[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood, where he was a high-performing tech lead making $750,000/year working \~30 hour weeks.

## FAANG Rockstar

Alex spent the biggest chunk of his career at Meta (\~4 years), a company that's notorious for [ruthlessly cutting low-performers](https://www.jointaro.com/question/lScy3l2NPIrWvRuHOjcF/how-does-stack-ranking-work-at-faang-and-how-can-i-be-proactive-at-a-base-level/) and demanding the world from their engineers ([literally forcing them to go from junior -&gt; senior within 5 years](https://www.jointaro.com/question/X3ccTVVCpuS1T76HI5fX/how-does-up-or-out-work-and-whats-the-transition-generally-like-for-e3-greater-e4-greater-e5/)).

Despite this, Alex got an "Exceeds Expectations" rating or higher in every single one of his performance reviews? How did he do it? Simple: *By getting far more done than most other Meta engineers*. During his later years at Meta, Alex got the following done every half (6 months):

- Landed \~270 commits (Top 5% code committer)
- Reviewed \~720 commits (Top 1% code reviewer)
- Got 100+ public thanks
- Mentored \~5 engineers to promotions (more than several engineering managers)

Alex was able to do this despite averaging \~40 hour weeks at Meta, rarely working weekends and late nights.

## Work-Life Balance Champion

Alex has always believed that the healthiness of your personal life and career are deeply interconnected, striving to live that reality by hyper-efficiently spending his time. From Meta to Robinhood and now Taro, Alex has:

- Spent time with his parents every week
- Found time to regularly hang out with his friends
- Done all the cooking for himself and his wife
- Done a bunch of other chores around the house
- Gotten consistent sleep and exercise
- Made time for his hobbies (any other Genshin Impact and Magic: The Gathering players out there?)

It may seem impossible, but you can indeed have it all, even if your goal is to be a high-performing engineer at a top tech company. You simply need to be smart with your time, and Alex is living proof of that.

Alex Chiou

Software engineers aren't paid an insane amount of money out of the goodness of tech corporations' hearts: It's because they need to consistently deliver while under the weight of sky-high expectations.

Now here's the problem: It is extremely easy to be unproductive as an engineer, *even if you're working incredibly hard*. There are so many software engineers out there who are working 80+ hour weeks but barely meeting expectations.

If you're frustrated with how little you're getting from your time, let's fix that and turn you into a rockstar who also has respectable work-life balance. After going through this course, you will:

- 💯 Know the **true** most important productivity booster

- 💡 Champion the right **mentality** to foster productivity

- 🏃‍♂️ Use the right tactics to **move faster**

- 🛡️ Have shields to prevent you from **wasting time**

- 🤔 Learn how to **debug** a lack of productivity

At the end of the day, time is the only resource that matters. With every minute of your day, you have an effectively infinite amount of ways to spend it, most of them inefficient. In a nutshell, this course will empower you to make the right decision with every unit of your time so you can get more done with less of it.

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer

Overview

Move Faster

Stop Being Lazy

Conclusion

Jocelin is a distinguished technology leader renowned for her profound commitment to product development, engineering, and leadership. As the co-founder and CTO of [Cooby](https://www.cooby.co/), a startup supported by Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India) and Pear VC, she played a pivotal role in building both the product and engineering teams from the ground up, cultivating a culture centered on innovation and growth. Cooby's primary mission is to improve communication for sales teams using WhatsApp, which in turn enhances client relationships and business outcomes.

Prior to her entrepreneurial venture, Jocelin honed her technical skills at Facebook and Instagram. At Facebook, she made significant contributions as a Senior Backend/iOS Engineer, particularly on the Facebook Composer product. She later progressed to a Tech Lead role at Instagram, where she led the development of the Instagram Ads Story feature and was also the tech lead of [Taro cofounder Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/)!

Jocelin's interests extend beyond traditional technology boundaries, with a particular fascination for generative AI and its potential to revolutionize various industries. She is passionately committed to developing cutting-edge technological products, leading technical teams, and creating solutions that profoundly impact people's lives.

Jocelin holds a Master's degree from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science from National Taiwan University, qualifications that underscore her extensive expertise and leadership in the tech industry.

Connect with Jocelin on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelinho/>

Jocelin Ho

Being a good tech lead is incredibly hard. While many tech leads don't do much more than ask *"Is it done yet?"* every week, good tech leads must add value to the engineers they're leading while getting an immense amount of work done themselves.

If you have earned the trust of your team and achieved the role of tech lead, you must take that responsibility *incredibly* seriously and strive to be a good tech lead. Because if you don't, people struggle.

This is what this course is here to help you with. After going through it, you will know:

- 💡  The **full definition** of an effective tech lead

- 💻  What **technological** skills tech leads must possess

- 🙌  How tech leads demonstrate true **leadership**

- ✅  **Practical tips** to start acting as a tech lead

As a tech lead, you don't have the formal authority that a manager does. Despite this, you need to exercise an equivalent amount of influence (often times more) on engineering decisions. In a nutshell, this course will empower you to be a true leader despite not being a boss.

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead

Mastering The Technology

Effective Leadership

[**Ethan Evans**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/) is a retired Amazon Vice President, now sharing his leadership expertise.

Starting at Amazon as a Senior Manager, then Director, then Vice President, Ethan has had decades of experience in the skill of managing up. In this course, he shares his extensive experience with layoffs: both being laid off, and also the person conducting layoffs.

Ethan spent 12 years in startups (10 in leadership roles) and then had a 15 year career at Amazon. He has led global teams of 800+ and products with annual revenue above $500M. He holds over 70 patents. More about Ethans:

- Reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, and 1,000+ hires.
- Was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for training and maintaining Amazon's group of interview outcome facilitators.
- Helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) "**Ownership**" — the words "They never say ‘that’s not my job." are Ethan's.

