Explore Editor's Choice on Taro

I am getting overwhelmed with my work, in this team for about 1 year. How should I optimize to squeeze time to help others?

Helping others gives me more joy than doing my own work :) . that is not my core work though.

I'm imagining a 2x2 matrix where one side has work-hard/not work-hard and the other has advance/don't-advance in career.

I think it's safe to say that one box has very few people in it: not work-hard and advance. I'm sure there are people who don't work-hard and get promoted, but these people must have something that gets them promoted such as great communication skills and the ability to sell themselves, so at least in that sense, they are unique and productive.

I would think most software engineers would fall into the work-hard/don't-advance block because they focus on the wrong things. In my view, you either want to be in the not-work-hard/don't-advance block or the work-hard/advance block, since the don't work-hard/advance block is not available for most people.

My question is, is the way to get to those 2 blocks effectively the same in terms of the skill sets needed, and moving between them purely a matter of quantity or effort? That is, in order to get by at a job where I would be content to just do the necessary work and then go home, I need to learn to be productive in a short amount of time, and then if I decide that I actually do want to advance, I only need to ramp up on the time or effort I put into applying those fundamental skills?

Hopefully this question makes sense.

Thanks!

I recently got feedback from my manager, and they mentioned that to start making progress to E6, I need to come up with new initiatives, which are big projects spanning across multiple teams. This is especially important for us as our team works in a way where we need to come up with the roadmap more on our own in a bottoms-up fashion.

This feedback is one of the core pillars I want to focus on going forward, but it's hard to make it actionable. What can I concretely do to start coming up with these projects?

I'm on a team with many new SDE 1s, and I'm trying to get them up to speed. However talking with all of them takes a lot of time, and it's affecting my velocity with project execution. My manager suggested that I set up office hours. Does that idea make sense and are there any other ways to make this all more efficient?

Every time, when my manager asked me to do some changes to the repository that is totally new to me. I became scared.

I prefer to do research by myself first. But I got lost in the new repo by reading file by file, and don't get the clarity.

So I ask the repository owner to provide documentation, mostly they don't maintain documentation, and even if they do, it is not updated or it involves a lot of detailed feature-wise documentation, which is usually not relevant to my requirement.

Then, I call the POC of that repo, but I couldn't figure out what is the right question to ask in the first call. Over time, I ping him asking questions whenever I face hurdles while achieving the requirements.

Sometimes, I put a debugger or logs to understand the flow of code.

The above processes took a lot of my time.

What is your suggestion to get clarity in the new repo such that I can complete my requirements in less time?

Prepping for interviews always feels detrimental to actual career growth. At the same time, what are the things one should look out for to avoid getting laid off and jump ship when things are about to go south.

One advice mentioned often is to look for finances of the company, but I am not aware how to analyse it. Can you help with resources for the same?

I'm sure Alex and Rahul talk about this in their , but wondering how to write clean code, particularly in the context of someone who doesn't have technical people available to review my pull requests in my work or in side-projects.

I'm sure this skill is almost entirely developed by working with talented people and writing a lot of code, but is there a place for resources like "Clean Code" the book or courses on Udemy?

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

1. What are the things you can suggest to reduce the turnaround time for onboarding a new engineer within the team?
2. What are the things that can enable them better?
3. How does this differ based on the stage of their career at which the new hire is in?

Crux is when you’re learning and digging deeper technically. How do you approach taking ownership and growing your impact on not just the project but across the team and larger axis?

I am trying to get promoted to Lead Software Engineer, which relates to an E5 level at Meta, if I am not wrong. I have seen several engineers in my organisation coast at the current level I am.

I wanted to understand if there are some key things I should be doing in order to perform at a Tech Lead level, so that I am promoted to one as well. This would be a bit long question, but please bear with me.

Following are some of the things highlighted in a few discussions:

1. Should have demonstrated complex backend system designs - How do I create this opportunity to build a complex system for myself? Often, the projects we are a part of don't require complex solutions.
2. Have a very strong code quality
3. Mentor other engineers - I started having 1:1s with Junior engineers on how to grow. Have not been doing this with Senior Engineers, but I try to jump in calls with them whenever they need some help. Often, the credit goes hidden, and sometimes it does bother me, but not sure if there is some way around it. What are your thoughts?
4. Handling production outages and incidents - Trying to be on top of it. Recently, have been putting out short term fixes, but alongside working on some libraries to fix it in an extensible way and have a larger impact with other teams as well. Sometimes, having visibility for my work in other teams seems to be difficult, but trying my way around this. If there is something you can recommend, that would be great.
5. Should I mention in my skip levels that this is something I am targeting for myself? - Right now, my focus is to try to uplift the code quality, work on larger designs (a question mentioned wrt this), trying to uplift the team (I have created a channel where I share stuff that can help the team upskill, brief nuggets of information on how to write good code etc. Doing this almost twice a week for around 2 months now), trying to mentor engineers within the team.

