I was hired to be an Android developer for a startup. Other engineers on my team bounce around back-end, web iOS and Android. I make sure to review every Android PR that comes in but at the same time I have strived to review code from other projects like back-end and iOS. My primary language is Kotlin so I can offer advice on that but since others are written in typescript/Swift I am not sure how to offer reviews although I want to. I mostly end up asking questions.

How to review code in another language/ from another team?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series E Startup

In the class ["How To Succeed At A New Team Or Company As A Software Engineer - 10/29/2022"](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/n384HdJuDgulSHbHQLnf/how-to-succeed-at-a-new-team-or-company-as-a-software-engineer-10292022/), we talked about how easily people get defensive when receiving feedback that they don’t 100% agree with.

I’m wondering, other than intentionally suppressing this instinct, are there any other tips, tricks, or mindsets that would help?

Can someone elaborate on "always treating feedback as a gift"?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series C Startup

Please also explain the word 'scope' by giving an example.

What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?

I'm in a difficult situation right now and feel I need some time off to recover and manage, but am also concerned with optics.

I've been interviewing for new roles recently and spent my time off over the holidays (\~2 weeks) preparing for a particularly stressful onsite interview. The team I was originally interviewing with no longer has an opening and I'm stuck waiting for headcount to open up and find a new team. 

The stress of this situation has been taking a toll on me mentally and physically, and I've been dealing with a lot of health issues over the last month. I think it would be best for me to take at least a couple of weeks off to help reduce my stress and focus on maintaining my health. This isn't extremely extended, but amounts to more like a month off when factoring the recent 2 weeks off for the holidays.

After writing this out, it seems more cut-and-dry that I need to just ask and cite the health issues. I'd be curious to hear how others have navigated asking for extended time off.

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Tier 3 Company

I was recently persued by a big tech startup on LinkedIn for a full-stack JavaScript role. In the phone screening they asked if I would be open for their new grad program. As I have been working at my current company for 4.5 years (3 years part-time during university) it simply didn't feel right.
They ended up going with someone else after the phone screening which could've been for multiple reasons, but was it wrong of me to not consider the new grad position? Should I consider new grad positions at big tech companies if it is my goal to work in big tech, even though I have some previous my experience?

Is it weird to apply for a new grad position 1.5 years out of university?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [62] at Microsoft

I've been debating this though for a while. Is it worth it to go for a principal role 
(61 -> 62 -> 63 -> 64) or just go and build something your own

Career advancement or building a startup? Which one is harder?

Hi Taro community,

Seeking your help in evaluating two offers that I received from two start-up companies.

- (1) In general, in such situations how do you suggest researching about the companies and determining which company and offer is better.
- (2) I am also concerned how my future job potential will be affected and so I want to take the decision accordingly.\
  (3) In this particular case, my offers are as follows,
- company A
  - Unicorn (post money valuation: $1B-$10B), Industry: Ad Tech (ML and cloud infra based), Last funding type: Series C, Total funding amount: $190M, Estimated revenue range: $1M - $10M, Founded in 2013 by ex-googler,
  - I have seen several folks joined from FAANG companies (eg, Google)
  - Offer: base $160K, bonus: 24K, Equity: $88K (not sellable now, but the company is expecting to go for IPO in one year)
- company B
  - Emerging Unicorn (post money valuation: $500M-$1B), Industry: Healthcare/AI, Last funding type: Series B, Total funding amount: $120M, Estimated revenue range: $1M - $10M, Founded in 2017
  - Among big techs, I have found just one person from AWS who joined this company
  - offer: base $190K, no bonus, Equity: 114K (not sellable now, the company is expecting to go for IPO in 2-4 years). I may be able to negotiate this offer.

Thanks in advance for any kind of suggestions/comments.

Need help evaluating start-up offers (Series C Unicorn vs. Series B)

I've been reached out to by a recruiter to interview for a fully remote Senior Dev position at a seed stage startup, with around 50 employees per LinkedIn.

Ive only ever worked for larger companies before, what sorts of questions should I make sure to ask during the interview process to make sure there's no hidden problems/wrong expectations? What expectations should I have going into the interview?

What sort of questions should I be asking during an interview for a startup?

I transitioned into a backend engineering role 1 year ago after working as a data analyst for 3 years. The jump was definitely big to me, as I had to learn a lot of new concepts (OOP, clean code, architecture, devops etc). The transition was done through internal hiring where they did a live coding interview (2 easy leetcodes), a live system design interview, and motivational interview. I passed all of those and ended up in a high-paced team.

The team was severely understaffed. The manager was managing 3 teams that decreased from 20+ people to &lt;10 people and there was hiring freeze. There was no proper onboarding and all the seniors were too busy with tasks to help me properly. I did my best to read the documentations and set up 1-1s with more senior engineers from other teams that could help me. I finished several projects although carried over some to the next half.

My 1st performance review was "meet expectations". However, before my 2nd performance review, there was a manager change and this manager gave me "partially meet expectations" and then said that I would be put on PIP program. When I asked the manager what the program would be like and how many people completed this successfully, he/she couldn't give a definitive answer and said that HR would be in touch me.

I decided to quit and spend time to learn more fundamental concepts and take up a freelance project. It's been 2 months since then. Right now I feel like I'm learning a lot in these 2 months compared to my 1 year in that company, but I can't help but feeling very anxious with all these layoffs and the incoming tech winter. I don't have any self-confidence within myself that I would get any decent job, especially after getting an incoming a PIP, I'm just worried that when I'm interviewing at my next job, the career gap in my resume and the past potential PIP would deter me from getting any jobs. I'm also at loss on how to avoid potential PIPs in the future. Any advice to help me? Thank you very much.

Edit: For more context, I didn't come from a CS background (I studied Mathematics). My team was not a revenue generator. The company was especially hit really hard during covid and had 2 big layoffs. When I left, there are many products that are being shut down and a couple of senior-level product managers left as well without being replaced due to hiring freeze. During the talk of my PIP, the manager brought up his/her expectations on me that was 1 level (mid-level) above my current level (junior-level).

We are 3 people in my team. I've been at the company for 2 years roughly and my team mates for 15+ years. I'm in a situation where my coworkers do stuff, but stuff that's often completely unrelated to our backlog. One of them struggles with being motivated by the job. Occasionally, a 16-hour job takes a month to complete. Maybe 2. And you never know why or when it will be done. This causes a lot of tension with the product lead. The other teammate (focused on the front end) rarely makes any PRs. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact that they have mostly done HTML/CSS and are unsure of how to navigate the frameworks we use or what it is. Our manager tends to cover for us, but obviously he's not loving this situation. It's been like this for 1–2 years. Now it has started affecting my pay raise, and I'm starting to feel tired of always playing dumb or referring to the other great work that they're doing when asked what my teammates are up to. Both seem to be struggling somewhat with stress and anxiety, so I've tried to be compassionate with them. But what do I do? I want to take ownership of the team's performance, but it's difficult to know what to do. They have the senior roles, and they have most of the ownership of the project, so I also feel weird telling them "what to do," if that makes any sense. The company size is roughly 20 engineers, FYI.\
\
Any advice on how to handle this situation nicely, i.e. making sure we're still friends afterward, would be highly appreciated.

How to handle being on a team with slackers?

I am doing backend engineering for last 5 years in small sized startups. I am doing relatively decent with good work/learning and good salary.

