Career Advice About Startups

I'm still navigating a career switch to SWE, and I tend to get pretty overwhelmed when looking at code. I already ask a lot of questions, and I want to be more self-sufficient because my full-stack team members are pretty busy. (They are all kind and would all be willing to to take some time out of their day.)

How can I get faster at reading code on my own while balancing a team transition? I'm at the point where I understand the high-level purpose of parts of our codebase but little as to how the moving pieces all fit together.

While I understand that there is likely no magic threshold to determine the point at one needs to ask for codebase navigation guidance, a good rule of thumb would be helpful when possible.

I have a couple years of experience, so I'm thinking if it makes sense to go down the engineering manager path. I'm well-positioned to start this journey at my current company as well; I'm a very early engineer on my team, and I have the ability to build up the team and mentor those new people. However, I'm unsure if this is the right way for my career to go and how much of my job I want to be people management - How can I figure this out?

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?

I got feedback from my manager that I can do more to increase the scope of my influence within the company, and this involves getting more recognition and visibility from leadership for my projects. How can I do this?

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.

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?

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.

I recently had a conversation about promotion with my manager. It seems I am primed to move from L2 -> L3 which I am happy about, but I was more curious on making the bigger jump to senior as that’s when the scope and responsibility become greater. According to him I already demonstrate senior level qualities whether it’s being completely reliable in shipping features, scoping out work and planning projects, to working with engineers outside my team to work on broad initiatives to benefit the whole org. All of which I have already done to some extent.

I asked him after I move to L3 and prepare for senior if the years of xp is still a hard requirement and he said yes. And that being a senior after 3/4 years in the industry is a bit quick and needs at least 5-7. In that case if the years of xp is so important, should I even operate at a senior for 2 years if I can’t even be considered for it until some arbitrary time has passed? It seems like extra effort to be paid the same.

I never got the full experience of working from an office due to the pandemic. I am currently working from home and making the decision to move out of state to be at my companys HQ. I hope this will help boost my career by being near my co-workers, asking questions, participating in "water cooler" conversations and even helping out with non-technical tasks like filming a commercial (example of something I heard happen at the office).

Is there any tips you would recommend for someone to make the most out of their time in an office? I am planning on being there for at least a year and I was told I can have the empty seat right next to my manager.

It's just my first month and my manager said I had to improve a lot because his expectations for a senior engineer is much higher, not just technically but also behaviourally.

I'm feeling anxious because I was in a pretty laid back company before and the rapid pace of a startup took me off-guard. I'm trying to push through by working longer hours but I don't think I'd be able to reach my manager's expectations.

It's causing me anxiety just by thinking about my job. Is it ok to leave a job even if I don't have anything lined up yet? I'm trying to review to get a new job but the long hours are taking up my personal time. What could be my options?

Knowing that, how should I tailor my career path - What companies should I work for and what skills should I get to set myself up for success against this goal? Should I continue working at Salesforce or should I go work for a different company?

The business side of my company is constantly asking for data queries. I want to take this on and become the "data guy" for the company, seriously helping everyone with analytics and user understanding.

We're using Firebase, but the company wants to move off of it. I'm considering building a custom solution using something like D3.js, but I feel like that would take too long to learn.

How can I best navigate forward achieving this result?

I am a new grad at a unicorn, and like many other new grads I am also struggling at my job and facing severe impostor syndrome / stress / anxiety. All other employees are very highly capable and the bar here seems to be very high. I was curious how much is it okay to share with my manager? Can I be 100% transparent? Or do I have to be strategic about how I communicate? I am afraid if I am being too open about how "unskilled" I feel I am, he might see me as less capable and not deserving of more impactful projects.

Speaking about strategic communication, I realised I struggle with it in general. I am a bit too authentic and direct, both in daily life and professional life. How does one learn the art of strategic / diplomatic communication?

My goal is to get to this level someday, so I would love to understand more. In particular, how does this dynamic play out at Big Tech/larger tech companies?

I've been behind a couple times shipping tasks and projects, and I've gotten feedback that this is something I really need to get better at. One aspect to this is that I take a lot of iterations before I fully understand something - This extra time slows down the planning and overall execution of my work. How can I improve in that regard, and is there anything else I can do to get better at setting targets for my work?

Context:

I'm a mid-level engineer looking to grow to the senior level. I'm currently leading a team of 2 other engineers on a large migration project that's revamping a big part of our API architecture. This is a platform team so the biggest objective of this project is to make the lives of other engineers easier.

Questions:

(1) How can I measure and demonstrate the business impact of this project, given that it is aimed at internal teams?

(2) What metrics could I be using to quantify the technical impact of this project?

I'm currently doing my 2nd internship, and I have time to do another one before I graduate (I'm currently doing a traditional ~4 year university Computer Science degree). What can I do to lock in a great additional internship for that last slot?

I recently joined a startup (just finished my third week about to start my fourth) and I set up a one-on-one last week with my manager to hopefully create a mentor-mentee relationship. That went well and now I’m looking to create a growth plan and a way to measure my performance. We’ll be checking in on a weekly basis so I can get a sense of my performance and how I am growing as a engineer.

Given that it is a Series B startup with ~25 people, our goals will be shifting a lot which makes long-term growth plans hard to create. For context, since I joined, my 60 day and 90 day projects have shifted somewhat. So how do I create a growth plan that is flexible and what should it include (Concrete goals vs. more behavior orientated goals)?? Should the growth plan be used separately from judging my performance or would it be the measuring stick for performance?

Would really appreciate some insight on this.

I am at the final stage of a interview with the CTO of a startup.

All my interviews were scheduled via an automated system on their end and hence have no method to contact a recruiter or anyone from the said company. The interviews till now followed a “big tech” process with tech phone screens, system design, etc.

This final interview is for 30min and i am guessing its going to be behavioral and some “getting to know each other” type of thing.

What are some questions i can ask to show I'm interested in the company and the role. But, at the same time i want to understand their long term plan (think 6 months, 1 year and forward)?

A side question: Should i keep interviewing for public companies? Given I'm on a visa, but the tricky situation for me being that my current employer will be undergoing a layoff in the last week of April. If i do end up getting an offer from this startup should i still be looking out for jobs at more stable companies? (i do acknowledge that there isn't any such thing as “stability”)? Any pointers or guidance on this would really help me out in making a final decision 🙏

Note: they are willing to sponsor visa

I'm totally buying the idea of why we should specialise eg. in Android, like Alex mentioned a number of times, because you're more employable for a large company if you're really good at one thing.

I'm less interested in large companies, I want to continue working in startups and at some point start one myself. I've got a background in ML and have been picking up "full-stack" web development over the past year, to be able to make simple products myself. I like the whole lifecycle of a product from talking to users, to design and engineering. Things I like the most though are backend and machine learning development.

Do you think it still makes sense to specialise given my career goals, or perhaps the advices given here were only for big-tech engineers?

As a senior engineer, I want to make sure that my time is spent effectively. That being said, how do I evaluate the business impact a project has and prioritize all the different things on my plate accordingly?

On a side note, how do I make sure that the scope of projects are matching my level or exceeding it?