**Fails** 

- Agreeing to lead a project before I fully understood what it was 
- Signing up for a live evening class in PST time from the East Coast

**Wins**

- Starting on a new team with an amazing manager
- Joining Sr to Staff course!

Senior Software Engineer at Late Stage Startup

Kasey

- Can you share a bit about when and why you transitioned into management? Was that always your goal?
- In your opinion, when is it appropriate to transition into management, especially if one's goals and strengths align with this career path? For instance, is there a significant difference in transitioning from a Sr Eng to EM as opposed to moving from aStaff to EM?
- What is the role of the Director level in an Engineering department?
- As a Senior Director, what expectations do you have for the impact of the Directors/Managers reporting to you? And what impact does your manager and skip-level expect from you?

The absolute first step in a successful job search is to write a stellar, concise resume. Despite this, so many engineers fail to do the incredibly high-leverage act of resume optimization, making several basic mistakes.

[Taro Top 10] How To Write A Better Engineering Resume To Get More Jobs

It doesn't matter how skilled and talented you are as a software engineer if the team around you is fundamentally unsupportive. In order to have a successful career, you need to join organizations that foster your growth.

[Taro Top 10] How To Find A Good Engineering Team And Company

As a software engineer, you will quickly realize that you can't do it all alone, especially at senior/staff levels and beyond. In order to continue growing, you need to learn to mentor others and delegate.

[Taro Top 10] Effective Mentorship And Growing Others

Software engineering work is rarely smooth and well-defined: There will always be crazy surprises. If you're in any sort of engineering leadership role (tech lead or engineering manager), you will need to become great at project management.

[Taro Top 10] Project Management

Learn what real system design looks like by seeing Alex use the tactics he used as a Meta/Robinhood tech lead to scope out a Taro feature. The skills here are crucial to being a senior+ engineer at FAANG and other top companies.

System Design Masterclass: Taro Playlists

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, Alex breaks down the principles and tactics he uses to communicate effectively.

Alex's Guide To Effective Communication

Stuff

After getting a foothold in the industry, engineers become mid-level. Most engineers stay at this level for quite a while as they navigate the senior engineer promotion (L4 -> L5 by FAANG leveling), which generally requires becoming a tech lead.

[Taro Top 10] Mid-Level Engineer To Senior Engineer (L4 To L5)

For almost all software engineers, they need to become a tech lead (a.k.a. TL) to get to senior levels. However, there's much more to being an effective tech lead than ordering people around.