1 on 1 Meetings Q&A and Videos

Our manager assigned a colleague and me both of us junior developers to a repository we have no experience working on, with no help or prior knowledge provided. We asked our senior for guidance, and she told us we need to reach out to two other teams to get a knowledge transfer.

We have 10 days to complete the task, but there’s already been a delay due to code reviews. Our manager refuses to understand the situation and told us that our jobs and especially our performance reviews are on the line.

Should I consider switching to a different org, or is it time to leave the company?
(I really don't like posting question like this)

How do you build relationship with skip manager (executive) when you do not have any meetings with them and you are working remotely?

If I do carve out an opportunity, I'm also afraid that my boss might question why I am trying so hard to build a relationship with his/her manager given I have nothing shared to work on with the executive. If there was, I and the executive would be atleast in some common meetings where I would get the opportunity to build relationship and demonstrate impact.

As a software engineer with 5 years of varied experience, now in a tech lead role at a large company focused on business-oriented full-stack/fintech projects, how can I effectively pivot my career towards more technical domains, such as database engineering or developer tooling?

Should I transition to a different department? Different company?

What strategies can I use to develop domain-specific skills (e.g., compilers) that aren't directly related to my current job responsibilities?

Context:

I've bounced around a bit over the past 5 years of my career, and I'm in my first big tech role as a tech lead.

I've had to step up and laser focus my time and energy due to the demands of this job, needing to learn a lot about the business needs to deliver impact in my role.

I realize that my past roles I never really picked up how much the business domain and project domain should have mattered to me, because now I feel l'm working on the "wrong" domain and types of problems that inherently interest me.

Hello I joined a new company as a senior swe earlier this month and have met everyone on my team but I'm new to big companies so not sure how to approach a skip level meeting?

The reason I'm asking is I've seen a lot of people and posts talking about skip level relationships.

1. Am I supposed to set up a meeting myself or wait for them to set it up?

2. Should I tell my manager I'm talking to my skip level ie his manager?

I recently had issues with management at my company and, out of frustration, changed my LinkedIn status to "Open to Work." I saw this as a chance to practice behavioral interviews, as Alex suggested in his course.

After completing some behavioral interviews with recruiters, I’m now scheduled to speak with hiring managers next week. Two companies have moved directly to the technical round based on my recruiter conversations. Most of these interviews are expected to happen over the next two weeks. I did not expect to get any technical interviews because I thought I wasn't good enough. But somehow it worked out better than I expected.

Here’s what I found out about the technical interviews from a follow-up email that I asked :

Both are live sessions.

The first company, which builds secure financial systems, provided this detail:

- "This is a filesystem design question combining design and live coding. The expectation is to present a complete solution, moving beyond pseudocode. Develop an approach/logic that can be fully implemented within the allotted time." - TypeScript & Node.js

The second company, which works in the distributed systems space requires a live coding assignment in Golang but gave no specific details.

I'm unsure how to best prepare. These aren’t straightforward like LeetCode problems, and there's no information on which libraries or resources to use. I haven’t done system design interviews before, and these companies expect a working coded solution. I've been attending system design sessions and group discussions with Taro, but live coding a feature is new to me.

I've done take-home assignments before, where there’s ample time to prepare, but this will be my first time coding a working component from scratch in a live interview. The pressure is higher since someone is constantly observing. I could treat these interviews as practice, but I don’t want to waste these opportunities. There's no guarantee of another chance, and I want to do well. This experience will be invaluable, and I don’t want to regret not giving it my best.

I was also wondering if I should ask more follow-up questions on the specifics of the technical interview like libraries to use, existing examples, resources to practice, etc. Is this too much to ask or is it fine?

Any guidance on preparing for these interviews would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, need some advice here.

I am a month into my new job - an AI startup, and my founder (who’s also my boss) has been scheduling 1-1s with me every other week to onboard me and give me time to ask questions. I feel like I am wasting this. I genuinely don’t have many questions to ask because I m mostly focussed on trying to complete my tickets as efficiently as possible (there is loads of work to do), and I already have been more or less briefed about the problem we are solving, KPIs and some big picture goals for the team.

I have another meeting with him tomorrow. I need some help - any questions on what I should ask?

First, I would really like to thank Alex for taking the time to record the video series regarding the .

I just watched the section regarding working with my intern manager. I understand that it is important to have a weekly 1:1 with my IM. I am wondering if it is necessary to also have a weekly meeting with the engineering manager as well. If so, what would be some good topics to bring up during the meeting?

Topics I am thinking of include: project updates, feedback, career advice/planning. I would love to hear any thoughts on this.

I’m joining a late-stage startup in August. I talked to a bunch of people in the company but this upcoming chat will be my first with a tech lead. This startup’s levelling system is similar to Palantir’s - the only titles are SWE, tech lead and eng. manager.

My goal in this conversation is to better understand the company’s promo culture, the expectations of each level and how to get to tech lead. What are some questions I should ask to get a better understanding?

Are there any other topics that a tech lead is well-suited to answer that I haven't considered? If so, what are some questions I can ask?