I am confused about future - since I have done bachelor’s only and that too from very very average tier 3 college in India so, do i need to go for masters from a reputed college to make my resume better for future. Is it even required to do masters or education from reputed college to grow in career or I am over thinking? Right now I don’t face any problem when I change companies but what about 10/15 years down the line. I am confused sometimes that do only skill matters or i need pedigree also to grow.

1. I have decent skills but I don’t have a good college name in my resume what to do from here to grow: go for masters or focus on job and skills?
2. If masters then: my another concern is do college degree in master really matters now as i will stop earning so, is it worth it or its just a FOMO?

Do I need to do masters in Computer Science to move ahead in career?

Senior Software Engineer at Series A Startup

To put this into context, the question refers more to people who have already been at the company for a while, not onboarding engineers. 

In my experience working only at startups, almost all learning has been the responsibility of the employee. There is a "spike" period where the engineer is given time to come up to speed, but it has always seemed to me a bit careless for managers to just give someone a list of technologies and say "learn this." 

I guess this question is really a proxy for asking: how does FAANG approach "bootcamping" engineers on a new and important stack? Are workshops, training courses, and L&D actually effective? Suppose that I am a senior engineer who wants all the junior engineers in my team to learn how to use AI assist tools like Copilot, how would I approach making this *mandatory* if I really think it's a technology that's as crucial as git?

What are some best practices surrounding requiring engineers to learn certain software and stacks?

Context: Working in a small startup where there are a very small number of wiser senior engineers

Everyone in the development team contributes to code reviews

Often I’m unsure about the quality of the feedback and when to act upon it

Sometimes people even change their mind after you have acted on that feedback which is frustrating and can contribute to the delay of finishing a task

Does this also happen in big tech? How do you handle these situations ?

How to deal with conflict and uncertainty about quality of requests in Code reviews?

I've only ever coded in js/ts; however, as I seek to grow my skills in react-native I've been trying to learn swift to deal with bridging. However, after coding a few hours in swift when I swapped back its like my brain stopped working and simple stuff I couldn't remember the syntax. After working in it again it kinda went back to normal; but, is this something that is normal or goes away with practice?

How to deal with context switching between languages?

I’m considering leaving a startup because of 2 things I’ve seen on Taro:

1. faang+ [early is gold for your resume](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/CRKwIs5EqsWanWXDkqP1/the-pros-and-cons-of-working-at-faang-and-big-tech/) as a long term investment in your career
2. [IC L5+ looks super fun](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/X8vpfJooDpsX915ouC00/session-3-becoming-a-tech-lead-again-in-just-1-month-after-joining-robinhood-from-meta/).

**2019 Goal of Joining a Startup**

- Learn a lot about how to be a good software engineer

- Be an early employee at a startup that makes it big

- Quickly become an Engineering Manager because I like working with people, helping others

**2023 Thoughts on Staying as an Eng Manager or Joining Big Tech**

- Dream of being an EM, is happening on small start up scale with a growing number of reports who like my management so far

- The dream is to be early at a unicorn and that is close, but

  - The new standard should be 10B not 1B

  - Doing this with a first job is not necessary and high risk

- In 2-4 years I’d likely still be a engineering manager from a no-name startup

- L5+ engineer in big tech may fit well with my personality right away based on Taro, where I love collaboration, helping people, product and technical challenges

  - I like not just spending 80% of my time heads down coding and that may be possible and expected right away in big tech, no need to be a manager

- Getting a 2 FAANG+ badges on my resume over the next 4 years would be more way more worth it than even a million dollar payout from a startup

  - Could have many doors opened for high level roles at startups OR faang depending on what I feel like at the time

  - Big tech stock offer may also easily be worth 1M in 4 years

**Priorities 2019**

- Supportiveness of team

- Growth opportunities

- Company prestige

- Maximum outcome (Risk)

- Compensation

- Company ethics

- Product space

- Technical space

- Work-life balance

- Level/title

- Benefits

- Location

- Stability

- Remote work

\
**Priorities 2023**

- Supportiveness of team +0

- Work-life balance +7

- Compensation +2

- Company prestige -1

- Growth opportunities -3

- Stability +7

- Company ethics -2

- Remote work +6

- Level/title +1

- Benefits +1

- Location +1

- Product space -5

- Technical space -5

- Maximum outcome (Risk) -10

Taro priorities video is [here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/gtrgOANaoISHOdfi91Ae/the-first-thing-you-need-to-do-before-figuring-out-your-next-company-and-team/)

**Startup Stats**

- 150 people, 25 engineers (doubled from a year ago)

- Fall 2021 had 50% investment at 250M valuation

- Dec 2022 450M valuation

- Revenue has since doubled in last year to 125M

- Profitable per years with 20% gross margin

- Growing industry

- Not venture backed, so not expecting 20x growth

- Estimated in 2-4 years to sell for 1-2B

How to evaluate a startup video [here](https://www.jointaro.com/question/UCG4XxyEOTjjyg4pEuwY/how-to-evaluate-a-startup/)

**Current job stats**

- Team lead for a year after 2.5 years as Software Engineer

- 0\.1% equity, 100k cash

- 18th employee, 4th engineer

- Dream of being an early employee at a unicorn, seems close

- Would lose all stock if I leave before acquisition/ipo

- **Biggest point for discussion**: \*\*\*2-4 years of being manager at a small startup may not qualify me to be an EM in big tech\*\*\*

\
**FAANG+ Offer**

- L4 equivalent

- 190k cash, 350k stock over 4 years, 60k sign on bonus

- Work life balance is supposed to be great

- Great food, big tech lifestyle that I’ve always heard/dreamed about

- Would work to be promoted to L5 in 1-2 years, then manager a year after that.

- Being a new person at a fresh company sounds very exciting now, I know the business fully and the tech stack of the current place to the point where many things Ive see before and feel stale/boring

\
**Questions**

1. Based on my write up about values, priorities, liking collaboration, would I like being an IC L4 coming from being a manager where I have solid tech skills but strong soft skills that I enjoy using.

2. If I stay at the start up would I be able to get a big tech EM offer with 3-4 years of management experience at the start up? Note this question [here](https://www.jointaro.com/question/O8vtGxsrwZebiSSlOlRd/how-to-manage-a-team-towards-high-performance/) shows what I’m learning now as a manager.

3. Should I down level myself from L5 to L4 if I think I could get the offer at L5 but am not sure about the certainty of success? (Question asked separately [here](https://www.jointaro.com/question/vck83XFTcKpuzD7qnA6T/when-should-i-down-level-myself-on-purpose-at-a-new-company/))

Should I leave my startup after 3 years for big tech?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon

Say a recruiter from Series C reaches out to you for a SWE role. 

What all are the questions that one should ask in order to do the understand the potential of the startup so that there is less risk of layoffs when joining there, given the uncertain times. 

I am aware of crunchbase website and looking at the news article that are linked there. What other homework one should during/before/after the interview process in terms of questions to ask, information to collect?

The limitation that is usually is the startups have very few employees so it is difficult to get concrete answers about the culture, WLB, actual work unless you are in their network.

**I've done a lot of research on how to be a good manager, but now do I just "trust the process" or how do I ensure we are a high performance team over the next half?** 

I'm a newish EM at a Series-B start up of 150 people, \~25 engineers. So far I have positive feedback from my manager and reports that I am empathetic and supportive. What my manager is telling me now though is that we need to see results. Productivity and performance seem OK in my first months but it is too soon to really see my impact. My manager noted that since we have scaled up from 4 engineers to 25 and gone mostly remote over 3 years there may be a loss of a sense of urgency and the feeling of impact per dev. We are also split into many teams with a smaller scope per team.

