Engineering Manager at Mistplay

Ryan Kuck

I think the most important risk to be aware of is that by speaking up you either demonstrate you know what’s going on in the meeting, what the other people are trying to accomplish, and how it all ladders up to the team and company goals OR not.

But by asking questions and listening first you figure that out before making an assertion or suggestion. By explaining your point clearly and concisely you have the highest chance of it making sense while respecting the time of people in the meeting. And by being either tentative, or 100% speaking in line with the direct goals of the other folks in the meeting and therefore being assertive, then you can’t really go wrong for throwing something out there

It is possible. But at the same time there have been interviews where I was very confident afterwards but failed and vice versa. There are other factors that can play a role that are outside your control like how other candidates performed and how their prior knowledge compares to yours. In this market you can pass all the interviews but still not get the offer.

Team Lead (people manager) at Mistplay

With 30 minutes to talk to the CTO at the end of the process, I would demonstrate that you are not yet sold on working at the company, ideally by genuinely having a bunch of questions they can answer about the future as you mentioned.

Alex or Rahul said the best thing a hiring manager wants to see in a candidate is that they have done this exact thing very well before. So if you can ask questions like, "At my last company I built XYZ pipeline with the similar tech as you all and we had ABC results. What's the next big project in the pipeline here? What is the desired outcome for customers and the company if we hit that milestone? If we land our next 1 year of roadmap whats next after that? Tell me about the past year of projects that you all built? What was exciting about the last year, what were the challenges? What is our biggest challenge in the next year?"

[My answer for what to look for in scrappy startups](https://www.jointaro.com/question/9jFuRj3UymeHsaKIzXia/how-to-find-and-connect-with-scrappy-startups/) is relevant here too:

The most important thing at your small startup is who are the other people at the company esp engineers and would you like to work with them.

- In the interview are they asking interesting questions and having good conversations?
- Are they describing interesting projects they are working on?
- Would you like to learn from them?
- Would you like to have drinks with them?

The company finances are also important so here are some questions for that:

- How much runway do you have before you run out of money? (2 years would be great)
- What are your plans for growth and hiring (lots of hiring is a good sign)
- Where is the company in terms of product market fit?
- How much revenue is there and where does it come from?
- If venture backed, how big was the last round of fundraising and who invested? (A big round with well known backers is a great sign)

Situations where the CEO and board are all white men is a great way to see that a company is not hiring the best talent, but instead people who look like themselves.

As an employee involved in the hiring process its an opportunity to call this out and make sure that the company has a broad pool of applicants. If 90% of the applicants are men, then clearly you are only posting in a narrow set of areas and missing out on great software engineering talent that will make the company much stronger and deliver better results to the users. There are lots of studies that prove this somewhat obvious fact like from [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/03/harnessing-the-power-of-diversity-for-profitability/?sh=8b28859459a7) and [McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters).

One more thought is someone could be the majority race and/or gender, yet have come from extreme poverty in childhood. Or maybe they deal with a debilitating mental health issue. Or they have a different sexual orientation. So I think it is important to think about a variety of ways to be diverse. An anecdote where race and gender align yet there is discrimination is based on [this article.](https://qz.com/apple-meta-and-google-must-fight-caste-discrimination-1849415898) It is technically illegal to discriminate for hiring based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status, but caste was not listed there. Apparently this has been or was a problem at Apple, Google, Microsoft. So we can all work together to help our companies succeed by advocating for all types of under represented and discriminated against people.

What about something in the middle where you informally say over slack, "Hey just wanted to confirm, do you also feel we have a positive work relationship?" ... "Ok thanks, mind if I share this exchange with my manager?"

It really sucks when people close to us don’t understand what we care about or what we can do.

But want to +1 what Jonathan is saying: if someone is supportive of you or not, no need to tell them what your dreams are, just do it. (Unless it’s your manager, or your closest friend and you’re scared of failing, etc). Talking about dreams that you haven’t accomplished triggers the reward center in your brain as if you’ve done them already and then since you already got the reward you’re less likely to do them.

Working on Shopify I imagine you’re in Canada? Either way DM me, I’m hiring for a senior web role!

RE: coach vs therapist. This is a really interesting call out and just want to provide my thought process here in case anyone relates. If its been your life dream to work at google, but you want some accountability to practice interviewing or you need to support a lot of other people with your salary, then this doesn't really apply. But if you don't *need* to get a better job, then you can ask the five whys:

- I'm unhappy with my job
- It isn't as fancy as what I see other people with or it has XYZ problems
- Why is this an issue? 
  - A) I need to feed my family
  - B) I want to be at peace and happy?
- If B) then what is really making you unhappy and not at peace? Could it be
  - Perfectionism
  - Lack of community
  - Lack of balance in life
  - ...
  - Or is it really money and status?

My therapist gave me this feedback when I was debating between a senior engineer role at linkedin role or staying at my startup, and then again every time I day dream of changing jobs:

> The happiness you will get out of your job for the rest of your career doesn't have to do with what role you have, but how you evaluate yourself.

You can always get a better job and still compare with something even better. And at a new job you will NOT have the same difficulties of your current job. But you will have OTHER difficulties - no job is perfect.

So if you're already happy but have a very specific goal to improve something, go for it. But when we talk about what "needs" we have as a software engineer that we want to fulfill to "fix" being unhappy, then it has been helpful for me to work with a therapist who thinks about me as a person first with needs like community, phycological safety, and health. Status and money are nice and are more directly achievable through putting in time and effort, but they may not be a satisfying solution in the end.

Finally if you are really motivated and putting in a ton of time and strain to achieve status and money, you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot by trying too hard and wanting it too much. (Speaking from my own experience).