These career growth courses are developed from his own knowledge and input from his extensive network of fellow coaches and executives. (See Rahul's interview with Ethan about [**the top 1% of engineers.)**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P83dtntKo)

- Connect with [**Ethan on LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/)
- Subscribe to [**Ethan's Level Up community**](https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/?utm_source=taro)
- If you liked this course, here's a 20% discount off any of Ethan's courses: **TARO**. You can apply it at any of the courses here: [**https://ethan-evans.mykajabi.com/**](https://ethan-evans.mykajabi.com/)

Ethan Evans

You are being laid off, getting fired, or just want to move on - **learn how to get the best package as a part of your transition out of your company**.

In this course, Ethan covers topics including the law, termination circumstances, why you should never accept on the spot, how to prepare your case, the mind of the manager, common asks and gives, and if you can sue.

You will get \~25 minutes of concise content. A job termination, either a Reduction In Force (RIF) or layoff, can be an extremely stressful time. This class is about exactly what to do if you think this is coming or if it just happened to you.

Spending an extra few minutes learning what to do (and what not to do) can enormously impact you, financially and otherwise.

Course outline:

- The Law
- Termination Circumstances
- Never Accept on the Spot
- Preparing Your Case
- The Mind of the Manager
- Common Asks and Gives
- Can You Sue?
- Summary 

Make The Most Of A Layoff: Maximize Your Severance Package

Optimize Your Situation

Over the last decade, I grew from an Individual Contributor Software Engineer to a Senior Director running multiple engineering teams at a Fortune 1 Company. \
\
My teams and I built Tech for a business unit with over $35 Billion in annual revenue. \
\
Before this, I was an early employee at a Startup, and I built eCommerce, personalization, and growth marketing tech that helped us go from 0 revenue to over a billion in sales in 1 year. Then that startup (Jet.com) got acquired for $3.3 Billion.

**This is the 1:1 with your Engineering Manager you should've had**. I'm condensing decades of experience into 1.5 hours of wisdom to help you navigate your career.\
\
My career was going great, but then I decided to quit. I walked away from a big guaranteed salary in Big Tech. I'm an engineer turned entrepreneur focused on building a portfolio of [small bets](https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro).

Connect with Louie:

- SmallBets community: <https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro>
- Newsletter: <https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/>

Louie Bacaj

Before I quit my high-paying job to work for myself, I was the **youngest Senior Director in Walmart Engineering**. I earned the most promotions in the shortest time and climbed 6 levels in 4 years. **In this course, I've packaged everything I learned so you can quickly advance your engineering career.**

In this course, I'll tell you the things your manager wants to tell you, but can't. Either because it would make things awkward, or it would get them in trouble. These are things that I had to learn the hard way. This is the advice I wish I would have had years ago, that you will get now.

In this course, I am taking a whole year of One on Ones I would have with one of my reports and compressing them into an hour and a half for you. Plus I am adding a whole bunch of detail people aren't usually fully aware of about One on Ones.

After going through this course, you will:

- 👍🏽 Discuss various career options: startups vs Big Tech and IC vs manager.
- 📣 Demystify what good software engineers *actually* do
- 😳 Determine the critical soft skills you need to succeed as an engineer
- 🔟 Figure out how 10x engineers operate
- 📈 Learn the simple formula for promotion and how it relates to time and scope
- 🗣 Know what to do in 1:1s and performance reviews

Timeless Career Advice for Software Engineers

What Is The Software Engineer Job?

Overlooked Skills

Earn Your Promotion 

Performance Management

I'm Michael, an ex-Netflix engineering lead turned engineering consultant and EECS alum @ UC Berkeley.

When I quit my job at Netflix, I thought that the only way to make money was either through another W-2 job or from building a VC-scale startup.

But soon after, I discovered a network of engineers who aimed for a middle ground between these two extremes. These engineer influencers all realized that it was easier to succeed as an entrepreneur if you build an audience first.

When I started my entrepreneurial journey in February 2022, I had 0 followers, 0 income streams, and 0 assets. But after focusing on building my social media presence for 6 months, I:

- Grew my audience from \~0 followers to [11k on Medium](https://medium.com/@_michaellin), [10k on LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/netflixenglead), [2\.5k on Twitter](https://twitter.com/_michaellin) and my [Substack newsletter](https://michaellin.substack.com/) with ZERO prior social media experience

- Went viral 4x on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook

- Published articles in [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/quit-job-at-netflix-senior-engineer-boredom-six-figures-2022-5) and Yahoo Finance

- Was invited by multiple CEO's to give paid speaking engagements ([recording here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r74h07aAyCo&ab_channel=MichaelLin))

- Cracked the LinkedIn algorithm - I managed to get a post about engineering to reach over 1.2 million impressions, with over 4k likes

- Cracked the Medium algorithm - I have never gotten under 1k claps on any article, I have a 100% curation rate on Medium, and I only wrote 6 articles.

- Regularly network with other CEO's, and large Youtubers, Twitter, and LinkedIn personalities.

I now focus on engineering consulting for early-stage startups: <https://www.allinengineeringconsulting.com/>. But I wouldn't have any business if it weren't for my efforts to grow on social media first.

Now I'm certain that **audience building is a critical first step in succeeding as an entrepreneur.** This course aims to show you how to build yours.

Connect with Michael:

- LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lin-tech/>
- Twitter: [https://x.com/\_michaellin](https://x.com/%5C_michaellin)
- Newsletter: <https://www.michaellinwrites.com/>

Michael Lin

The primary currency for career growth is the network of people who know who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. With the tools available to all of us, **building credibility and influence has never been easier**. 

Platforms like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and Substack contain countless examples of engineers who are achieving incredible success because of their ability to connect with an audience.

Once you have influence, it becomes significantly easier to expand your network, build distribution channels, and grow a business.

This course is focused on how YOU can become an engineer influencer. We cover 10+ case studies of other engineer influencers and how to apply their strategies to grow and monetize your own brand.

An *engineer influencer* is an engineer who builds an audience on social media and uses that to kickstart their future startup or business.