The temptation when asked to "get results" might be to ask for constant updates from developers and punish them when fake hard deadlines are given and missed (we are a B2C company so there are rarely actual deadlines). So how do I motivate my team to work hard in a healthy sustainable way? How do I measure the progress and reward them fairly while creating a team focused culture and not one that is competitive and individualist? 

Below are some of the management ideas I'm using/working towards. I have lots of room to learn how to do each better, so advice on which to prioritize my effort at improving first would be great in addition to notes on what's missing and what seems off on the list:

**Individual attention**

- Working with each individual to set SMART goals for the next half
- Working with each individual to figure out what motivates them, and do that
- Figuring out what learning each person wants to do and giving them support there
- Regular, timely feedback (positive and negative)
- 1:1s where I do a lot of listening, help remove blocker
- Shielding from outside distraction and unhelpful pressures

**Team culture**

- Creating a lowercase-a agile mindset: people are first and it is ok to fail and we learn from our mistakes. We can fail gracefully by making small, quick launches where we get frequent feedback from the users, and feedback from coworkers on how we are succeeding/failing
- Making the team effective first, efficient second: 5 wrong things done in a quarter are worse than 2 right things that move the needle
- Setting team OKRs for the next half that the team wants to accomplish
- Encouraging team work on tasks, pair programming, positive code review culture, etc
- Improving the process to make it effective and fun around how the flow of work happens between planning, selecting tasks, marking things as done and tested
- Team demos with stakeholders to show off results and get feedback

Bonus questions about motivation: In 1:1s how do you figure out what motivates someone since they might not say extrinsic things like money even if that is what they are working for, or the opposite they might be happy at their level and just like the work they do with a good work life balance but might not say that directly either. Also if there is a team of 5 where 2 want money and 3 love the work for itself, how do you tailor their experience to that? The first two will still want fun/interesting work and the second three still want to get promoted and compensated fairly.

Thanks!

How to manage a team towards high performance?

Software Test Engineer at Series B Startup

My goal is to transition into a SWE role, but something I've struggled with is making the building of software projects more digestible. A lot of the time I'll look at some project I have to build, and I just don't know where to start or how to figure out what to do. Any tips on how to make this process less scary?

How do I make software less overwhelming?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Startup Company

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

How do I figure out how managerial my career path should be?

I work for a very technical and niche start-up as a Frontend Developer. For context, we have 3 F.E. devs and 3 B.E. devs. I was hired as a vaguely-level intermediate developer, and after about nine months at this company, my F.E. lead is advocating for me to be a Senior developer. The only issue is that the company hasn't done internal promotions before, and they're a bit stalled whilst considering how to best handle the process. There's also some ambiguity in measuring a Front-end developer's skills - especially compared to a back-end developer; Our CEO is also a seasoned back-end developer, so he understands technical skills but is unclear on how it maps to Front-end skills.

\
What are some things I can bring up to my company's leadership on how to measure my skills and value? Such to help facilitate a conversation around my promotion.

How should a start-up conduct a performance review/evaluation for a promotion?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Consulting Startup

Hello.

I have a busy senior/manager. We used to have 1-1s twice a week, and now I'm lucky if I even get a single 1-1 every other week. I understand that it's because he has a lot of responsibilities (e.g., coding, managing, scrum'ing) and end-of-year deadlines.

Here are some things I've done to make up for the lack of 1-1's:

- I **over-communicate** via IMs (even if he doesn't respond) to let him know how I'm progressing so he can "smoke test" my theories if I'm heading the wrong way.
- I present **high-level overviews** of the code (&lt;15 bullet points) I'm working on to avoid doing deep dives into the implementation.
- I deliver **short standup updates** with easy-to-remember keywords that my manager has mentioned before.
- I try to **offload** some of his managerial tasks (e.g., onboarding new engineers) to free up some of his time.

Does anyone else have a busy senior? Should I be doing anything else? Thanks!

Hello. For anonymity, my name is John, and my coworker is Bob.

Bob is relatively new, so I help Bob out when he's blocked on a JIRA ticket. I don't mind helping, but Bob only mentions my name during standup when he's unsure of something (e.g., John and I worked on this ticket, and *we* think this might be the issue).

During the times my name was mentioned, I probably did think that was the issue, but these are incomplete thoughts + theories that I'd rather not be publicized if I am wrong (I don't mind being wrong in public, but I'd rather be wrong on my terms).

I don't think Bob is doing the above on purpose, but it does bother me.

Here are some possible solutions I've considered:

- (**a**) After sharing a theory, tell Bob that he doesn't have to mention this theory and/or my name during standup
- (**b**) Only share theories with Bob that I can 100% back up
- (**c**) Say something to Bob about their past behavioral patterns

I think (**c**) is too confrontational, and given that I don't *think* that Bob is doing it on purpose, I can probably skip this. I want to stick with only (**b**), but I want the option to share an incomplete theory as it *may* indirectly help Bob to a solution or teach them something new.

What do you all think?

Should I tell my coworker to stop mentioning my name during standup?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series B Startup

How often does everyone pair program here? And how do you regard them?

I am at a startup and since I have started, first as a junior, my pairing frequency is about 1-2x per week. I do not consider myself a junior anymore (at least not at the company, but maybe on Leetcode >_<) and find these sessions more valuable as volleying ideas flow more. I was wondering what it’s like for others and if it is a day in the life thing at big(ger) tech; is it kind of seldom or frowned upon or do some of you use it as a measure of skill, etc.

Hope everyone is having a good start to the week!

How often do you pair program and what do you make of them?

Senior Software Engineer at Series F Startup

I have realised over the years that I have gained good amount of technical knowledge but I lack great communication skills (in terms of expressing my thoughts). This was okay till I was working as software engineer as my task involved more of coding work which does not require explaining things to large audience. Now as a Senior Engineer my task revolves around making design choices, explaining pros/cons of selecting an approach etc. I realised that even though I am confident on my technical approach, I sometimes fail to express myself and the approach in the right way during the discussion which led to times when my approach is discarded and others as selected as they express themselves better. I need some suggestions on how to improve on this aspect as this will be crucial part going forward in my career.

How to develop better communication skills?

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

What are the commonalities and differences between tech leads and engineering managers?

I recently started at my new gig as a remote tech lead. While I am on the West Coast, most of my team is either on the East Coast or in Europe (+11 hrs). Meetings start at around 7 AM PT and go on until 11:30 AM PT!

Here is my challenge: I am a morning person & like to do more deep & undistracted work during the morning hours (Coding / Reading / Writing) . Screen time in the mornings usually drain me out & my productivity dips post multiple zoom / G-meet calls. What are your thoughts on how could I balance my sacred morning hour time between meetings & impactful work?

Thanks!

How do I optimize my sacred hour at work?

Background: I studied Bachelor's in computer science from a Tier 3 college in India and joined a reputed early-stage startup (Bay Area based) as an Operations Manager in India. I worked there for two years, and during that, I got exposure to technology. I gained tech skills by myself and moved to another startup as a Backend Developer.