Another aspect is that my team would be getting changed soon due to organisational requirements. Given that, How do I make sure I am on the right trajectory to getting promoted ? (One thing on top of my mind is that I would be asking for junior engineers whom I can work with and try uplifting, alongside asking for opportunities/projects that would have large visibility and impact.)

Do you have any other advice for me?

After a certain experience there's a certain expectation from Senior Software Engineers, I think because in the beginning of my career I wasn't involved in Development and hence despite being of experience 10 years I think I may not have the design skills required to work independently on a feature.

That said, I am going through LLD questions on YouTube, to understand more about designing from scratch, while I am doing I thought if there's a way to get me upto speed even more. The reason I am asking is because apart from doing Leetcode daily I would like to spend some time daily on design aspect as well.

In summary, I want to work independently, and for that am learning from the internet. I am wondering if that's it or there's something more I can do in my free time to become better developer. Any actionable items would be great.

My current manager comes from a very different background compared to me and my team, which has lead to some misalignment in terms of what the team should do and how it should do it. I feel like there's a fundamental difference in working styles here.

This mis-sync has shown in our 1 on 1 meetings as well. They're less about my career growth and my goals and more about them and their way of doing things.

Any ideas on how to remedy this situation?

Whether that be a formal mentor within the company or you have found a mentor outside the company.

e.g. I want to level up as an engineer, have sought out a mentor(s) to help me do so, what are some of the things I should make sure happen that I get the most benefit out of the relationship.

In Alex's case, he met Rahul at Meta and now they're cofounders. How can I build up such deep relationships with other people at Google or any future company I work at?

Given this industry, switching is always somewhere in my mind. How can I figure out if it makes sense to pursue that or stay? When it comes to staying, how do I know if my current team is conducive to my overall growth and goals going forward?

Some additional questions:

1. What do you look for in the team?
2. Do you tell your manager?

One thing I'd love to ask about is effective pressure management. Coming from small cos to a big company like Meta; despite startups having a reputation for chaos, I personally find there's a larger number of failure modes at big companies - a review taking too long, lack of good logging, misalignment, which can lead to either a project being derailed or just flat out failing. I've personally gotten better myself at pressure management (trial by fire); but would love to have thoughts from folks on how they work on this skill!

Does it get worse as you progress from L3 -> L4 -> L5 -> L6 -> etc? Intuitively that seems like what would happen as your scope grows across promotions: Is there more overtime associated with the more senior levels?

I work overtime a lot, and it's pretty stressful. I'm also worried that amidst all this effort working for Meta, I'll lose track of who I am overall and what I can do for other companies. What can I do to strike a better balance here?

I am a little worried about the potential of layoffs at Meta. I am not sure if I will get a needs support. I have been working on doing a design doc for the past month, and my manager has generally been very positive towards me. But I feel like I might get a NS due to my not submitting as many diffs and accepting as many diffs. I joined my team less than three months ago, and still technically ramping up. I would be sad if I got a NS or a pip, but it wouldn't destroy me.I guess my question would be how can I best buffer myself during these next few months, and how can I avoid situations like this in the future? What should I do if I do get put on PIP/NS?

In quarterly conversation with my manager, for questions like how I’ve contributed to Quality or any other sub dimension I got response that I should talk about team and not only how I (as an IC) contributed. And I honestly struggle here. Any tips? How I upgrade myself to talk about impact at team/bigger level and not only at personal level?

In particular, what are the upsides of living in the SF Bay Area? Is it worth the high cost of living?

For my situation in particular, I would like to end up at Amazon working full-time after school, but I don't live in Seattle or the Bay Area (I live somewhat close to another major metro area). Does moving make sense?

I'm still in school, but I will be graduating in a couple months. My goal is to get promoted as quickly as possible at a reputable company like Google. However, there are so many ways to get better as a software engineer, and I'm unsure how to prioritize all of this information. What should I focus on since I'm earlier-in-career to really unlock that fast career progression?

I see engineers like Alex and Rahul, and they have had many accomplishments with pretty fast trajectories leveling up. I'm wondering if there's a primary common theme among software engineers like that - What are they doing that others aren't?

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!

I've heard Alex, Rahul, and other engineers within Taro talk about handholding when joining a new company for all engineers and for newer engineers in general.

What does it mean that an engineer doesn't require handholding anymore? Does this mean the frequency of the questions gets diminished or is it more about needing as much initial help to start tasks or something else entirely?

I have recently joined this company and I am trying to learn and I am clocking 12 hours everyday. Inspite of that I am doubting my abilities and I have manager who doesn't actually listen.. and instead of helping me navigate through this.. he is just on repeat saying I have to deliver this urgently .. and I am not picking up fast enough..

How do I demonstrate that I am seasoned in a way such that if a Big Tech company decided to give me a chance, I can put them at ease and show that I'll be successful? How does that look like across various levels?

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!

As a self-taught developer, I don't have a systematic knowledge base as those who were trained by college degrees or bootcamps. How can I built up a knowledge system as a Software Engineer over work?