In the 2000’s we got laptops, debugging tools, and powerful libraries. Some could have said oh these make software engineering so much easier so we won’t need as many engineers compared with when there were punch cards and a single mainframe at a university that students would share. Instead it 10x’ed productivity or more and so did software engineers salaries. 

So that is my prediction for ChatGPT/copilot etc, they help us a lot right now already, and  hugely increase our productivity. But based on my sister in laws comments their ability to get even better is limited by the laws of computing so they won’t replace us any time close to the next 10 years

My sister in law is working at Nvidia building chips and software to do AI stuff. I vented to her about this exact same thing 2 weeks ago and she said it looks really good right now and then we extrapolate where it will be in 2, 5, or 10 years based on the last 1 year growth. 

She said that isn’t the way it works though, a lot of the parameters for these things diminish at a rate like n^4 in effectiveness so there are huge obstacles for scaling this up. It’s more likely she said this is like the deep learning craze 10 years ago where there was a huge jump in one year and then some progress but not by that same amount for the years after.

Also I recommend working with a therapist, great for working through this type of stuff. 

And if software engineers (who need to code but also need to have product knowledge, collaboration skills, system design ability, know where to focus there time, creativity etc) are able to be automated, then finance workers, doctors, lawyers, architects, mechanical and civil engineers etc will definitely be automated too plus product managers, engineering managers, and CEOs.

So yes there is a lot of hype but if every job is automated and we all get 200k income from the government while living in villas built by robots who bring us food and drinks all day, that would be OK too.

But for now focus on using ChatGPT to make your life better and think about problems that it can’t solve.

That sucks to hear - I watched it yesterday and thought it was awesome! It was a fun way to learn from real code examples and see that even future Staff engineers struggle at first

5% growth on subscribers since a week or two ago seems not bad at least!

Fail:

- I've had it on my mind to invest in Nvida for a while now. Every day that goes by it get's worse.

Win:

- Had a great time meeting awesome folks in person at the Taro meetup in the bay area!

The main question here may actually be about the exact sentence(s) to use before and after getting help. At a restaurant it is the waiter’s job to help, so just being thankful for them helping in the moment works (life hack: less annoying to have someone say thanks several times than sorry several times).

But in a work setting you have a huge advantage because you can build good relationships over the long term, including by helping each other directly. So it shouldn’t really be a big deal when you’re reaching out. If you don’t know the person yet you could still:

- Be clear and concise
- Make it obvious why this is important/urgent
- Show why you need their help specifically, not someone else’s (and if relevant, what you have already tried and gotten stuck with yourself)

To avoid being entirely metaphorical, there are many things you can do to help others as a software engineer even as a first-day new grad:
  -  Fix the team’s onboarding documentation and/or make a supplemental guide of your own to help the next person
  -  Pair program with others and help with their problems (if you’re new you can start by helping someone else new)
  -  Ask for feedback and offer to give real constructive feedback as well, maybe informally in a coffee chat or similar 

One related example I have is while moving a couple times over the past years I’ve asked friends for help and sometimes couldn’t have done it without them. I say, “Hey I’m moving and was wondering if I could have your help Sunday afternoon.” And then I buy dinner afterward. 

But also I’ve helped other different friends move quite a few times. So it’s kind of this society/community thing where we sometimes need each other, say thanks, and can pay it forward when we have the opportunity to help someone else.

What about for each type of question you’re worried about assessing what the fundamental skills are and repeating them back to the interviewer, honestly acknowledging if you haven’t faced that exact scenario, but then saying here is xyz I’ve done that demonstrated those skills and that had abc great results.

For example, “the important thing to build a  cross functional feature is great planning,  communication, and empathy - and while it wasn’t cross functional I’ve built those skills on a project with one other coworker or student or professor by <fill in here with real example you are proud of>.

Trying to speak about something as if you did it without really having done it would likely lead to follow up questions that would go down hill.

Last thought: admitting honestly when you don’t know something or haven’t done something could even be a positive signal. It’s good if someone knows what they don’t know, it’s good if someone is honest, has courage to admit they are wrong or don’t know or need help. Interviewing for my Junior year internship at Zillow there was a follow up question on C++ vs Java and I said “I don’t know”. And they paused and wrote that down and then just asked a different question. I thought I failed because of that (and wasn’t perfect overall) but got the offer and lesson learned it’s ok to not know something.

Bonus last thought: our CTO at Mistplay was head of engineering at Airbnb in 2019-2021 and before that lead the team at Match through acquiring Tinder and a full rewrite of it. One thing he emphasized for us in his first months is he doesn’t know everything and readily admits when he needs help from the team where they know more. Obviously we need to give good answers to most interview questions, but this is a helpful mindset once on the job.

As you say being concise is key. So maybe just 3 or 4 bullet points per week that highlight current wins, fails, risks, and blockers? Or if you want to expand more those could be section headers and you can write N/A under some and expand more on others as needed. One about feedback you’re iterating on could be a nice touch too, especially if it’s from them

Personally I have had 5 managers in the last 4.5 years at one company, so I don’t see this as too much cause for alarm as something out of the ordinary. Maybe someone could link some posts about best practices around changing managers in general - but I know in one video it’s said that great managers do not last. They become managers of managers and it’s very normal to lose them quickly if they are good. 

I think there are actually a couple of benefits to a new manager. You learn from someone else’s perspective. You get a fresh start with how you present yourself to them. You can bring up asks for responsibility and increasing scope with another set of ears.

Ideally you can build a good relationship with your current manager, ask for a one on one on one to have a group huddle on goals and accomplishments at the beginning and end of the nine months and still land your promotion on schedule.

If you know you want to be a software engineer in college I totally agree it’s better to spend your time building your own projects than absolutely maxing out grades. Knowing how to have good work and learning habits is important but the content of college CS classes is not super relevant to software engineering.