I have been working as a Backend Developer for the last five years. All the companies I have worked for and left were in the early stage, so until now, I didn’t progress much in my career and still hold the designation of Software Engineer. I am earning and learning decently in Dubai, but I feel like stuck and not moving forward as I don’t see my future, at least in the current startup. I work as an Individual contributor, and management is pretty naive here.

I don’t understand what to do to move ahead from here:

- I don’t feel much enthusiasm for engineering as my other colleagues and friends feel, so I feel like doing MBA and trying Product Management. But I am also not sure as I have already changed my career path once, and I am already 30 years old, so, not sure if doing it is a good idea or not. It's costly as well, so not sure it's a good investment. My wife is also doing an MBA, so I feel maybe FOMO is causing me to try it and get out of this zone.
- One question that keeps me curious is why most of the engineers who are already working in Engineering don’t go for MBA.
- Another option I feel is to try a Master's in computer science as its relatively cheaper than MBA also, I have been doing tech for the past five years so it can be a supportive degree, but I don’t love tech so much that I want to spend whole life in it, so I feel may b its also not a good idea.
- I have a very limited professional circle as I have worked in very small startups and studied at Tier-3 college, so I feel like MBA/MS can help.
- I feel like maybe I can also try FAANG instead of MBA and MS and see what happens from there, but I like my current work with elixir and enjoy it, so I don’t feel much happiness while doing preparation.
- Also, I feel it's been three years here. We are two backend developers here, and we have good money. I get decent work with Elixir. I can stay here at the same startup, and maybe I will grow in future here only, which I strongly feel will not happen.

So, this is the problem I don’t understand where to go in my career from here. I am sure, for one thing, I want to try my startup again (I have tried twice, once in college and once a year back and closed before it started) in future.

Hey everyone! I am looking for some advice. I have weekly 1:1 with my manager and during our last interaction, he suggested to come up with a yearly plan on things I want to achieve. Can someone shed some ideas/templates I can follow to create a roadmap or plan.

How to define a yearly performance plan with manager?

I don't really know what I want to do in my career. I finished university one year ago, and I work as a full stack engineer right now, and I'm quite interested in ML. I'm more frontend-facing right now, but I see low returns on spending too much time learning new frontend frameworks my entire career. I'm more interested in becoming a well-rounded engineer, so I feel that there would be higher returns on digging down into the backend more. I have been looking at trying to join some big tech company as a backend engineer, but I just went on an interview for a small tech company which does quite alot of ML with the hopes that they were looking for another ML engineer. Instead they presented me with a broad-scoped data engineer role which sounded pretty cool.

My strategy up until this point has just been to find cool roles where I get to learn useful stuff as an engineer from people who are way smarter than me. Sometimes I think "If I would make a startup, would this skill come in handy?" Is that a poor framework? Should I have a plan? I don't even know if I ever want to make a startup lol. I'm interested in joining big tech, but other than that I'm not really sure. I just enjoy building stuff, and I see this as an opportunity of learning data engineering really well (which I don't know very well), but that is perhaps not a wise career choice? Any guidance on how to think as a new grad is appreciated lol.

Should I make a career path or just be open to interesting positions?

I’ve come to realize more and more that the greatest thing holding me back by far as a software engineer has been perfectionism. By perfectionism, I mean the mental attitude that says that what I have done isn’t good enough so I need to spend more time on it, or that I’m not ready to do something. This attitude is pretty much the opposite of Meta’s “Move fast and break things”. 

Here are a few of the ways that this mindset has hobbled me throughout my career:
- University (I studied Engineering): thinking I had to read the textbook and do all the assigned questions. My GPA suffered. In reality, my time would have been better spent doing past tests/exams and forming better friendships and study groups with other students to learn what was most valuable to know. I’m speaking from both a GPA-maximizing viewpoint, but also from a long-term viewpoint in the case of better relationships with classmates. 
- Immediate Post-University: Thinking that my coding skills weren’t good enough and that I needed to do a 6-month bootcamp which I did. Hindsight is 20/20, but getting my first job and working from there would probably have been better.
- First job: Struggling with moving fast. I was at a tiny (<10 people) start-up and they wanted speed. I struggled with the pace they wanted because of things like writing formulaic unit tests that didn’t add much value and needing to constantly walk through my code with a debugger. I do believe that this particular company had unrealistic, unhealthy expectations for a newbie, but I also believe I could have moved faster.
- General learning: Prioritizing online courses over side projects.
- Job Hunting: Aiming to get done 150 interview questions before applying, rather than applying and doing mock interviews from the get-go.

I believe perfectionism is particularly harmful in tech compared to other industries since things change so fast.

Maybe this is better answered by a life coach or therapist, but what are some things I can do to limit the pernicious effects of this mindset?

Fighting Perfectionism as a Software Engineer (and getting important stuff done).

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series A Startup

I recently passed 5 years of work experience as a software developer, mostly working at small companies/startups. I’ve been at my current position for almost 2 years and the startup is around 100 employees.

The company is doing great, we just raised another round of funding. I’m preforming well and I’m up for promotion to senior software developer next performance review.

With all that being said. My goal has always been to get into a big tech company and I think the earlier I do the better.

Overall I really enjoy working at this startup but I have always been career driven and I think going to a big tech company would be the right career move. Am I correct on this being the right career move or is this just the pressure developers feel to work at a big tech company?

How much am I hurting my career by staying at a startup? (Pressure to work for big tech)

Senior Software Engineer at Pre-Seed Startup

Hey all, I’ve been working at a pre-seed startup for the last two months and I think I haven’t “clicked” with the CTO yet (I’m the only engineer right now). To give you some context

1. We’re aiming to launch two experiments per week so they are more MVPs rather than complete features (I’m ok with cutting corners and making things “not the right way”)
2. Each experiment I’m launching sends data to Mixpanel so we can know if it “moves the needle” or not. These experiments are aligned with our KPIs (see #5)
3. My CTO who happens to be the co-founder has little experience working in tech, I assume 1.5 years tops. He's 25.
4. We're trying to find Product Market Fit
5. The KPI we're after are: Retention and Revenue
6. I've received praise from CTO and CEO about the work that I've done, and I'm extremely transparent with everything I do: Share status in Slack, and Linear, I record Looms, share screenshots, etc.
7. We have 18 months of runway.

He has said twice that even though I'm superb technically speaking; he's having a hard time seeing me thinking about the product and how to improve revenue/retention and he wants to see more ownership on my end; and that frustrates me because as I said on #1 and #6, I've successfully launched experiments week by week and have received praised from them multiple times. So IDK what's going on, I find this to be frustrating because from my POV I've done great work, I've spoken to users, shipped and tracked experiments, and improved our development workflow (we don't work with prod data anymore), proposed new things that we can do, etc...

The last time I talked to my CTO about this (this has happened twice now) he suggested that I should think more about "growing the business and taking ownership" without giving me a clear path forward, and I assume that when I meet with him again this week he's going to play that card again (being vague about how to improve/what am I doing wrong)

It frustrates me because it doesn't make sense to me to work in a place where my contributions are not appreciated. 

- Have you been in a situation like this before?
- If he doesn't give me a clear path forward, what can I do then? it seems that I missed the point the first time.
- I know how bad the market is right now, but quitting is not out of the table (I have 12-18 months of runway/savings)

Thanks a lot!

Dealing with Confusing Feedback from my CTO in a pre-seed stage startup

I’m always impressed by software engineers with strong track record working at FAANG level for long term period (&gt;4 years) as working in these type of companies require dedicating yourself 100%+ to sustain and keep meeting the performance bar..