Examples include:

- [Rahul Pandey](https://www.youtube.com/c/RahulPandeyrkp) - ex-Meta engineer, who leveraged his 60k followers on YouTube to launch Taro, a career-mentoring app that got into YCombinator

- [Gergely Orosz](https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz) - ex-Uber engineering manager, who used his Twitter following to grow his paid newsletter "The Pragmatic Engineer" to 140k readers in 18 months

- [Daniel Vassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo) - ex-Amazon engineer, who grew his following to 130k followers on Twitter and now teaches a highly successful cohort based class called "Portfolio of Small Bets"

Each of these engineer influencers focused on building their social media following first.

### **Is this course for me?**

If you're a 1) W-2 employee in tech and 2) interested in diversifying your income streams, then yes!

### **What if I'm not an engineer?**

That's OK! You can apply the principles I teach to any field. I also discuss a number of designers, PMs, and engineering-adjacent folks as examples as well.

### **How is this course specific to engineers?**

First, I strive to use other engineers as examples wherever I can in this course.

Second, this course addresses entrepreneurial mistakes that engineers are most likely to make. This includes:

- focusing too much on product building rather than channel building

- feeling intimidated about self-promotion

- not knowing how to make sales

- thinking they don't have the authority to speak on engineering

- always aiming for a VC-scale unicorn

Become An Engineer Influencer

Channel Selection

Content Strategy

Production Process

Smart Audience Interaction

Monetization Strategies

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood, where he was a high-performing tech lead making $750,000/year.

## Resume Master

In order to pass interviews, you need to get them first, and this is something Alex was able to do in droves, largely due to his incredibly polished resume. Alex hasn't properly applied to a job in 5+ years but still gets interviews from top companies who find his resume/portfolio online (he walks through [why his portfolio is so impressive at getting inbound](https://www.jointaro.com/course/get-more-interviews-write-a-stellar-resume-as-a-software-engineer/the-real-secret-for-a-top-tier-resume/) in this course as well).

He's shared his resume format with others to repeat success (which you'll get access to by completing this course), often giving them an immediate 50%+ uptick in interview calls. To help friends, family, and the online community, Alex has reviewed 1,000+ resumes and [gotten them jobs at companies like Meta, Google, Snap, Workday, and more](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)!

## Deep Hiring Loop Perspective

Alex has been extensively involved in the hiring loop at all 4 of the top Silicon Valley companies he worked at. At Course Hero, he built the entire Android hiring loop from scratch, writing the job postings, reviewing the resumes, designing the interview process, administering the interviews, and then making hire/no hire decisions.

Across his 10+ years in Silicon Valley, Alex has reviewed 1,000+ resumes in a professional setting. He has also rejected 1,000+ resumes, tossing 90%+ of them into the bin. He deeply understands what top tech companies are looking for (and not looking for) in a candidate from their resume, particularly the many, *many* traps job-seeking engineers fall into that make their profile look **worse**.

The beautiful thing about resume optimization is that it really doesn't take too much time. If you go through this entire course and deeply pay attention to the hard-earned wisdom Alex has bundled within it, you can maximize your resume's quality in at most 10-20 hours. This is a 1-time cost that's definitely worth paying as you will be sending that resume to hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs.

7\.4 seconds: That's how long the average recruiter spends on your resume according to [this well-documented eye-tracking study](https://www.hrdive.com/news/eye-tracking-study-shows-recruiters-look-at-resumes-for-7-seconds/541582/). When it comes to tech where any decent job posting will get 100+ applicants in the first 24 hours, this study rings quite true with recruiters almost always spending just 5-10 seconds on a candidate's resume (sometimes less!).

Because of this, you absolutely have to make your resume *extremely* polished. Despite this, so many software engineers make basic mistakes and phrase their experience incorrectly. The wisdom in this course will get you out of those traps and maximize the chances of your resume surviving the initial screen and getting you an interview. After going through this course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **principles** behind a stellar resume

- 🗑️ Avoid the common **traps** that make resumes suck

- 💯 Get **maximum credit** by best framing your experience

- 📊 Make the right resume based on your **level**

- 🤔 Know what to do if your resume **isn’t enough**

The tricky part about writing a stellar resume is that there's so much misinformation online about what makes a good resume, usually coming from people who have never worked at top tech companies. This course cuts through all this noise by giving you time-tested tactics from proven engineering leaders who have been behind the hiring loop from all sorts of companies from FAANG to hyper-growth startups. By completing this course, you will also get a real resume from the instructor himself that you can use as a concrete template.

Get More Interviews: Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer

Traps To Avoid

Framing Your Experience

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood.

He became a tech lead just a couple years into his career by owning the entire Course Hero Android app (100k+ users) as their 1st Android engineer. After that, he expanded his scope as a tech lead at Meta and Robinhood, shipping multiple $10 million+ revenue projects with 15+ engineer teams.

## Knows The Struggle

Alex joined Meta as a Mid-Level Engineer \[E4\]. Like the overwhelming majority of engineers, he then proceeded to hit a wall growing to senior as you can see from his Meta performance review ratings:

- **1st half:** E4 Exceeds Expectations
- **2nd half:** E4 Exceeds Expectations
- **3rd half:** E4 Exceeds Expectations
- **4th half:** Promotion to Senior Engineer \[E5\]

So why was Alex stuck at E4 Exceeds Expectations for 1.5 years? It's because he wasn't making the fundamental mindset and behavioral shifts required to truly function as a Senior Engineer. In other words, it's because he didn't have the wisdom from this course.

## The Expert Senior Engineer Mentor

The E4 -&gt; E5 promotion was incredibly stressful for Alex, especially with [Meta's up-or-out policy](https://www.jointaro.com/question/X3ccTVVCpuS1T76HI5fX/how-does-up-or-out-work-and-whats-the-transition-generally-like-for-e3-greater-e4-greater-e5/). Alex made it his mission to help as many engineers as possible so they wouldn't have to go through all the pain he did. So he picked up mentees left and right, achieving incredibly impressive results with his mentorship:

- Got 5+ mid-level engineers \[E4\] promoted to senior engineers \[E5\] in just *1 year* (5x faster than industry average)
- Got 10+ mid-level engineers \[E4\] promoted to senior engineers \[E5\] in just *1\.5 years* (3x faster than industry average)

The Senior Engineer promotion doesn't need to be frustrating: With the right guidance, you can grow to that level incredibly quickly. That is what this course is for.