My very small sample size study of myself is: I had mostly A’s and wish I hadn’t. I didn’t get a return offer from my Junior year internship and didn’t have a job lined up after graduating because I was burnt out. And there’s so much I didn’t really know as a junior engineer because I hadn’t built my own projects

Something you can do as a junior engineer that only takes 20% of your time even if you have to change jobs to achieve it is to [choose the right team/company for you](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/0WEmTNZOMIh8xAdfO3JH/masterclass-how-to-choose-a-good-company-and-team-as-a-software-engineer/) that has the right people, pay, purpose, tech stack etc so that you thrive at work and enjoy software engineering and your life.

At your current job it is important as a junior engineer to give feedback to your manager to find problems that:

1. you can solve in a reasonable amount of time
2. but also keep challenging you and pushing your technical understanding
3. and that you genuinely enjoy thinking about and ideally even get energy from working on

One more thought that didn't fit in the last answer is: whatever coding you're doing it's fundamental to break down your work into small bite sized pieces and take them one at a time. ([1 min video with example here](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3Jkc4M9FjM4))

Glad you're here to ask this question, you're in the right place!

> it's never really keeping with all the latest technologies it's all about understanding said fundamentals

100% agreed. And what are those fundamentals for coding? I think its just the basics needed like variables, control flow, functions, and what classes and objects are. After that there are books on OOP, functional programming, Clean Code, etc. But its easier to learn more complex stuff by doing. For getting that first job having fun with side projects is key.

> is there some learning path to follow

Essentially building something is key to real learning:

1. Google around about a language of your choice to get warmed up 
2. Work on a project yourself. Don't just copy code from a tutorial into an IDE, but rather pick something fun and new that you really want to do.
3. Go back to google to fill in what you don't know. Switch often between studying and doing for best results.

**Examples:**

Before I got my first full time tech job after school I did a bunch of little exploratory projects for a few months. I implemented my version of malloc in C and tested it's performance - that worked. Then I tried building an iOS app that used GPS, head tracking, spatial audio libraries and didn't really finish anything but played with some libraries. Then I changed some strings and margins of a React template and shipped a personal website. After that I searched for game engines in javascript where my idea was I would train an AI to play them really well, record youtube videos as if I was playing them for real and go viral. Never really finished this but played a perfect game of snake programmatically and I stopped there because I got hired.

> I never felt like I'm learning

It feels like you have a negative view of your progress and/or experience with coding. First of all, you probably know a lot more than you think. But the metal side of coding was also really tricky for me - it wasn't understanding OOP that was super hard but rather what the IDE means when it says "Build Failed: 43 Errors, you seem to suck at this". These are some "fundamentals" on the mental side:

- \#1 Positive self talk. When there are errors DO NOT think "Wow I'm stupid" or "S\*\*\* I messed this up" - instead know this is super normal - Staff engineers at google also write bugs and have errors all the time, catching them is good. Bold red error messages are unfortunately the IDE's best attempt at a gentle reminder saying "please adjust a few minor things because otherwise this code won't quite work yet". ($100 to whoever changes this)
- Configuration/set up getting started can be the worst part of coding. But it's not just you who spends 5 hours trying to just start a new project and it isn't working at all yet. Everyone will have 10 errors getting a project running locally on a new machine. It does get easier once you just know and expect this.
- You need to give yourself regular breaks [(1 min video here)](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PLn3ZAJCECo). Don't wait to have dinner until after you get this feature working, or see friends once you finish part one. Take the breaks and know you're making progress at something really hard *even if there are a bunch of errors right now*. It'll be easier to think after a break - and your physical and mental health are always most important.

I can’t say it better than Devon did, but living and working in Canada I had the same experience. I’m not working at a venture backed Bay Area startup up or in big tech or even the highest paying software job in Canada - yet I joined Taro in October 2022 and suddenly I had a call with an engineering manager and tech lead from Meta (Rahul) providing career advice and guidance to me as a new team lead on how to be in the top 1-10% of engineers. 

I’ve been in an easier time zone for it but I’ve joined several live course over the past year and a half where I’ve met more top US engineers even without being there myself. Ultimately though the async courses Rahul and Alex built + async Q&A have helped me succeed as a team lead where I’ve grown from managing 3 to 8 people since 2022 by teaching the importance of empathy and trust etc in addition to how to be a high performing engineer. 

Additionally Alex and Rahul create an environment where if you reach out with async with questions and comments they not only answer your question but give you the feeling that you’re important and that there’s a community supporting you whether you’ve been laid off, are striving for promotion, or are launching your own side project. None of that depends on where you’re located.

The way I look at it is if you’re a new FAANG engineer in the US (and like me you’re not a genius) you need Taro to survive, but you can absolutely crush it by being a top engineer or manager in a market that doesn’t even make that 100% mandatory.

Thanks for that take Alex, I love it! 

One thing I might be getting mixed up on though is the side project importance. It is an awesome way to catch the eye of big tech or a start up incubator - but maybe that is more critical for Junior engineers and if you just knock it out of the park being in the top &gt;10% at your company then that is a better use of time than trying to also do a lot on the side as a mid-level plus engineer (unless you simply are doing it with no ulterior motives than pure joy of doing it)?