But I also felt that the “golden era” of working at FAANG have already passed. I think joining FAANG today will still give lots of learning but not as many growth compared to maybe 6-7 years ago when they are still growing very rapidly.

Do you have any tips for junior/mid engineers with 1-2 YOE who feels like their current role does not offer the golden era of FAANG level growth in terms of career opportunity? Feeling like this primarily due to team culture and engineering talent on my current role that is subpar compared to FAANG (I was previously an intern at FAANG and is now working at a startup).

Given the current market situation (layoffs, hiring freeze), getting into FAANG or the next FAANG would be quite challenging.

do you have any tips so that I can make sure I can give my best to whatever I have right now but still have FAANG level of career growth in non-FAANG company?

How to have FAANG level of career growth in startup?

I recently just got back a take home project for a start up, and the feedback I got was I don't deal with ambiguity well enough. I can't do anything actionable with this advice. Should I be asking more questions? Less? Better? Have a better understanding of what to do? What did you guys do to handle ambiguity better?

Senior Software Engineer at Startup Company

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

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

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

I'm overleveled in my position and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Small Company

I'm relatively new to software so would love to understand more here. In particular, what does it look like at Big Tech compared to other companies? My goal is to eventually transition into a Big Tech company - Do you always need to work 60+ hours a week to do well there?

What does work-life balance look like across the industry?

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

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

Would really appreciate some insight on this.

How do I create a growth plan with my manager/mentor and what should it include?

Context: I work as a Entry Level SWE at Series B Startup with 25 people; the SWE team is 7 people total. I am the only person currently under my manager & my coworkers are fairly clear about what I am building & why. Also, the SWE team morale is strong and productivity seems to be at a sustainable rate.

In general, I think my manager & mentor is an incredible engineer & empathetic person open to feedback/trying new things. He’s personable, highly knowledgable, is available to answer my questions, & answers all my noobie questions. While I love these aspects, I do feel he is a bit reactive as a manager. When I asked him if he wanted to be my mentor, he agreed but I think he interprets it as being available to answering more of my questions. I don't think he is used to being a mentor or a manager and would like to see a more proactive effort from his side to help me level up as a engineer (right now I am mostly bringing up the ideas for 1:1 meetings, and creating a growth plan, etc). 

So how do I help him?

How do I help my manager (who is also my mentor) be a better manager and mentor?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Seed Stage Startup

Whether it's mentoring a junior or writing documentation, I'm not sure how to best balance the level of information sharing with the speed of development - especially regarding new features or projects. At the moment, I share information as it's required or wanted, but I feel like it's easy for people to dismiss learning anything new, which leaves me uncertain as to whether or not I should push for others to learn about work or handle it on an as-needed basis. If this is related to a team's culture, then what kind of practices should I be advocating for?

How should I balance providing mentorship/learning for other devs with speed of development?

I might join a Big Tech company later on in my career, and I know that choosing the right company has huge financial consequences due to the large RSU compensation.

How can one set themselves up for success here and pick a company with a good financial outlook? What metrics should I look at and is there some sort of website to help with this?

How can you tell if a large public company is going in the right direction?

Software Engineer Apprentice at Series B Startup

I'm a React developer and for the most part am able to accomplish tickets assigned to me; however, what I struggle with is when I have a particular ticket that is heavily logic focused. 

For example, recently I had to implement a multi date picker for a booking engine and between the many different cases for user interactions and date comparisons, I feel it took me way longer than it should have. 

In order to optimize improvement in this area, would it be worth it to grind leet code style questions? or maybe codewars?

How to get better at problem solving as a Frontend Developer?

Session #8 - Hypercharging Your Growth At Early Startups (w/ Staff Engineer Seed Zeng)

[Click here for the presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZocNUZJL-feWAKoucVLUcaVxix2Xa1udEL4KpgQRBTo/edit?usp=sharing).

There are a *ton* of great points covered in this session, so we'll only share our Top 5:
- **Startups have massive scope** - In an early-stage startup, there is always an infinite supply of hard, technically deep problems. This allows you to have a lot of freedom choosing an opportunity that works well for you and build up a wide breadth of important skills. This is almost always *not* the case in Big Tech - [Check out this expert career advice on the difference between Big Tech and startups when it comes to learning](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9).
- **Don't say "I'm not qualified to work on this"** - The best software engineers are able to adapt to any situation their team faces and add value regardless of what framework or tech stack is needed. In order to do that, you must first flip this fearful mentality. [Here's our masterclass on how to learn quickly in tech](https://link.jointaro.com/S2h95sJvRU8Utjj6A).
- **Don't be afraid to make mistakes** - Recovering from a mistake is one of the most powerful ways to learn, and startups will generally have more tolerance for mistakes as stakes are lower compared to a more mature, massive public company where product issues can make the news. [Here's our advice on how to maximize your growth from mistakes](https://link.jointaro.com/THof1u97Z5t1ovCr9).
- **80% of the journey is just showing up** - Seek out important, complex situations and run towards them instead of away from them, especially with production issues. If you're earlier-in-career, you can learn a lot simply by being a participant in fixing these fires; from there, you can make yourself a core driver more and more. [Here's our advice on how you can be more independent debugging tricky technical problems](https://link.jointaro.com/xE8oMpCaDYjuMhCg7).
- **It's all about the people** - Your career growth is largely a product of the people you surround yourself with, and this is especially true in a startup where the team is small, bonds are deep, and everybody knows each other. [Here's our advice on how to network effectively within a company](https://link.jointaro.com/Hr1nr53D7sfQAEv3A).

To see (and hear) more from Seed:
- [Connect with him on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/seedzeng/)
- [Check out his podcast "Superposition"](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3N1cGVycG9zaXRpb25zaG93L2ZlZWQueG1s?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwjot6up4Zf7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en)

Related resources:
- [Session #6 - Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups](https://link.jointaro.com/2ZevbN54MPZPTocH8)
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9)

I am a junior engineer at a series A startup. I was interning for the past 8 months and got converted full time, now working as full time junior engineer for the past 3 months. I had been getting "Exceeds Expectation"  from my tech lead/manager. 

But from the past 3 1:1s from the tech lead. He mentioned that

1\. My code is not up to the mark to directly merge without taking a much deeper look into. Basically mentioning that my code is not levelling as a senior engineer. There are no senior engineers in my team, I directly report to tech lead. So I really cannot learn how to write better code as he mentioned. Where can I learn this?

2\. I have been just crunching tasks or helping someone without understanding the root cause. He mentioned I lack "Product Thinking". I am really not sure what he means by this. I thought helping others would help me grow in my career. By helping others I mean if there is a small task that is required by some other team, I just go and do it without understanding entirely what they want.

3\. The founders keep mentioning that there is a lot of growth potential in our company

I really work hard every day from 8 AM and late 11 till night but the work I do is not helping me to grow and I want to grow and become a senior engineer. There are not even tests in our codebase, and a lot of problems I see in the way we do things which I don't know I can help solve . How can i grow?  how can I tell them that I can be that senior engineer to solve the problems? How can I learn to make good decisions as to what needs to be prioritised in terms of which task needs to be done? If I don't know let's say how to write tests, how can I learn that and cultivate that in the team?

How to become a senior engineer at early stage startup by finding problems to fix?