"Senior Software Engineer" is a title with a beautiful ring to it, and it's one that every software engineer aspires to. Top-notch senior engineers are incredibly coveted by tech companies, especially Big Tech, as there's simply not enough of them. With the massive rush of people into tech during the pandemic, the median software engineer is now Mid-Level. If you are Senior, you are special.

However, the Senior Engineer promotion is brutally difficult, especially at FAANG. There are so many engineers struggling with Meta E4 -&gt; E5 and Google L4 -&gt; L5. Amazon SDE 2 -&gt; SDE 3 is notorious for being the hardest senior promotion in the industry with engineers taking up to 10 years to make the jump.

So why is this level up so frustrating, being the first promotion 95%+ of engineers really struggle with? It's because Mid-Level to Senior is the first promotion that requires a fundamental dynamic shift, which this course thoroughly breaks down. By the end of the course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a mid-level engineer and a senior engineer

- 🧠 Have the right **mindset** to behave as a senior engineer

- 🛠️ Identify your **technical gaps** to senior engineer

- 📃 Figure out your **fundamental gaps** to senior engineer

- ✅ Define a clear **roadmap** to senior engineer

After going through all the lessons here, you will have the necessary tools to become a high-performing senior engineer at a top tech company like FAANG. This promotion is particularly exciting as senior is when doors start seriously opening up for your career, with the primary one being the option to become an engineering manager!

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer: L4 To L5

Impact

Engineering Excellence

Direction

People

Senior Project Case Studies

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. He started off as a new-grad at PayPal in 2014 making *$85k* and grew to a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood in 2021 making *$750k*.

With 4 different companies across 8 years, Alex got incredibly good at interviews with one of his strongest points being behavioral rounds:

- For Course Hero, Alex did so well in the behavioral round with the VP of Engineering that he got a phone call 1 hour after the onsite saying that he was being extended the offer. The offer ended up increasing his salary by over 50%!
- For Meta, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 5 hours of studying.
- For Robinhood, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 2 hours of studying. It went so well that he ended up teaching the hiring manager giving the round insights about effective mentorship!

When you're operating at the absolute highest levels of behavioral interviews, it ceases to feel like an interview and more like a fun conversation between 2 incredibly talented people. Through years of hard work, Alex got that level and is excited to get you there too.

## Interview 0 -&gt; Interview Hero

Alex is an introvert and grew up incredibly shy, having very few friends all the way up through high school and most of college. He then graduated UCLA as a lackluster student, just barely maintaining a \~3.0 GPA. He had poor communication skills and a tiny professional network - It's needless to say that he was terrible at behavioral interviews as well.

Fast forward to his later years, and Alex improved on all those fronts. He became an expert communication and a tech lead after just a few years, building all of Course Hero's initial Android app from scratch and creating a team of 4 Android engineers behind it. His professional network reaches far and wide across FAANG, top startups, and everything in between. Armed with an arsenal of incredibly rich career stories and charisma, behavioral interviews became a walk in the park for Alex.

Alex is living proof that the skills necessary to become a behavioral interview master can be learned, no matter how much of an introvert or weak communicator you are. You just need to put in the effort and have the proper guidance, which is what this course provides.

## Expert Of The Other Side

Alex was involved in the hiring process for all 4 of his companies, doing 250+ interviews. Of those interviews, 50+ were behavioral interviews. On top of those, Alex has also done 50+ mock behavioral interviews, coaching dozens of engineers to cracking behavioral interviews at top companies like FAANG.

Alex deeply understands:

- The difference between a passing and failing behavioral interview performance
- The most common reasons software engineers fail behavioral interview rounds, often stemming from their incorrect preparation and lackluster skill development
- What good behavioral interview performances look like at each level from junior (L3) to mid-level (L4) to senior (L5) to staff (L6)

Data structures and algorithms problems (i.e. LeetCode) suck up all the attention among software engineers when it comes to interviews. However, you need to master far more than LeetCode to land a quality tech job (even at FAANG). If you want to succeed on the software engineer interview journey, you absolutely have to get good at what's *actually* the most important interview type: Behavioral interviews.

Here are the attributes of behavioral interviews that make them so critical:

- You will encounter them on every interview loop from Big Tech to early-stage startups
- They can screen you out early (often at the recruiter pre-screen)
- They're used extensively for leveling
- You cannot fail them and still get an offer

Despite this, many engineers see them as a fairly meaningless and "fluffy" exercise. This leads to them struggling with behavioral interviews, often not realizing that they're getting hard rejected on these rounds! By taking this course, that won't be you anymore. After going through it, you will:

- 🧠 Have the right mentality to answer *any* behavioral question well
- ✅ Understand good vs. bad behavioral answers
- 📖 Use the right tactics to prepare properly
- 🤔 Possess the skills to vet the company
- 📊 Know what behavioral performances look like across different levels

The beautiful thing about behavioral interviews is that by improving at them, you just become a better software engineer overall. Skills like effective communication, speaking with charisma, and empathizing with others are fundamental skills that are useful anywhere at any stage in your career.

Master The Behavioral Interview As A Software Engineer

Answering The Questions

Questions To Ask

Leveling

Preparation

[Ethan Evans](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/) is a retired Amazon Vice President, now sharing his leadership expertise.

Starting at Amazon as a Senior Manager, then Director, then Vice President, Ethan has had decades of experience in the skill of managing up. In this course, he shares stories of presenting to executives like Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, and others. In addition, as a senior leader in the company, Ethan saw both effective and ineffective ways that his employees managed up to him.

