RO from company B, and I can start working remotely for company B. The workload would be extremely high and I doubt that it’d be sustainable.

My main concern is that the job market is so hard right now that it’s not like I can wake up and get a job when I want one. Company A is also my top choices during this job search. My fear is that going to the army will close the US door for good. Would like some advice on ranking these options.

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.

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!

• 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)

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?

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?

I spoke to the CTO of a YC startup yesterday. We had a nice, 20-minute chat, and then he said he'd send me a coding assignment to do.

He sent it right after. The assignment is to create a Django app that does some basic CRUD operations. I haven't used Django before, so I'll need to do that. I'll probably need to spend more than the 2-3 hours he said I should spend on it.

My question is, how long do I have to send this assignment back to him? I have a Big Tech interview coming up in a week so would rather study for that. Can I send the CTO the assignment a week and a half after he gave it to me? 2 weeks?

I can obviously ask him, but I'm not sure I want him saying, "oh, send it in the next couple of days." So if I don't ask, he might be fine with me sending it in whenever.

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 have a lot of expectations on my plate, and it can be hard to handle. I'm being put on a project soon, but I do have some spare time here and there. How can I make effective use of this time, and is there anything I should focus on during onboarding in general?

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

Hi!

I had mic issues in the OH and couldn't ask live. How would you recommend I prepare for System Design interview questions, especially since I feel my experience at my previous company didn't prepare me well for these?

I have 2.5 years of experience at a big tech company and was recently laid off. Ideally, I’m aiming for an ~L4 level position as I was L3 in my past role and was nearing promotion. I’m getting more interviews at start-ups now, and they typically focus on system design rather than leetcode questions. At my past company, the tools were so powerful that I didn’t get the same breadth of experience a new grad might get at a smaller company. For example, I never touched or thought about our database or considered scalability for our services. In hindsight, I should have taken the initiative to find projects outside of my team with more scope, but now I know better!

My current plan is to read "System Design Interview" by Alex Xu and go through the Taro System Design Masterclass. Do you have any feedback on this plan? I recently had my first system design interviews and have more coming up. I want to prepare as best as I can with the time I have. I’ve accepted that I may not excel at first, but any feedback to improve my preparation plan and mindset would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I pretty much interact with everyone else through text-based means, which is all really pronounced in this remote covid era. However, I like to learn from other people directly, talking with them. For example, I'm currently working with a senior full-stack engineer doing things like pair programming and that has been helpful.

What can I do to get more of this deeper learning instead of trying to learn almost entirely through text?

I've been at my current company for many years, and I'm looking for a change of pace. I'm unsure how to bring this up properly with my manager in particular: How do I frame the conversation and when do I have it?

For context, I have a really good relationship with my manager. They were initially an engineer at the company like myself, and they've been with me since I've started.

I've been working at this company for almost 2 years now and we recently started doing kick-off calls for big features. Before this, management would come up with features in private meetings and assign engineers tickets. We expressed our frustration with this approach so management started doing "kick-off calls" recently but would only invite 1 engineer or 1 data scientist depending on who they think should lead the feature/project. This is a 10-person company, and it feels like I have no room to be creative/propose solutions etc. I brought this up during retro and 1:1s with my manager and the answer I always got was "we don't want it to be a democracy" or "too many people/questions would drag the meeting longer than it has to" etc

I can understand this reasoning if it's a big team/company, but we're a really small team and it feels to me like they're not interested in hearing about other engineers' input, ideas etc at all. This causes me to think engineers are just here to do grunt work/grind. Am I being too cynical?

I was excited to land a PR that introduced the latest Android frameworks into the app, but I got feedback from my manager that it would add confusion, making it harder for new engineers to onboard into the codebase. My PR didn’t land. How do I avoid this in the future?

Right now I'm in a situation working for a startup that posts a video of a bug with little to no detail at all and sends it off to dev to be fixed. If there is information included, there is no standardization so it can be frustrating having to hunt this information down. I understand in startups I will have to learn to operate in a realm of ambiguity; however, the team is so small that I could potentially fix this with a little buy in.

Somethings that I've seen work in my previous job were having:
-screen shots of current state and future state
-video of current issue
-steps on how to reproduce
-device information
-potential solutions

Im new to the team and don't want to be "that" guy trying to change everything, so I don't want to come to them with any half baked ideas. Do you have an example of a strong story that I could use as a template for our tickets?

I'm looking for red flags when it comes to seed stage startups that are still pre-PMF/MVP stage

Does number of non technical people make a difference? If a startup has too many sales people is that a red flag?

What are other things I should be concerned about?

I'm considering joining an early stage company, with about 10 employees. The company raised a healthy seed round, and I have a lot of respect for the founders and the current employees whom I know.

With that in mind, what are the important considerations to go over prior to making a decision? This would be by far the smallest company I've worked at. I think the earlier stage means more opportunity for ownership and accelerated learning, but also more pressure to deliver quickly and without hand holding.

When people talk to me, I have a tendency to pause. This has led to feedback that colleagues wish I could answer their questions faster. The problem is that I need to pause for some questions as I need the time to think and formulate a good response. Is there a way I can incorporate this feedback without sacrificing my answer quality?