Right now I'm in a situation working for a startup that posts a video of a bug with little to no detail at all and sends it off to dev to be fixed. If there is information included, there is no standardization so it can be frustrating having to hunt this information down. I understand in startups I will have to learn to operate in a realm of ambiguity; however, the team is so small that I could potentially fix this with a little buy in. \
\
Somethings that I've seen work in my previous job were having:\
\-screen shots of current state and future state\
\-video of current issue\
\-steps on how to reproduce\
\-device information\
\-potential solutions\
\
Im new to the team and don't want to be "that" guy trying to change everything, so I don't want to come to them with any half baked ideas. Do you have an example of a strong story that I could use as a template for our tickets?

How can I create solid standardizations for creating user stories that will drive impact?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Startup Company

I graduated with a master's in CS 1.5 years ago and since then I have been working at a no-name brand company as a full-stack engineer. I would love to join Spotify but I lack prestigious grades and side projects. The tech stack I work in is somewhat old (Angular 2, .NET, no cloud, in-house solution for CI/CD, etc). The company is nevertheless alright and my colleagues are all very friendly, including my boss and manager. 

If I would want to join Spotify, should I double down at my current job and try to get those side projects started, or should I consider another position in-between my current position and Spotify in order to increase my chances to join Spotify? The reason why I’m not a big fan of this idea is that I don’t like to join a company with the intent to leave within 1-2 years. The reason why I'm considering changing company is because I worry that my current growth could potentially be a lot higher than what it currently is. 

Will my lack of experience in newer frameworks/tools be a large disadvantage to me when I’m looking for a junior/midlevel role at a tech company where being efficient in languages/tools is a must? Is it better to stay since I can make more of an impact now since I’m familiar with my company’s tech stack compared to having to go through an onboarding process at a new company which may result in decreased impact for that period? I would prefer to join big tech in 1 year as a junior engineer, rather than in 10 years as a mid-level engineer.

Switch jobs or stay to eventually join big tech?

Senior Software Engineer at Consulting Company

Everyone knows that the tech industry revolves around the Silicon Valley, but I'm in a different metropolitan area in the US. I'm thinking about my next move company-switch wise, and I'm wondering how much it's worth being in the Bay Area for greater access to opportunity and career development in general. Also, does this vary based on whether you want to work for Big Tech or startups?

Does not being in the Bay Area hurt your career as a SWE?

I work at a relatively small private company, and we spend pretty much all of our time churning out features as customers request them. I'm wondering if it makes sense to also spend some time digging into data to better understand user behavior. I'm trying to find ways to add value to the company besides just feature work.

Does it make sense to look into analytics and get more data?

The product managers in my org are pretty ambitious, and that, combined with the fact that we're a startup, leads to a lot of feature work. However, I wish we had more time to do engineering-oriented efforts like refactoring, adding automated tests, and others. The PMs say they want to do it, but this work never seems to be added to the sprint - Any ideas on how I can close this gap and get these types of projects added?

How to get more engineering focused work on the roadmap?

Sometimes I find people with a backround similar to mine who have gone to places I would love to go. Naturally, I would love to learn from them as they have done what I wish I could do. Their time is of course quite valuable and I understand that it might be naive to think that they would want to talk to a random person whose incentive might be mostly for career growth. Is there any way I could approach this in a genuine way? Or should I try to avoid connecting with people because of this reason?

Connect with senior engineers on LinkedIn you want to learn from?

Senior Software Engineer at Seed Stage Startup

I'm pretty new to my company, so I've been asking questions and looking for "hand-holding" to bring myself up to speed. I've been having trouble ramping up though - My velocity hasn't been the best, and I've also gotten feedback that I need to be more independent as a senior engineer.

This leaves me a bit confused - I know that in order to onboard, you need to seek out help aggressively and ask questions, but this seems opposite of the feedback around being more independent. How do I think about these 2 ideas? Should I just be working harder and spending more time figuring things out on my own?

How do I balance being more independent and asking questions?

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

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

How can I make the most out of a return to office?

How do I make sure to continuously improve at a company which does not really give much feedback? We have a meeting once a year where we talk salary and the work that I've done. I have only had one meeting, but they just said they were happy with me and my work. It's a rather small company so we don't have many of the feedback loops that larger companies have (code reviews etc). Since we are a quite small company, every senior have their own view of what good code should look like and I'm not sure which one to listen to.

How to continously improve with limited feedback from mentors/managers?

Hi I wanted to ask how valuable a bootcamp can be and can I do that instead of a four year degree?  The reason for this is because of how expensive college tuition is and I'm really worried about the return on investment. I feel like there's a lot of information that I'm learning right now that I feel like I won't really need and instead, I can use that time at a bootcamp to work on projects and learn valuable skills I can use in the work field.  Would I be at a huge disadvantage by not completing my 4 year degree and are there valuable concepts that I would be really missing out on by not completing my four year degree?

Coding bootcamp or 4 year Computer Science degree?

Software Engineering Intern at Series B Startup

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

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Financial Firm

When it comes to describing your projects, what are the things you should emphasize vs. not? I want to be able to paint myself in the best light when talking about projects at work and during behavioral interviews, particularly those of Big Tech.

How can I most effectively talk about my projects?

I am an engineer in my 30s and have heard that unlike a doctor/lawyer, who become more valuable with age, it's the opposite in tech. I've also heard getting on the manager track is a way to prolong your prospects (although this isn't necessarily the track I'd want to take). Curious on your thoughts on this topic.

Should I worry about age discrimination in tech?

I have been working in this company for 1 year 3 months now, and I'm feeling burnt out. I'm looking to take a break for around a month and a half, which I know is on the lengthier side. Does anyone here have experience requesting this long a leave?

I want to take a short career break. How to convey this to manager?

Junior Software Engineer at Series D Startup

I'm pretty early in my career (~1 YOE), so I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out. A lot of the advice on Taro is around finding your strengths and investing more in those, but I'm unsure on exactly how to do that. I feel like I'm just going from ticket to ticket and am quite busy in general, so I don't know how to think about all this. Any tips?

Alex and Rahul and the other senior people on Taro have consistently emphasized how important good software engineering fundamentals are to long-term career success as a software engineer. This is in contrast to learning the latest popular framework or area of development. Can people define what those fundamentals are and how one should go about acquiring/improving them? 

Thanks!

What are software engineering fundamentals?

Hello! 👋🏼

I finished my first JIRA ticket today and I was assigned another ticket, but this ticket feels different…its requirements are significantly more vague. 

I understand at a high-level what the requirements for this task are: 
1. check a folder for new files every x min
2. copy new files to another folder 
3. keep track of copied files

These are examples of some the questions I had, however they *feel* too low-level for the analysis stage. 
* what file types can I expect?
* should the frequency be editable?
* how should the program handle a job run that takes > x minutes?

So, my question is this: what high-level questions can I ask to further demystify these vague requirements and future requirements?

What can I ask to break down vague requirements?

As a junior engineer, I ask questions and ask for help a lot in general. However, I want to make sure I'm not annoying my teammates and being too big a burden. How can I do that? Is there something I can do to return the favor for those who helped me?

How do I not bother people when asking for help?

I've been working for around a year now, and I feel like there's a big gap between where I am now and where I should be in terms of skill level. I'm getting good feedback at work, but there's just such a *huge* gap between the senior engineers on my team and me - It all feels really daunting. How do I know if I'm good enough, and what can I do to feel better here?