Ethan spent 12 years in startups (10 in leadership roles) and then had a 15 year career at Amazon. He has led global teams of 800+ and products with annual revenue above $500M. He holds over 70 patents. More about Ethans: 

- Reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, and 1,000+ hires.
- Was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for training and maintaining Amazon's group of interview outcome facilitators.
- Helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) "**Ownership**" — the words "They never say ‘that’s not my job." are Ethan's. 

These career growth courses are developed from his own knowledge and input from his extensive network of fellow coaches and executives. (See Rahul's interview with Ethan about [the top 1% of engineers.)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P83dtntKo)

- Connect with [Ethan on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/)
- Subscribe to [Ethan's Level Up community](https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/)

Learn how to build successful, effective relationships with your manager, skip level, and senior peers.

This class contains a systematic, focused process for Managing Up successfully. It covers how to manage up in a variety of situations and to different people such as senior peers and skip level leaders.

Managing up is not just about getting recognition for one's work, but rather about investing in the relationship and understanding what the other person likes and dislikes, just as one would with friends or family.

Building a good relationship with your boss will make everything else easier, including handling conflicts and opportunities. 

**Your manager relationship is the single most important relationship you have at work; make it count**!

### Key Skills Covered

Working Well With Your Boss

- Understanding Your Boss
- Effective Communication

Handling Tricky Situations

- Problem Solving and Decision Making
- Conflict Resolution
- Giving Upward Feedback
- Managing Expectations

Driving Your Professional Development

- Ask for Career Support
- Earn and Get Investment From Leaders

Peers, Skip Levels, and Politics

- Peers and Skip Levels
- Politics and Ethics
- Enabling People to Manage Up to You

Managing Up: Build Effective Relationships With Your Boss

Working With Your Boss

Tricky Situations

Professional Development

Other Forms Of Managing Up

This is a course about the "insider's guide to negotiation", so it had better be taught by an insider! Rahul is a Stanford CS grad and Silicon Valley tech veteran who has seen the profound impact of negotiation throughout his 15 years in the industry.

Rahul's compensation went from $110K at the beginning of his career to $830K in his peak earning year, 2021, as a Tech Lead and Manager at Meta (Facebook). That's more than 7x! A lot of his Total Compensation (TC) growth can be attributed to his ability to negotiate. The 2 primary segments of negotiation in Rahul's career:

- **2013**: 5 offers at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and Square
- **2017**: 6 offers at Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Stripe, Uber, and Airbnb

Some examples of the shocking increases that Rahul saw with the leverage he had:

- The Snapchat salary went from $160K --&gt; $180K, the stock grant went from $600K --&gt; $1.0MM, and the signing bonus went from $10K --&gt; $100K 💸
- The Facebook stock grant went from $325K --&gt; $600K and the signing bonus went from $30K --&gt; $45K 💰

The numbers here are due primarily to having control over timing, information, and options. This is something you can learn and replicate, and the results can be life-changing.

(No, you don't need to get 5 offers, get a Stanford degree, or live in the Bay Area. Many others have replicated or exceeded Rahul's success in their own careers.)

### **Condensing Years Of Learning**

Rahul is now the cofounder of Taro, a platform designed to accelerate career growth for engineers. In this capacity, he has directly coached dozens of engineers through negotiations and has also seen the outcome of 100s of other negotiations across companies, geographies, and timelines.

This course condenses the collective wisdom from these tech workers into a high-density reference guide for you.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

Rahul Pandey

Your ability to negotiate is undeniably one of the highest-leverage skills you can learn. But tech workers are lousy at negotiation!

This course is designed for tech employees who are actively or passively in the job market. Candidates who proactively think about negotiation during their job search can increase their compensation by 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars with a few extra hours of work (I'm proof of this!).

**Negotiation is not that complicated. It's not even that difficult.**

If you have (1) a desire to get paid more and (2) the ability to tolerate some uncertainty, you have everything you need to *manufacture* leverage and negotiate a higher compensation. This course teaches you how to do exactly that.

We'll demystify how successful negotiations work so you feel confident in discussions with recruiters and hiring managers.

Here's what you'll gain by the end of the course:

- **✊🏽** Understand **if and when to negotiate**

- 🔮 **Create leverage** for negotiations

- **💰** Deconstruct the best ways to **improve your TC**

- 📝 Share **concrete tactics and phrases** to employ

This course is broken down into 3 major parts:

1. **Principles** - How does negotiation work and why is it worthwhile?
2. **Planning** - What should you do (and not do) before and offer you receive an offer?
3. **Tactics** - What is the best course of action for various scenarios?

We'll also cover tips for common situations such as:

- Negotiating your current compensation at your job
- Negotiating when you have a single offer
- Dealing with exploding offers

Finally, we'll also share specific phrases that have been used successfully by dozens of engineers, for you to adapt/copy/steal into your own negotiation playbook.

This course is the distillation of 100s of hours of experience and feedback from negotiation: 100s of conversations with other tech employees, dozens of conversations with recruiters, and the author's own journey with negotiation across 10+ companies.

One of the best things you can do for negotiations is to land several offers. If you need help with that, take this course first: [**\[Course\] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer**](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation

Core Principles Of Negotiation

Before You Have The Offer

After You Have The Offer

Engaging With Recruiters

Specific Scenarios

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10+ years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood.

He became a tech lead just a couple years into his career by owning the entire Course Hero Android app (100k+ users) as their 1st Android engineer. After that, he expanded his scope as a tech lead at Meta and Robinhood, shipping multiple $10 million+ revenue projects with 15+ engineer teams.

## From Ineffective Junior -&gt; Rockstar TL

It wasn't all sunshine and roses for Alex as he started off his career in 2014 as a [junior engineer at PayPal doing pretty much nothing](https://www.jointaro.com/question/MldWyFYyJUTxRGjId2f5/help-needed-new-grad-job-going-at-a-slow-pace-with-nothing-to-do-next-steps/). He would spend more of his day playing foosball than writing code. His career trajectory was completely stagnant, and he was making every mistake in the book.