For example, after I get a bird-eye understand of the industry, I can fit the pieces that I'm dealing with at work into this system and build up my knowledge with a more systematical way. Can I get some suggestions/approaches for this, or get to know your experience building your own knowledge system?

I recently made a string of silly mistakes related to a particular project that led to a few bugs being deployed to production. I think I incrementally got more and more overwhelmed and stressed by the project because my initial fix caused a bug and from there I fixed that bug and inadvertently caused others.

I'm concerned about how this might play out with my EM. How I can best approach owning this set of silly mistakes without it having a negative impact on my reputation due to my low code quality mistakes partly caused by the stress of the situation?

My tech lead asked me to write up a mini bug report for our our engineering retro and this morning my EM was asking about what the report was for because I had written it down as part of my weekly goals in our stand ups. My EM has low context on the complexity of the work we do and is far from the code - tending to over index on any signal he come across.

I just went through my performance review and I'm meeting expectations so I don't have a formal review for a while. I'm about to go on vacation for a while so I'm hoping this fades into the past but still I'm not sure exactly how to play this now so it comes out in my favour before I go away.

Came across 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.

Across my career, I've felt bad about my skills sometimes because I'll have teammates, who are also at my level, doing as much as 2x more than me. This has led to me feeling like an imposter many times - Any thoughts on how to process all this?

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

Hi everyone! I will join Palantir as a Forward Deployed Software Engineer(FDSE). I need advice on tackling the first 2-3 months at the company to gain team respect and trust. I am excited about this opportunity and want to grow but do it efficiently, if that is even a thing😅. Jokes aside, All I want is to have a great career at Palantir.

YOE: over 2.5years(including just over 1year of internship).

Stack Experience: Ruby on Rails, Python, some Java

Current Work: Backend Engineer. Building and maintaining APIs

Lately, I have been finding myself with a lot of free time and am unable to shake this feeling that I am not "doing enough." After finishing my school work, I usually just go to the gym, hang out with friends, or play video games.

Is there anything else I can do to further improve myself as an engineer and set myself up for success later on? Perhaps some books or resources to read.

I've tried working on some side projects, but honestly find it hard to follow through with them due to lack of urgency with no deadlines and prior fatigue from working on school assignments.

Before I was at Meta, I worked at a networking company for 10+ years. It was very different from Meta as a massive consumer web company. On top of the domain differences, the culture is also very different between these 2 companies.

I'm working on ML at Meta, which is something I'm pretty new to. As a senior engineer who wants to make an impact quickly and make a push for staff, how can I effectively make this domain switch to hit the ground running fast?

Recently, I have found myself just working on the tasks and investigating the bugs that my manager tells me to. However, from a performance perspective this would be considered "meeting expectations" at best. How do I develop a nose for impact and introduce new, innovative ideas to my team that really improve our product or development workflow?

Sometimes I feel like I didn't get 40 hours "worth" of productivity after a week, and it didn't make sense to physically spend 40 hours working that week. Is it possible to succeed as a software engineer working less than the traditional 40 hours? I imagine it requires being able to get the work done faster - What are some techniques to do that?

In particular, I'm having trouble figuring out really complex bugs. For example, on my current project, we're auditing a lot of the existing feature set to see what issues they have so we can fix them as we revamp them. I'm happy to find lots of issues, but I have no idea how to fix them, even after finding a code pointer.

I talked with a senior engineer on my team for help, and they were able to get more color on the situation. However, they mainly were able to do this as they have been in the org for a while and knew who to go to for what: I can't replicate that deep knowledge they have as I'm fairly new to the company. How can I create a systemic process I can follow to figure out these situations?

Some additional questions:

1. Does it vary between big companies and small companies?
2. Do you need to work a lot to be a high performer?

Fear/stomach-turning when I think about asking people for help (especially in public channels) has been a major blocker for me as a junior engineer.

At Microsoft, basic criteria for promotion is to deliver at next level consistently. Example: At L62, i need to work and deliver at L63s work level standards.

My manager has given me feedback that I could be more active in meetings, which would help me find my place within the team. However, I find it hard to participate in meetings a lot of the time, because I don't know the technical source material they're talking about. This leads to me learning as I'm in the meeting, and I don't have any remaining mental bandwidth to speak up.

When it comes to meeting types, I'm good with those like retros and brainstorms but those that are more technical like tech reviews and project planning can be hard to a large voice in.

I'm really new as a Google FTE (still doing some logistical onboarding like getting my laptop fully set up), but I want to hit the ground running and start growing at Google as fast as possible. However, I don't know what I don't know - There's a lot to take in, and I'm unsure where is best to focus and allocate my time.

My goal is to become extremely efficient at coding. I want to build a reputation as someone who is able to deliver tons of high-quality implementation and products very quickly. I want to build actual velocity where the actual rate of code per hour/day is really high as opposed to just being able to accomplish more from working extra hours.

What tactics can I use to level myself up in this way so that my old coding abilities feel unrecognizable when looking back 3-6 months in the future from my vast amount of improvement?