I've put my phone into greyscale/black and white so it's less addictive. I can still access information I want without as high of dopamine triggers to click the red dot or illuminated number of notifications.

iOS: Settings &gt; Accessibility &gt; Display & Brightness &gt; Color Filters

I think we as engineers at tech companies understand how much money goes into optimizing those triggers to take people's time and money, and actually a business idea of the future is designing apps or even an OS for the mindfulness and mental health of the user not just extracting maximum time/money from them right now. Unfortunately it would be harder to make short term money that way. My 30 year prediction/prayer for tech is we will have this

Two strategies I've tried:

- Don't make myself work 4 hours after work everyeday at burn out on my side projects, instead 30-60 min consistently per day and then stop
- Mix up what I'm doing so I have a lot of variety. This isn't the greatest for going fast in one area but holistically I feel happy to make youtube videos Monday, Tuesday, build on my app on Wednesday, have fun with friends Thursday, Friday, build more on Saturday, fully unplug on Sunday

That’s super fair Rahul, there are many different approaches. I think if one can live ones dreams like having a business with revenue, family, house and save that is ideal and worrying to much about money doesn’t help.

The one thing I realized is just that if I do want to be supporting myself independently of traditional work in the next 10 years, then every $1000 extra I get used to spending each year is another $25000 that I need to have saved and invested to support that lifestyle by the 4% financial independence rule. (Or $1000 more to earn each year as a small business/creator/artist which might be way less consistent than a normal job)

Amazing question, I've been thinking a lot about this too! I addressed this for myself with a mindset shift by re-understanding what money is when you are fortunate to have a higher paying career. Here is an example video I found super helpful for that understanding: [Why I am a Financial Minimalist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUm-7AWwARs)

***Summary:*** *Money is for buying time not luxury goods*

- There is a sense of tranquility with no huge mortgage/lease payments weighing you down
- Money buys you options in life and to pursue creative ventures and to find purpose and meaning
- Money is not for feeling a sense of superiority to someone else by buying a Gucci belt and fancy house

Of course you can and should treat yourself but personally I'm trying to just not do every treat every month, rather picking and choosing based on a pre-thought-out budget. And the budget can change, but not just because your income did. I'm choosing to save more so that I can fund myself to say take a year working on my own business. But pick what is meaningful to you, and not just saving for retirement in 40 years.

**More resources:**

- [NerdWallet Advisors](https://nerdwalletadvisors.com/home?returnTo=%2F) I use them to get a CFA's help with financial planning for $30/month
- [Financial Mastersheet](https://beacons.ai/humphreytalks/freedownloads) this is a free excel sheet I use to track my monthly expenses and total investments over time from another favorite creator of mine
- [FIRE Investment Calculator](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archipelago.retirement) this an Android app I built and would love feedback on BUT I recommend that before you ratchet up your spending another $1k per month from that next raise, you can play with your numbers here to see how investing that would allow you to retire sooner (even if you're not really doing FIRE)

Glad to hear it was helpful. I think it’s a great sign your manager and skip are empathetic and supportive, it sounds like talking to them has or will go well. And I’m not sure you need to mention something specifically to anyone else on your team. If they have questions ideally your manager should help cover or you can lightly mention you have something personal right now without going into it. It would be unprofessional of them to dig into the amount of work you’re doing or your personal state other than to ask you or flag it to your manager who will just let them know it’s known/handled and all good. 

This is super tricky, wishing you the best of luck with work and life at this time.

A few thoughts are:

- You may be friends/friendly with your manager and peers, but if you are unsure if you should share something or if it might negatively impact your perception asking for a promotion/raise later (not because of fair reasons, but society and human bias) I would recommend saying “I have a personal issue”, “I have a medical issue”, or “Someone in my family has a personal/medical issue” and leaving it at that. Follow up questions can be addressed with a simple, “sorry it’s personal”.
- If this is a 2 week or a 6 month impact on your performance it makes a difference. Are you letting you manager know your current work will be a little late, or do they need to pull in another engineer for the rest of the half. While I recommend vagueness for the reason, I recommend clarity in asking for what you need.
- From personal experience I do find work can be something positive to focus on when life is rough, as long as you’re confident in your projects. That might be another thing to ask for, you’d like first dibs on the clearest tasks you know the most about for a few months. An no on-call or P0s right now. Best case scenario is work is going well and helps provide relief. Worst case scenario health and family come first so stick up for the boundaries you need whether this manager/company are happy about it. Taking breaks, getting sleep, and having compassion on yourself doing a great job in spite of challenges is key.

Really curious what other more official answers are on this, but one piece of context I can provide is this is not 100% just your manager’s decision. Definitely talk in 1:1s with them to make sure they understand your impact and that they are aware of feedback from VPs and senior/staff engineers and peers you mentor. 

Even at a much smaller company like mine though, there are processes in place for when and how promotions can happen. This is because there are financial models that span the year for budgets across the company, and when promotions do happen they a signed off on by the executive team, HR, finance etc. So making that whole process happen for a one off event may be something your manager would love to do but cannot.

If that is a limitation, you could still say to your manager you want to land the promotion plus a maximum pay increase in October, so how can you work together to prepare a promotion packet for that.

I second, third, and fourth everything that has been said. Here are two short videos to add my two cents:

- [Advice on how to decide if you should join a particular start-up](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DVBjjIEEaV8)
- [Tip on good questions to ask](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gXb8vCF03xg) after a technical leet code interview at a start up

I totally relate to this feeling a lot - I always like to get ahead and get the task resolved now. Breaks are important when especially when stuck: [1 min video here](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PLn3ZAJCECo), but helpful all the time. You've got to take care of yourself first!

In addition to having a hard "stop time" I recommend before that do a soft wind down:

- Write down what you've just been doing
- Write down next steps you want to work on

You'll come back the next day with with a running start.

**Hot take: my bad memory is a gift and it is for you too.**

The reason is it focuses my learning on understanding fundamental principles, not memorization. That being said, take notes, create docs, and give yourself time to see things a few times. But ultimately it is NOT about having a lot of stuff memorized.