Eventually, Alex woke up and took control of his career. He began thinking more proactively and making deliberate moves to ascend up the career ladder, striving to do amazing work and add as much value as possible to those around him. Fast forward 7 years to 2021 and Alex was making **\~$750k/year** as a high-performing Robinhood tech lead at the age of 29, leading 25+ person projects.

## Mentoring Engineers To ⚡ Fast Promotions

What Alex is even prouder of than his own career trajectory is those of his mentees, particularly those at Meta. Across his \~4 years at Meta, Alex mentored 30+ engineers and achieved these incredible outcomes:

- Got 10+ junior engineers \[E3\] promoted to mid-level engineers \[E4\] in just *1 year* (2x faster than industry average)
- Got 5+ mid-level engineers \[E4\] promoted to senior engineers \[E5\] in just *1 year* (5x faster than industry average)
- Got new-grad E3s promoted all the way to E5 with *"Greatly Exceeds Expectations"* ratings in just 3 years (*$200k TC -&gt; $500k TC*)

These trajectories are way faster than what Alex was able to accomplish himself, which was his goal. Every great teacher dreams of having their students surpass them, and Alex is no exception.

With this course, Alex is taking the largely unknown tactics he shared with his direct mentees and sharing them with you 🤲. With this newfound knowledge, you can also level up at 🚀 speed and help Alex achieve his dream on an even grander scale.

Switching jobs is great, but it can only get you so far. *The true foundation of any ultra-successful tech career is promotion.* When you look at software engineers at the pinnacle of career achievement like the FAANG Principal Engineer \[L8\] making $1,000,000+, you'll notice that the overwhelmingly majority of them have very long stints at a particular company with several promotions.

Despite this, promotion gets a bad reputation as it's sorely misunderstood, both by individual engineers and entire tech companies. This leads to many engineers getting stuck at certain levels, giving up, and just hopping companies to escape the pain. This course is here to demystify promotion and teach you how you can plant roots and actually climb up the tech career ladder. By the end of the course, you will understand:

- 💡 How promotion **actually works**, particularly at top companies like FAANG
- 🧠 The framework to understand the **senior engineering career ladder**
- 📃 How to define a **clear plan** to get to the next level
- ✅ What it takes to get **maximum credit** for every project
- 🚀 What it means to master your performance review and produce the **best promo packet**

Now here's the beautiful thing about pushing for promotion and following the advice of this course: *It will make you a much better software engineer*. The skills you build up to make a serious promotion case are genuinely useful for your long-term development. This is in contrast to interviewing where you're largely trying to fake mastery. At Taro, we're all about a *"growth first"* mentality, which is why we're so excited to share this course with you.

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer

Finding The Right Team

Set Up Success Criteria

Project Credit And Scope

Performance Review

Rahul has been "the new engineer" seven times in his career: four internships and three full-time jobs. He's been an engineer for most of his career and directly shaped the onboarding experience for new engineers on his teams as a manager. Most recently, he worked for 4.5 years at Meta as a Staff Software Engineer and Manager.

### Rahul: The Frequent Noob

Rahul has personally onboarded across a variety of companies and levels of seniority. His first job after university was as a founding engineer (employee #3) at a Stanford startup. Onboarding in this company was as simple as "Here's your laptop, good luck!"

This startup was acquired by Pinterest, which was a Silicon Valley darling undergoing hypergrowth at the time with \~400 employees. Pinterest had more process than the startup, but the product and company were changing rapidly. The onboarding was frequently incorrect or outdated.

Rahul then onboarded as a senior engineer at Facebook (now Meta), the classic Big Tech environment with tens of thousands of employees. Facebook is famous for a very structured approach to onboarding through Bootcamp: a multi-week program to get engineers up to speed.

This doesn't count the "mini-onboardings" that happen within a company: switching teams or moving around due to a re-org. The tech industry today moves incredibly fast, so the ability to adapt and ramp up quickly is essential.

### Years Of Learning In 3 Hours

Rahul is now the cofounder of Taro, designed to accelerate career growth for engineers. In this capacity, he **spoke directly to 100s of engineers** who have onboarded at dozens of companies. This course condenses the collective wisdom from these engineers about the successful (and unsuccessful) traits of new employees.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [**YouTube**](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

Onboarding is the critical period when you first join a new team or company. The impression you create in the initial months has an outsized impact on your future opportunities. The best engineers leverage this time to put their careers on the fast track, while poor engineers miss expectations and end up [PIP'ed](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-ultimate-performance-improvement-plan-pip-guide/) or terminated.

There's a lot to do as you ramp up: learn the codebase, build relationships, and start working on impactful projects. So it's no surprise that joining a new company can be overwhelming and stressful.

**This course presents a roadmap to ensure your success while onboarding**. We cover the importance of onboarding as the foundation for your job and career, why companies generally suck at it, and the correct mindset to adopt when you're new.

We'll then share tactics around three key pillars for Software Engineering onboarding:

- 🧠 Asking for help
- 💻 Learning the codebase
- 🙋🏽 Building relationships

Most importantly, this course will share the **principles** behind the advice so you can navigate any situation you're in.

We'll also cover specific tips for success in common situations:

- Junior engineers
- Senior engineers
- Joining a small company (whether VC-backed or indie business)
- Joining a large company

Here's what you'll gain by the end of the course:

- **✊🏽 Build serious respect** with your manager + team

- ⌛️ Quickly become **productive in a new codebase**

- **👨🏽‍💻 Learn from coworkers** (even if they’re not helpful)

- ❌ Understand **failure modes** (+ prevention)

If your anxiety is coming from **looking** for a job instead of **onboarding** into a job, you're in luck! Take this course and come back when you're gainfully employed: [**\[Course\] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer**](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

Watch the full course or go through the parts that are most relevant for you. **The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers: Succeeding When You're New** is designed to give technical employees to increase your impact and reduce your anxiety.

