This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.
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 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?
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
Crux is when youβre 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?
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:
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?
In quarterly conversation with my manager, for questions like how Iβve 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?
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:
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?
Some additional questions:
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.
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.