**Example: Leet code**

Someone with amazing memory might memorize 5000 problems and solutions and in the interview have amazing recall to pull up the right solution. Alternatively my strategy is to deeply understand the way 5 data structures and 5 algorithms are built and run.

**Example: Learning a new code base**

Its tempting to read every line of code and try to understand it. But on your team if there are 100 features they may still fall into three types. Then you need to know how each of the 3 types works and then you can see something new of that type and also quickly understand.

**Example: Learning to be a manager**

I was tempted to memorize and run by my manager a solution for every scenario I faced. I was overwhelmed and hesitant. Instead what worked is learning about what I value and should value as a manager: empathy, communicating (especially the bad), removing blockers, creating trust/trusting my team, and giving each person what they need.

Now I can solve thousands of scenarios (including new ones) by remembering a few principles.

I suggest building something with a frontend (so that it is shiny and beautiful and recruiters and family and friends can enjoy) and no backend (so that you actually ship it and don't get stuck on too many steps).

Personally I'm building financial calculators on Android this way:

- [Retirement Calculator](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archipelago.retirement)
- [Loan Calculator](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archipelago.loan)

I spent less than 10 hours getting them initially out the door which has been my problem in the past: I think of something way to complex and don't get to the point of actually having a user. Can iterate once shipped on something simple.

Small follow up question though @Alex - what if I’m a new grad and I’ve already landed the interview with whatever resume I had. (Re-reading the question I realize it is more about what you were mentioning but it think this is also interesting and related).

What are you looking for in our 1 hour conversation that would make you want to give a thumbs up or down vs the next new grad you speak with? Is it still just my internships and GPA or something you can discern by talking with me?

Yes I can confirm its best to not share a number. The very most important thing is to not share the *first* number, but to get the highest offer it doesn't help you to name anything before they give an offer. When they give a range you are implicitly saying you are comfortable with it by continuing to interview with them so I don't see a big problem in saying "I'm comfortable with that range". 

Generally the advice I've heard and is to deflect or delay. So when they ask you for a number during initial calls deflect it by saying "Money is important to me, but what's really most important is collaborating with awesome teammates building a product I believe in (or learning or helping the world or whatever you want)". And then you turn them asking about money into a chance for you to show them why you deserve the top of their pay band.

Keep in mind they have these conversations 1000+ times and you have it a handful of times, so when they give you an offer you also want to prepared to say thanks + I need to talk with my family, partner, dog or neighbor. Anything to calmly say thanks and then get off the phone. You want to be able to strategize about how to get more even if it is a bigger than expected offer or a big salary increase already. Once they give you an offer you have the power and then you can start naming things.

Especially at Senior levels people are really good at talking. So the most important thing is to gauge if they were standing around watching this thing get built or did they really have huge personal impact on its design, build, and iteration. This is where asking them to solve a real problem vs tell you about something they solved can help. (I was just reading about this on Taro or LinkedIn) Option 2 is really focus on follow up questions to get more details off the “happy-path” of the story to see how much they thought about their project from different angles.

Re: junior engineers the same thing applies. I love that you say you’re good at learning, now I’m going to explain a new programming language/concept to you in one minute with an example and then ask you to debug a real code snippet.

Wins: 

- Watched the ["Engineering Branding"](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/t06NajpS2kSCk98IEmQm/case-study-building-an-engineering-brand-why-and-how-linkedin-youtube-twitter-substack/) Taro case study and *finally* published a YouTube short of my own and got 2 likes!
- Getting better about setting aside some but not too much time everyday 6 days a week for side projects and hobbies so that I make progress and enjoy them in the long run

Fails:

- Trying to align on a new project with director/executive level stakeholders at work is challenging, not sure if I'm doing the best I can here. One says yes, another says no. I try to provide context on what's been tried, what possible, and my vision for what the impact is but it is not easy getting decisions like this remotely

Yeah there’s probably some distribution mostly between 4-12 hours. I definitely believe you could do great work and get promoted with the 6 hour schedule you’re talking about. It could help even to take a walk and come back to debug something instead of sitting there all day with out food or walking around. After working too many hours for months I feel myself doing worse

Exactly, impact i.e. value delivered to the user/client/company is what matters for meeting expectations and promotion.

Echoing [Alex’s feedback in another thread about a potential PIP](https://www.jointaro.com/question/g46nZJRKqL06skfLJSDD/feedback-that-im-underperforming-for-my-level-is-this-pip-what-now/): if you are working 80 hours a week and struggling, try working 40 with two full days off.

The contra positive is if you are working \~40 and enjoying your career progress, do not work 80.

A finance YouTuber I follow was also making a point about this: to make a lot of money/value in your career, work a job where time doesn’t matter but quality does. As a server in a restaurant the only way to make more money was to work more hours. Now as I’m looking to think about my day I don’t try to stay busy for X time per day. Rather if something is important and impactful I get it done well, if there are too many of those thing I prioritize for impact and say no to the others.

Launching a side project app I also realize software is perfect for the YouTubers advice because in theory I could spend 1000000 hours building an app with 100 users or 100 hours with 1000000 users. So it’s really important that I think about using my hours effectively, not efficiently. (Where effectiveness is impact in the right direction, efficiency is doing whatever random tasks I am assigned or first think of in large volume quickly)

This will be a fun thread!

I'm working on an Android app: [FIRE Investment Calculator](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archipelago.retirement)

It's been really fun to iterate on since launching it last year. Even without many users I'm enjoying thinking/learning about UX, design, product, marketing, etc stuff.

My thought is that showing you are currently employed is a major strength. Also, anyone in tech will understand layoffs right now and the need to pay bills with something temporary makes sense. I see that this would look like job hopping on paper, perhaps, but talking with you in the interview it will be clarified with the explanation. I also don’t think you have to worry about getting interviews with big tech already on your resume. 2-5 years from now you could also drop the contract work from your resume if you want.