The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers

Proper Onboarding Mentality

Asking For Help

Learning The Codebase

Building Relationships

Contextual Onboarding Tips

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. His success is also reflected in his compensation:

- **2014:** Alex was making *$85,000* per year as a clueless new grad at PayPal 🤓
- **2021:** Alex was making *$750,000* per year as a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood 😎

In just 7 years, Alex was able to increase his pay by a staggering +800%. While a lot of this was due to promotions and his personal growth, a huge portion was also due to the 3 company switches he made across his career. It's hard to reach the top without changing jobs, and Alex took that idea to the bank 🏦.

## Interview 0 -&gt; Interview Hero

Alex graduated UCLA as a lackluster student, just barely maintaining a \~3.0 GPA. He entered the tech job market as an even more lackluster interview candidate who was too lazy to do LeetCode. It took him 25+ failed interviews before landing the offer for his first job at PayPal.

Fast forward to his later years and Alex was passing his interviews with far more ease at better and better companies, having learned from his many failures of the past. For Meta and Robinhood, he only had to study a few hours (&lt;5) to pass their behavioral and system design rounds!

## Inspiring Others To Job Success

Alex has mentored thousands of software engineers towards cracking the interview for their dream jobs. Here's just a small list of the top tech companies Alex has empowered engineers to get into:

- Meta
- Amazon & Twitch
- Google
- Snap
- Microsoft
- Pinterest
- Workday

And this is just the big publicly traded companies. Alex has also landed many engineers into positions at cutting-edge startups.

On top of the stellar selection of companies, Alex has helped engineers from all sorts of backgrounds ace their tech interviews:

- **Junior and senior** - Alex has helped both struggling new grads and senior engineers with 10+ years of experience.
- **US citizens and new immigrants** - Being on a visa makes the job search much harder, and this is an obstacle Alex has coached several mentees through, even helping an international student land a role at a top startup.
- **Traditional and non-traditional** - One of the engineers Alex helped get into Workday didn't even have a Computer Science degree!

## From The Other Side Of The Table

The last big reason why Alex is perfect to teach this course is that he's thoroughly seen the interview from *both* sides and built a deep understanding of what the world looks like through the eyes of the interviewer (i.e. the person giving the questions) and the (often struggling) candidate.

Alex was an interviewer at every company he's ever worked at, giving 250+ interviews, with \~100 of those being at Meta. He's reviewed 1,000+ resumes and been in the room for many hire/no-hire decisions. He's done every interview type from phone screen to onsite and DSA to behavioral. At Course Hero, he was their 1st Android engineer and tech lead, so he wrote their entire Android engineer interview process from scratch.

With all this experience, Alex has seen every possible way a software engineer job candidate can fail during their interview grind:

- He knows why they have to desperately apply online into a black hole with minimal results
- He knows why their resume doesn't even make it past the initial screen, not even getting the chance to talk to a human
- He knows why they completely choke during the interview despite having studied for 500+ hours

With this course, Alex is teaching you how to learn from the countless mistakes both he and his thousands of prior mentees have made.

Finding a job as a software engineer *sucks*. From "gotcha" data structures and algorithms (DSA) problems to recruiters ghosting you, the tech interview grind is often miserable. The sad thing is that universities and bootcamps are **terrible** at adequately preparing new talent for the brutal realities of the engineering job market.

This is why this course exists: It is the comprehensive resource you need to fully understand the many ins and outs of the software engineer interview grind. After going through this course, you will:

- **🧹** Organize your entire job search (and make it debuggable)

- 🧠 Train your brain to learn interview skills properly and stay healthy throughout the process

- 📃 Apply effectively and efficiently to jobs

- ✅ Have a framework to come prepared into any interview

- 💡 Understand all common interview types and how to approach them

Now you might be looking at this and wondering, "*Wait, where's the advice on becoming a LeetCode master?"*. This is 100% intentional and not a mistake: Over-indexing on DSA is easily the #1 way software engineers mess up their job search. While the vast majority of online resources help engineers with this portion, there is far, far more to the interview journey. It's why most engineers never break into FAANG - They don't master the multitude of other crucial interview mechanics besides DSA. Take this course and you will learn those mechanics!

Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer

Get Interviews

Interview Types

Pass Interviews

After The Interview

Rahul is the cofounder of Taro, designed to accelerate career growth for engineers. From 2017 - 2022, he was an Engineering Manager and Tech Lead at Meta. Before that, he was an Android Engineer at Pinterest.

Throughout his career, Rahul worked at companies with varying PIP cultures, and he's worked directly with engineers who received a PIP. In addition, Rahul has interviewed dozens of engineers and managers to learn how the overall tech industry uses and perceives a PIP. (See his [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/-a3SZVzl6Wo) on the topic.)

Rahul graduated from Stanford University and lives in the Bay Area.

Connect with Rahul:

- [**Taro**](https://www.jointaro.com/p/rahul-pandey/)
- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/rpandey1234)
- [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/)

The easiest way to stress out a tech worker is to bring up a PIP -- a **Performance Improvement Plan**.

A **PIP** is a formal document informing an employee 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.

Given how high the stakes are, it's essential that you create an airtight gameplan to get the best outcome for yourself.

This course shares everything you need to know about a PIP, presented in a structured way with easy-to-revisit sections. This course is broken down into 4 phases of a PIP lifecycle:

### **Before the PIP**

- Surviving (and thriving) in a company that has a PIP culture.
- A systematic approach to prevent bad surprises when it comes to performance evaluation and feedback.
- How to identify if you're in the PIP danger zone, and what you can do about it.

### **Receiving a PIP**

- Actionable advice if you've officially been put on a PIP. What to do and what not to do.
- The **PIP Evaluation Framework** to determine if you're setup to fail, or you have a fighting chance to succeed.
- Checklist of what you should negotiate (or at least ask about) in your severance package, and what to check before you walk out the door.

