Taro's official blog designed for Software Engineer career growth. Onboarding, compensation, promotion and more

Big Tech

I Just Received a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) -- What Should I Do?

I Just Received a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) -- What Should I Do?

A PIP is a formal document to let an employee know about recurring performance issues. The performance improvement plan (PIP) indicates that the employee is not meeting expectations for their job, and without an improvement, they'll be let go. There's no denying that receiving a PIP is extremely unpleasant. In

Software Engineers and Startups - Finding Your Perfect Fit

Software Engineers and Startups - Finding Your Perfect Fit

Startups are fundamental to any thriving tech ecosystem. One of the beauties of the tech industry is that most of the FAANG companies started off as a startup in someone's college dorm room or garage! Working at a startup can be an exciting experience for an engineer at any stage

Inside The Layoff Era of Big Tech (Meta, Google, Amazon Layoffs)

Inside The Layoff Era of Big Tech (Meta, Google, Amazon Layoffs)

In the past 5 days: * Google laid off 12,000 * Microsoft laid off 10,000 * Amazon laid off 18,000 When I joined Meta back in 2017, I never expected to see large-scale layoffs at the biggest, most profitable tech companies in the world (Meta laid off 11,000 employees

A Framework for Learning New Tech Fast

A Framework for Learning New Tech Fast

As time passes in your engineering career you’ll quickly learn that part of being a Software Engineer is learning new technologies and effectively applying them (as quickly as you can). Therefore a prerequisite to this guide is at least a strong fundamental understanding of a single stack (this can

Software Engineer Interview Guide - Data Structures and Algorithms

Software Engineer Interview Guide - Data Structures and Algorithms

You made an awesome resume, applied to a bunch of jobs, and landed a couple interviews. You diligently prepared for them, and the time has come for the real thing. So what should you do once you step foot into that interview room? Well, that's what we're going to do