Imposter syndrome and high expectations are not limited to the IC track, so I wouldn’t weight that too heavily when deciding

I had a similar challenging experience from being employee 18 at a now 250 person company. What I found is that I had to give up scope when the company hired 10x. At first I fought this and tried to stay involved everywhere but that wasn’t what was best for the company. What worked well is to just focus in the areas that I am still being assigned and consulted for, and crush those with 200% quality and impact. After taking that approach then my scope steadily increased. 

Actually the opposite of steadily. Not at all as soon as I thought but then all at once. Have to keep up quality and impact and be patient and communicate your impact, foster relationships, keep strong doing what’s right through difficult times and reorgs, and eventually will be recognized.

Possible ideas: 
    - Ask for feedback on your code, design docs, and on-boarding trajectory
    - Ask what’s important at the company during performance reviews and how to get ready 
    - Get general strategies about your goals for the next year or two and how to get there

I wouldn’t write off your company too soon. My team is small and very collaborative but we don’t really use group chat to solve specific implementation issues or questions unless it’s an all hands on deck emergency. What people do instead is build relationships with each other and when they have a question they know someone they trust or someone who has domain knowledge and have a 1:1 slack/call with them.

Starting remotely to get this going is super tough, but there are options. At stand up you could identify someone with domain knowledge and ask to pair with them later. Or pick anyone you want to get to know more and slack them, “Hey want to crush some tickets together tomorrow and help each other out for an hour?” Book the time on their calendar and then the key during the session is to focus on being present and upbeat so it’s a good experience, and ideally you will solve a major issue or two in the hour. Then you can talk about how fun and productive it was during retro and schedule more. If it doesn’t work with the first person you can just try another.

Here is a story from the last sixth months: I was advocating for a new project and organized a 3 person call with the CTO and a product VP… and they were both there waiting when I showed up to it five minutes late. I stumbled through an apology several times over before beginning and they both smiled but I strongly do NOT recommend doing this.

Great comments above, wanted to underscore the mental side of things as well for overall health. Spending time with friends and family as Alex said plus exploring non tech side hobbies, spending time in nature, appreciating little things everyday, and aligning what you do with what you value in life can help you WANT to eat healthy and exercise and have good sleep without forcing it.

Also just wanted to add Re: getting a new job, Taro is a great community for support when getting a job (see the new accountability slack channel), plus videos to build skills, and Q&A with advice, so I’m sure with that support you can get another job within a year.

I have a 1.5 year gap on my resume and got my current job and plenty of interviews with it at startups and big tech. You can actually list Career Break with dates and no other context needed on your resume. If asked you can say, “it’s personal” and keep it at that. If someone doesn’t respect your boundaries in the interview you don’t want to work for them. Focus on all your achievements which it sounds like there are a lot given the high degree of responsibility.

If you can budget out how things will be OK without a salary for a year then I wouldn’t think twice about quitting. Your health is priceless, so the only reason not to quit is if it would get worse by not having food/shelter.

To speak about Canada after living in Montreal, QC for a couple years (moving from the US) I think Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver are pretty great places to live overall in the areas your are talking about. (It is very cold in Montreal and Toronto for a long winter).

I would use an international city comparison calculator [like this](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living) to compare the cost of living relative to the different places, because even in Canada housing varies a lot. Also you can check out the tax rates in different cities as well. For instance there is twice as much provincial tax in Quebec vs Ontario (**15% to 25.75%** vs **5\.05% to 13.16%)** but with that comes a ton of services such as child care and K-12 education. Full list of Quebec services [here](https://www.quebec.ca/en/information-and-services).

Note people in Canada on a work permit from other countries may need to apply for a visa to visit the US in some cases let alone move there. I'm not 100% sure how that works but it isn't always trivial.

If you come to Canada we're hiring across engineering here:

- <https://jobs.lever.co/mistplay>
- <https://www.mistplay.com/careers>

We have a lot of developers and employees from different backgrounds and are an international company of 250 people.

This is tough. The job market is tough, figuring out why we don't get an offer is tough, getting interviews at all and then performing well through all of them is tough. Interviewing when you're not just passively looking but in fact need a job is very tough.

Here are two things from your post that tell me you can succeed sooner and more easily than 90% or even 99% of people though:

- You have a FAANG company on your resume
- You've passed more difficult interviews before - the tech screen part of it seems to be a non-issue

This means you will be getting a lot of interviews relatively and the part that most people spend the most time worrying about isn't a big deal for you.

So what is in your control that you can practice?

- Rehearse, conversationally, your background story about where you've been and what impact you've had. Since you might be going down rabbit holes, this is a good one to run by a few friends. Make it crisp, measurable, clear, and allow the interviewer to ask for more follow up as needed. 
- Practice behavioural questions as if they were leetcode questions for most people. Steven Zhang talks about [how he got 18 offers](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/gGkO4pLeFq1ctRM9tSBF/case-study-how-to-land-18-faang-offers-with-steven-zhang-airtable-usdr-tableau/) and what he did is he wrote out answers to many many behavioural questions commonly asked. He answered each with a vignette from his experience and practiced reciting them, recording them, and listening back to them like a podcast.

Perhaps most importantly, stay positive. As a both a hiring manager and a candidate, I think a huge signal is if one is relaxed, happy, confident, open to conversation, present, and engaged. This is hard to practice, but possibly there are a few things you can do here:

1. Keep in mind it is a super tough market right now so normal to have it take longer, there's nothing "wrong".
2. Don't practice too much, relax and take care of yourself too! Eating well, sleeping well, exercising, socializing are all keys to feeling good and being ready when the right team presents itself. 
3. Write down successes as you go and feel good about them. If you keep track of how you are getting through phone screens and first rounds, it will be a matter of time before you have enough shots on goal in final rounds that you land the offer.