I feel like I'm not good enough sometimes - How to know what level I should be at?

I’m currently working as a Data Engineer for a mid-sized (1500 people) investment-services corporation. The company has been around for a long time and makes money, but it definitely isn’t a tech-first company (e.g. it refers to the software side as “I.T.”, has tons of meetings, approvals needed to install almost anything on my computer, including VSCode).

I want to get into FAANG as a software engineer because I want to move away from the business/data side of things and closer to the engineer side of things. On my current team, I’m the lone data-engineer (will be joined by another in a few months) and as someone with <3 years of experience, I know that my growth is being stunted. 

I’m currently grinding AlgoExpert to prep for interviews.

How should I think about the circumstances under which it would be worthwhile to quit in order to prep (full time) for FAANG interviews?
Here’s what I can come up with in terms of current pros/cons of quitting:

Pro’s of quitting:

- A LOT more time to prep for interviews, can probably increase my output of questions by 3x
- Can do a lot more interviews without worrying about my job and scheduling
- Do less business/data stuff which I plan on moving away from anyways
- Get closer to a FAANG salary faster, which will likely be around 2x of my current salary

Cons:
- Don’t know how long it will take me to get a job
- Don’t know how easy it will be for me to get interviews without a job
- Psychological benefits of having a job
- Some learning on the job
- Low-stress job, nice manager, no overtime
- Already take an hour or two of my current job time to do AlgoExpert
- Make some money right now

How does the answer change (if at all) if I manage to land interviews with a bunch of different FAANG companies (say 5+) and I’m struggling to schedule all the time for interviews, prep for them, and do minimal work at my current job?

Thoughts are appreciated!

I'm positioning myself to go through the process of transitioning to a SWE position, and I've been told that junior developers would be given tasks that are small in scope, well-defined, and with low ambiguity.

That said, I would love to know if there are concrete examples of such tasks. For instance, would updating a Makefile before an internal release be within such a scope? Other examples would be helpful in order to get a better understanding. I assume that it would likely be different from company to company as well. Thank you for your time!

What types of tasks would be expected of a junior software developer at the beginning?

I'm a completely self-taught software engineer aiming to get a full-time role as an Android engineer. I have no published apps in Google Play at the moment; I'm currently working on a metronome app as I am a musician.

What kind of fundamentals should I know to feel confident, specifically confident enough to apply to jobs? It’s hard for me to feel confident from a non-traditional Computer Science background. I keep doing more and more tutorials and courses to build up my confidence, and it just goes on and on. Is there some roadmap I can follow?

I'm a self-taught Android engineer. What fundamentals should I learn to feel confident enough to apply to jobs?

I’m about to start applying for jobs. I’d like for my next job to be at FAANG for all the reasons that Alex and Rahul mention it’s good to begin your career at FAANG. This is my third job out of school, so I’m a little late, but better late than never :)

I believe what Alex and Rahul said about working at FAANG is that it’s good because you:
1.	Get to work with really talented people and learn good fundamentals and practices.
2.	Get top-of-the-market compensation.
3.	Set yourself up for more 1 and 2 in the future whether or not you leave

My crude approach to getting into a FAANG/FAANG-equivalent company is to look at levels.fyi, and run down the list of companies and apply. This approach certainly satisfied point 2 above, and is also very good for getting 1 and 3 as well given that all 3 points are highly correlated.

I know that referalls are important, so I do plan on tapping my network as well.

But I wonder, am I thinking about this the right way? Is there a better approach? If I could in theory get super-amazing 1 and 3, and get less 2, I think I’d be willing to do that. But I’ll never come across such an opportunity if I’m just using levels.fyi

All thoughts are welcome 😊

What's the right way to look for my next job?

Hello! 

I was assigned my first JIRA ticket at my first official dev job, which I started about two weeks ago. Given my situation, I want to know how long my manager expects me to work on the ticket, so I don't end up underperforming or not meeting expectations.

Some background: before this job, I worked at a very early-stage startup (one other person and myself for about a year), so I don't consider myself a complete junior. Additionally, I don't know my official title since I came in as a contractor and the contractor title does not match the FTE title, so I'm not sure what is expected of me. 

Some of my thoughts: I've considered asking my manager directly how long he expects me to work on this JIRA ticket, but I wasn't sure if the question was too noob-like or too forward. I've also considered that so long as I'm making progress (which I am), I should be okay (until it's not). 

So, all this to ask, should I ask my manager how long he expects me to work on my first JIRA ticket?

How long should I take on my first JIRA ticket?

Everyone on my team is significantly more experienced than me. I feel a bit intimidated criticizing the decisions that engineers far more senior than me are making. How can I start contributing?

How can I make an impact when my peers have 10+ more years of experience than me?

What can I do to get on the radar of senior engineers within the company and build respect for me overall? My company is also relatively small, so I'm fairly close with the CTO as well.

What can I do to quickly build my reputation as a junior engineer?

Question: "For being promoted from SWE I to SWE II, how do I take the behaviors my company has associated with each role (below) and make that more concrete for a growth plan, taking into account the changing & flexible timelines startups have?" 

For context, I already have weekly one-on-ones with my manager (who is new at being a manager & is also my mentor), and a growth plan (that I created with him) that roughly outlines (meets most expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations for my role). Additionally, keep in mind I work at a startup w/ <30 people so highly specific concrete goals set on a particular date can change in 2-3 weeks as priorities change. Also, my company has defined a series of behaviors as to what each SWE level should be able to accomplish. Here it is. 

Software Engineer I (<1 year - 2 years)
- Technical Skill
    - Broad knowledge of CS concepts
    - Focus on growing as an engineer, learning existing tools, resources, and processes
- Getting Stuff Done
    - Develops their productivity skills by learning source control, editors,   the build system and other tools as well as testing best practices.
    - Capable of taking well-defined sub-tasks and completing these tasks
- Impact
    - Developing knowledge of a single component of our architecture
- Communication & Leadership
    - Effective in communicating status to the team
    - Exhibits company’s core values, focuses on understanding and living these values
    - Accepts feedback graciously and learns from everything they do

Software Engineer II (2-6Years+)
- Technical Skill
    - Writes correct and clean code with guidance; consistently fellows stated best practices
    - Participates in technical design of features with guidance 
    - Rarely makes the same mistake twice, begins to focus on attaining expertise in one or more areas(eg. embedded , testing, algorithm, support code, commlink).
    - Learns quickly and makes steady progress without the need for constant significant feedback from more senior engineers.
- Getting Stuff Done
    - Makes steady progress on tasks; knows when to ask for help in order to get themselves unblocked. 
    - Able to own small-to-medium features from technical design through completion. 
    - Capable of prioritizing tasks; avoids getting caught up in unimportant details and endless “bikeshedding”. 
- Impact
     - Self-sufficient in at least one large area of the codebase with a high-level understanding of other components
     - Capable of providing on-call support for their area including systems that they are not familiar with. 
- Communication & Leadership
     - Gives timely, helpful feedback to peers and managers
     - Communicates assumptions and gets clarification on tasks up front to minimize the need for rework. 
     - Solicits feedback from others and is eager to find ways to improve
     - Understands how their work fits into the larger project and identifies problems with requirements.

How do I turn SWE roles behaviors/descriptions into concrete actions in a startup environment?

Staff Software Engineer [Lead MTS] at Salesforce

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

One of my dreams is to start my own venture someday. How do I tailor my career accordingly?