### **Case studies**

Real stories of people who went through a PIP, including their context, what they ended up doing, and what advice they would share. Four case studies from Individual Contributors (ICs) who received PIPs and two case studies of managers who have put employees on PIPs.

### Finding career success after a PIP

- How to prevent the negative impacts of a PIP from extending beyond the initial job.
- The right mindset to adopt for future jobs, and how to talk about your experience in the right way.
- Advice to avoid shooting yourself in the foot for future interviews.

The Ultimate Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) Guide

Before The PIP

After The PIP

Case Studies

Finding Career Success After A PIP

[**Alex Chiou**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. Across his entire storied career, he has been a champion of code quality and woven it into so many of his accomplishments:

## Course Hero

At Course Hero, Alex was hired as their first Android engineer and tech lead. From there, he grew the team from 1 to 4 engineers and led the [Course Hero Android app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coursehero.coursehero) to having the highest NPS by far of any Course Hero surface (web, iOS, and Android) with the most 5 star ratings.

## Meta

At Meta, Alex was a Top 5% code committer and Top 1% reviewer, always getting **Exceeds Expectations** or higher on the *Engineering Excellence* performance review axis every half:

- With *270+ diffs landed per half*, Alex landed more than double the average Meta engineer. This is largely because his code quality was extremely high, leading to his diffs getting approved and landed on the 1st try 95%+ of the time. Alex was one of very few engineers within his 100+ person org to have an average time-to-close of less than 1 day.
- With *720+ diffs reviewed per half*, Alex reviewed more than three times as much code as the average Meta engineer. This is because his expertise in code quality let him spot messy code patterns extremely quickly, uplifting his entire team (and multiple sister teams) to ship much better code.

## Side Projects

Outside of work, Alex has built several side projects at scale and with a stunning degree of quality:

- [Random Name Picker](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomappsinc.studentpicker): 1,000,000+ users with a 4.7 star out of 5 average rating after 5,600+ reviews
- [Random Number Generator Plus](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomappsinc.randomnumbergeneratorplus): 680,000+ users with a 4.8 star out of 5 average rating after 6,500+ reviews
- [SQL Practice PRO - Learn DBs](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=randomappsinc.com.sqlpracticeplus): 550,000+ users with a 4.9 star out of 5 average rating after 9,300+ reviews

With the infinite amount of tutorials and infrastructure services out there nowadays, writing code really isn't hard - Just getting things to work is much easier than ever before. This means that if you want to stand out as a software engineer, *you need to write much **better** code than almost everybody else.*

Every engineer needs high code quality, especially at Big Tech companies like FAANG where even the slightest mistake can hurt hundreds of thousands of users and cost millions of $$. After going through this course, you will:

- 🔎 Understand what good code looks like (and doesn’t look like)
- 🌱 Set up the right growth mentality around code quality
- 💻 Learn how to submit a quality pull request
- 🍝 Avoid common messy code patterns

Now you might be looking at this and thinking, *"I need to move fast, I don't have time to write the perfect code"*. This is a very understandable misconception many engineers have before getting to the highest-levels, but it couldn't be further from the truth: *When you write better code, you will actually move **faster** as a software engineer*. Don't believe us? - Take the course and find out why!

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer

Having The Proper Mentality

Better Code Strategies

Pull Requests

Common Messy Code Patterns

Wrapping Up

[Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top companies like PayPal, Meta, and Robinhood. As a tech lead at Instagram, he shipped multiple $100 million revenue ads products to over a billion users. He's also built several software projects at scale just for fun, shipping 3 Android side projects with 500k+ users and 30+ apps to Google Play with 4.5 million+ users combined.

System design: It's a become a staple topic among software engineers for its prevalence in interviews. However, unlike data structures and algorithms, system design is *actually* something engineers have to do on the job, especially at senior levels and beyond.

In this course, you will learn:

- How tech leads at top companies like Big Tech design high-quality, scalable systems
- Common design patterns and things to look out for as a frontend engineer or anybody who's working more on the product side
- A good format you can use for your own technical design documents
- The process to follow to find the best overall engineering approach to a hard problem
- How to socialize your technical ideas to get buy-in

Grow past the memorization of fancy FAANG tech components and become an engineer who's capable of writing code that lasts.

System Design Masterclass: Shipping Real Features To Production

Overview & Setup

Core Design

Follow Through

[Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a prolific mentor of engineering talent, and that includes interns. Across his 4 years at Meta as a tech lead, he raised his own intern successfully to get an "Exceeds Expectations" offer. He also mentored 5+ other interns to getting their own return offer, even mentoring an engineer on how to mentor their intern!

Meta is one of the best tech companies to get an intern return offer from with its extremely large signing bonuses ($75,000+) and an ultra-competitive starting compensation ($175,000+). However, the program is quite competitive with just a 50-70% return offer rate historically.

After completing this course, you'll understand what it takes to survive (and thrive!) in one of the world's hardest internship programs. You'll learn:

- The optimal process to onboard efficiently
- How to build the relationship with your intern manager and make them fight for you
- What it takes to meet engineering expectations (e.g. how much code to write)
- The common ways interns fail and get blocked in calibrations

Getting a return offer as an intern is one of the highest leverage things you can possibly do in your career. If you've done the work to get into Meta's prestigious intern program, use this course to finish the job.

Nail Your Return Offer As A Meta Software Engineer Intern

Hit The Ground Running

Success In The Modern World

[Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. With just 1 year of experience, he became a tech lead building Course Hero's Android app from scratch and growing the Android team from himself to 4 engineers. At Meta and Robinhood, he continued being a high-performing tech lead, driving teams of 15+ engineers.

Communication is a skill that software engineers often underestimate in terms of importance, and being good at it is effectively a senior engineer requirement. In this series, you will learn how to:

- Earn trust quickly and make people like you fast
- Resolve disagreements
- Make it easy for others to understand and resonate with you
- Be a friendly, visible, and high-performing presence on any team (both remote and in-person)

Software Engineering Career Courses