The idea of building some POC’s yourself to get the team started with examples and a bunch of learnings - and then iterating from there - sounds good. 

From my experience sharing new technology with the team this is a great strategy. Reading docs and getting certifications only gets you so far. Having a working example, plus all the knowledge you have from building that example yourself will be very useful.

I can’t speak to this domain specifically but general advice is to keep the new components of the project simple. I think the temptation when building something new is that it seems complicated so the system ends up being complicated. But iterating and collaborating with the team until you have the project broken down into individual simple pieces and steps would be great.

Would love to hear specific answers from domain experts on this question!

If the question was about how to get offers without having had a major impact at your company yet, then there could be a discussion about increasing scope and talking about successes better in interviews.

However, if you have offers from teams with better pay, more opportunities for growth, more interesting work, a product you like more, etc, or any combination there of - and you want to change - I personally would take it and not look back. It is not a requirement anyone will check on that you have learned enough, and there may actual be something about the current company or team culture that is why you aren’t learning as much as you want.

A couple more thoughts:

- If you haven’t learned as much at this company, ask questions about learning potential to make the next role have that.
- There are some good questions and answers about impostor syndrome on Taro, likely if your doing well in reviews and getting more offers you are learning and growing a lot, but impostor syndrome is very common and real. Try: “[Overcoming Imposter Syndrome - You Have So Much More Potential Than You Realize](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/dTSdd4ozp298jH3glvnx/overcoming-imposter-syndrome-you-have-so-much-more-value-than-you-realize/)”
- If the concern is that you won’t succeed at the next place because it’s too big of a jump then it is understandable and probably a common concern, but since you are interviewing and getting multiple offers it is very likely you are ready. With the Taro community support as well, you’ve got this!

I would highly recommend NOT studying advanced syntax features, but rather what architecture ideas can be used and what are Android best practices:

<https://developer.android.com/topic/architecture>

<https://developer.android.com/topic/architecture/recommendations>

Hands on learning is also great. If you build an app with a networking library connected to a public API that uses Room for a local database you will learn a lot about coroutines. If you use layered architecture like the docs describe you will learn even more and it will not be too easy. There are great Google tutorials that are hands on and walk through the libraries:

<https://developer.android.com/courses/pathways/android-coroutines>

<https://developer.android.com/codelabs/android-room-with-a-view-kotlin>

Another idea is instead of researching “Advanced Tutorial for xyz” try searching “Best practices for xyz” and see what resources you find. I did that with coroutines and got some pretty detailed docs:

<https://developer.android.com/kotlin/coroutines/coroutines-best-practices>

Lots of people publish on Medium their latest experimentations and findings, and if you make sure it’s a reputable author like a Google Developer Expert you can learn a lot there too.

I think it is personal preference for what kind of experience you want.

As a founding engineer you have complete control over how things are built and who knows, you could be the CTO or a VP in 5 years if this goes well. What is certain though is you would need to take care of everything by your self or with a tiny team for a couple years. If that sounds fun, and it does to me as someone who want to launch my own start up, then go for that! You will be getting paid to be on the frontlines of learning how businesses are built. There is a 90% chance the startup will fail but a 100% chance you’ll learn a lot up finding product market fit and iterating to get there. With 5-6 years of experience and a job offer in hand + the Taro community you can crush it in that role. But there will be little structure that you don’t create yourself.

As a Senior SWE on the platform team at a late stage start up, the advantage would be that from day 1 you can be shipping to likely millions of users. If you like the team you interview with that would be a huge bonus knowing you have awesome colleagues to collaborate and learn from. At the startup you would be hiring the rest of the team yourself. There would be much more regular routine and structure than with the startup. If it sounds better to not be the sole person responsible for production failing or succeeding this would be a better option. At the same time the engineering challenges would be focussed on very different scalability concerns vs trying to find product market fit and building a bunch of stuff that gets no users. You would do a ton of learning new tech at the start up on your own to take care of everything needed vs building on the best practices of the team and company at the large startup with a bunch of peers.

They both sound like great options, and if you put in the work with the bigger picture in mind you can impress your next hiring manager with your stories either way.


Great question, such a good question that there is an hour and a half masterclass on this: “How to Choose a Good Company and Team as a Software Engineer”.

This is one of my favorite masterclasses because it’s really all about you and your priorities and choice. There is no correct and sweet that applies to everyone, but rather they provide a framework for your personal evaluation.

(Sorry for no link, on iOS I’m having trouble copying that).

In conversations in general, not just work related, it’s often helpful to take the first step going deeper yourself. Be comfortable and confident, and the other person will reciprocate if they want to. For instance instead of saying “Hey I’ve worked at xyz company for the last 2 years and I’ve been learning more about DevOps recently” try, “I’ve recently failed in this way …” or “I’m feeling like I’m struggling in this area …” and see how the other person opens up and relates.

Here are some counter thoughts to the hurdles you have:

   1. Rahul always talks about the importance of empathy, so if you’re an engineer and they are a PM you could ask “What is something you want to tell every engineer you work with but can’t” or “What do you wish engineers did differently when working with product?”

   2. If there is a big difference in seniority I believe that it is because your match is OK with that and they are there in a networking and growth platform as the mentor. Personally I bet it would be enjoyable then for them to answer your questions like “What led to your success” “What do you wish you knew sooner” and “What challenges did you overcome”

I believe Rozie was just posting about this and a great way to have honest, real, deep conversations would be to talk about failures (and of course what you can both learn from them).