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

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

How much does years of experience actually matter to be a Senior SWE?

Came across [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/x6k3wk/comment/in7nt1s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on CSCQ where the original poster asks about what these missing essential skills. One reply had me wondering, how I can actually learn these points:

- How to write things in a way that other people really understand what you're saying.
- How to structure code so that you can come back to it in 2 years and understand it.
- How to show off the work you've done.
- How much testing is the right amount, and not too much or too little.

How do I learn these essential skills that are not taught in school?

I'm a self-taught, aspiring Android engineer, looking to land my 1st full-time role. I have around 4 hours a day to learn software development, and I'm wondering how I can spend my time the most efficiently. Here are the 2 core things I want to understand how to balance my time between:
- DSA (data structures and algorithms)
- Building projects for portfolio

How do I balance my time between studying DSA and fleshing out my portfolio?

I have worked at Meta my entire career (~5 years). I know that Meta is pretty "startup-ey" among the Big Tech companies, but I imagine that it can't mimic startups entirely and there's unique learning value startups can offer. Does switching to startups give big value to career development?

What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?

My manager said to me in 1:1 that I take too much time to context switch from one task to the other. He said I can do a better job on my whole multi-tasking approach toward work.

Any tips on how to improve?

I've gotten feedback that I'm more on the quiet side and that I could be more active in meetings. However, I feel like I don't have much to add when it comes to meetings. I want to say something that's insightful and adds value to the conversation, but I'm unsure how to come up with that level of material, especially on-the-spot during the meeting. How do I figure out what to say?

I struggle to come up with things that add value to a meeting - What do I say?

I've learned it is a great idea to keep a "brag journal" up to date with your accomplishments. This is something I've been doing but my question is what are some ways I can bring this list up during the performance review? Do I share the document prior to the meeting or do I quickly go through the documents with them?

How to bring up your list of accomplishments in performance review?

When people talk to me, I have a tendency to pause. This has led to feedback that colleagues wish I could answer their questions faster. The problem is that I need to pause for some questions as I need the time to think and formulate a good response. Is there a way I can incorporate this feedback without sacrificing my answer quality?

Got feedback that I could respond to questions faster - How to process it?

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

I have trouble coming up with accurate estimates, leading to missed deadlines.

I'm new to my company, so I'm asking questions to bring myself up to speed. However, something I'm wary of is becoming a burden - I assume you don't want to ask the same person every time for help. Any tips on how to figure out who I should ask my question to minimize the chance of this happening? I want to make sure I get along well with my team.

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

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

How do you determine the impact of projects?

- How am I to approach 1:1s with juniors devs in the team
- What does it mean to gain social capital in this interaction
- How to establish influence without authority in this interaction (even if there is scope for authority)

What role do the junior-devs in my team play in my promotion to TL of the team?

Right now, I'm on the test side in my company, writing some automated tests but doing a lot of manual tests as well. I would like to transition to software engineering, but I'm not entirely clear on my path there. There has been precedent of making that transition within my company, but I don't have any hard commitments there on allowing me to do the same. Any advice on how I can plan out this switch?

I just wanted to raise a feature request for a dark mode for the Taro app.

Can a dark mode be added to the web and mobile app of Taro?

Context: I work as a Entry Level SWE at Series B  Startup with 25 people; the SWE team is 7 people total. I am the only person currently under my manager & my coworkers are fairly clear about what I am building & why. Also, the SWE team morale is strong and productivity seems to be at a sustainable rate. 

During our mentor-mentee meeting last week, my manager & I agreed to give each other specific feedback each week (and also agreed for our 1:1 meetings to be used for awkward, personal stuff as Alex & Rahul recommended).
In general, I think he is an incredible manager; he’s personable, highly knowledgable, is available to answer my questions, & answers all my noobie questions but I do think there are some shortcomings as he is not used to being a mentor or a manager. 

I don’t want to just say “Great job!“ as that is an easy default to fall into week-after-week. 

So how do I evaluate my manager? Is there a set of questions somewhere? A framework of some kind?

Since our company is so small (< 10 engineers), we do code reviews across platforms – so I review iOS and web code even though I’m an Android engineer. 

I haven’t gotten any negative feedback on my code review yet, but I want to make sure I’m doing it properly. How can I suggest improvements on other engineer’s code, even if they’re on a different platform, or if they’re more senior than me?

How do you suggest code review feedback where you think there’s a better way to do what they’re currently doing?

**Part 1: Before Joining an organisation**

1. How can one identify the best kind of organisation to join at different point in one's career? I understand that the advice to this question may not be a prescription for all, but how can one identify places that would help them to maximize their learning and growth. For several other people, different parameters may be important for them as well such as work-life balance. Personally, I feel that WLB is dependent on a person more than that on the organisation. Thoughts?
2. Quite often we feel that growth may be fast paced at startups, but there can be startups that do and don't promote the growth of a person. Given that there is no list out there to check, how can one make the best suited decisions for their career, not landing at a place they should not be at? What kind of research can a person do before joining an organisation?

***

**Part 2: After joining an organisation**

1. Given that a person has joined an organisation, what are the kind of signals that they can identify to see whether the organisation is supportive of their career growth and is indeed the right place to be, for them?
2. On several anonymous portals, there are people from the organisation that will talk poorly about an organisation when things are not going good for them. Managers can quite often paint a really rosy picture about the place. How do you identify the honest signal from the noise all around?
3. If you find an organisation not good for you after you join there, how quick is it too quick to leave? How much time should you spend there before you can make a judgement about the same?

What kind of organisations should a person join at different points in their career?

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Series B Startup

I'm currently SE2 in my company, which is the earlier side of mid-level and am trying to make progress to SE3 and then senior engineer. Knowing that, how can I start making headway towards that SE3 promo? Do I need to be able to draw the line between my work and business impact?

How can I build a bigger presence within the team and make progress towards senior?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series D Startup

I feel like engineers on my team are all just doing their own thing. I work on the front-end, and when I go into front-end meetings, it seems like nobody has an opinion on how we can improve.

I like working with the people here: Everyone is nice and the overall work/life balance and vibe are relaxed as a result, but nobody is pushing me to get better and I'm not even sure what better looks like. It seems like my manager is fairly removed from the code at this point, so they don't have concrete feedback for me.

I get some meaningful feedback in code review, but not a lot. A lot of the comments are more surface level.

Given all this, what can I do to grow more?

How can I find more opportunities to grow when I'm getting very little real feedback?

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

How can I get my work better recognized by leadership?

What role does good feedback received in a 360 review cycle have in the promotion / salary hike conversation? How to make the most of good feedback?

How would you go about leveraging the good parts of a 360 Review received, in the salary/equity refresher conversation?

Entry-Level Software Engineer at Series C Startup

My main goal right now is to level up, and that next level for me is making the jump from junior to mid-level, hopefully within 2-3 years. To better understand the evolutions I need to make, what are the main differences between junior and mid-level when it comes to SWE?

What does a competent mid-level software engineer look like?

Senior Software Engineer at Series D Startup

My manager has 3 pods reporting to them, and my pod is pretty small at just a couple engineers. Because of this, I'm not entirely sure what I can take on to start making progress towards Staff. What projects can I work to fill in this gap? For additional context, I work on the back-end, but I can do full-stack if needed.

How can I come up with ideas to expand my scope on a very small team?

How to deal with conflict and uncertainty about quality of requests in Code reviews?

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