A concrete example of what Rahul is mentioning is that as a new EM myself I could spend 12 hours a day keeping up with slack messages. The adjustment was being OK with delays getting back to people and focusing on what is important more than just what is urgent.

I used AngelList, now WellFound and interviewed with several startups in 2019 to find my current company. [https://wellfound.com](https://wellfound.com/)

Some companies were in the pre seed and had exponentially more risk than others. With that comes a bigger risk reward possibility, but I decided to join a company where they had found product market and were profiting millions per year, but only had 3 engineers.

I would recommend it to others for their first start up because you get big impact even as a new grad, without taking huge risk. 4 years later we have 30 engineers.

The most important thing at your small startup is who are the other people at the company esp engineers and would you like to work with them.

- In the interview are they asking interesting questions and having good conversations?
- Are they describing interesting projects they are working on?
- Would you like to learn from them?
- Would you like to have drinks with them?

The company finances are also important so here are some questions for that:

- How much runway do you have before you run out of money? (2 years would be great)
- What are your plans for growth and hiring (lots of hiring is a good sign)
- Where is the company in terms of product market fit?
- How much revenue is there and where does it come from?
- If venture backed, how big was the last round of fundraising and who invested? (A big round with well known backers is a great sign)

I like that you used the template from Alex and it looks like you’re using about the right amount of space for each component.

I have two main suggestions:

- Try using the Accomplished \[X\], Measured by \[Y\], By Doing \[Z\] format as much as possible. For instance, your first line of “Displays current time on the page and updates it every second” could be “Shipped clock feature with 0 bugs in production by using test driven development (or some time zone library, or some frontend tool)”. Most every line with this format will start with an action word like implemented, increased, devised, found, debugged, presented, created, achieved, improved etc.
- Do a couple passes looking for subtle consistency bugs. I noticed that some job titles are italicized or capitalized while others aren’t, some bullet points start with capitals some not, one bullet point has a period at the end while others don’t. It seems silly but recruiters would care about this if they feel it shows missed attention to detail.

Mistplay

Engineering Manager

With 20 years of experience this sounds like a rare exception to the one page rule. That being said Alex’s resume [here](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/articles%2FAlex%20Chiou%20Resume%20-%20FINAL%20FOR%20SHARING.docx?alt=media&token=3a75b8b2-09e8-4b68-b80d-22761055c3b2) covers 8 years of meaty experience in just a page, without feeling crowded, by being extremely concise. The full resume master class is [here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OnQV2V3J8DYVBBuGbZx6/how-to-write-a-stellar-tech-resume-that-gets-you-more-job-opportunities-8282021/). A key from it is to be concise while showing, not telling.

Since I don’t have near that experience myself I’d love to hear more people’s thoughts! In the meantime this is chatgpts slightly useful but mostly parroted opinion:

It's generally recommended to keep your resume to one or two pages, especially if you have a lot of experience. With more than 20 years of IT experience, you may need to be selective about what information to include in your resume. Here are a few options for organizing your resume:

1. Detail only the most recent 3 or 4 companies/projects: This approach would allow you to focus on your most relevant experience and keep your resume to a manageable length. You could include a summary of your earlier experience, either in a separate section or as a brief paragraph under each job description.

2. Use a combination of the two approaches: You could list all the companies you've worked for, but only provide detailed job descriptions for your most recent positions. This would allow you to highlight your most relevant experience while still providing a comprehensive overview of your career.

3. Use a functional resume format: A functional resume emphasizes your skills and achievements rather than your employment history. You could organize your resume by skill or area of expertise, grouping similar positions together and highlighting your relevant skills and achievements.

A few ideas I have are: 

- Sending a follow up email after the meeting with the action items discussed 
- Agreeing on a timeline for the items (including this in the email) 
- Making sure the items are clear and reasonable in size to get done 
- Following up privately near the deadline if they are not done yet

It’s great to get your own work done before doing extra learning that is tangential. Having a goal to finish your sprint early though, and then using the time to crank out some study time seems like a strategy that could work. 

Another option is talking to your manager about your desire/need for the study time and seeing if you can build 20% time for that into sprint planning. Something to try would be asking for those one-off tasks that you need the knowledge so you are practicing what you learn and demonstrating the study time is allowing you to increase your scope.

tldr: underpromising helps cover a variety of sins including this issue, to avoid missing deadlines

I’d love to hear another answer to this as it seems like a common issue. A very related question just now where my answer partially addresses this: https://link.jointaro.com/jWEZhHe7AATz2mkG7

One way I like to account for this is by under promising from the beginning. If two members think 2 weeks for a project, another thinks three then we agree to plan for 4 weeks. Worst case we deliver twice as fast as promised.

This early communication helps a lot because the PM and the designer may have thought they were proposing an MVP that could be done as just a quick change but then they hear a month and it gives them the chance to simplify more and think about what they want. As opposed to saying “yes” to 1-2 weeks when looking at the ideal plan and then having it take longer due to the unexpected.

Have you had amazing idea with clear data to support it, but it was rejected? In this event we will talk about why that might have happened, and suggest alternate strategies for next time.

Spoiler alert: we use computers to reach millions/billions of users, but we are very different from computers ourselves. Presenting the best data to another person can actually backfire, unless it is coming from a place of shared goals/values and trust. It isn’t logical, but it is human nature. If you explain a better idea than I presented, and you even have rock solid evidence, I no longer am thinking about the user or our business impact but rather about how I just don’t want to “be wrong”.

Come to this event with your stories of challenges and successes of influencing your engineering team!

To dive deeper, check out these resources:

- ["How do I lead without authority?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/BWv3hFSELbn59mXJbkNB/how-do-i-lead-without-authority/)
- [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)