Almost every software engineer starts their full-time career journey here. The content here breaks down how you can start your career off with a splash and grow past this level as quickly as possible.
If you have a new manager joining to manage your team, how can you ramp them up quickly on all the work you have done before them, the impact you have generated, your role in the team.
I have attached my resume for review:
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'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?
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?
As I'm starting to join a team soon(and knowing this answer varies by team, level, and company), I'm wondering how long does onboarding take and what does it mean to be fully onboarded within your team
When I started in bootcamp, my bootcamp mentor assigned me a couple tasks to do. How important are these tasks? Do I need to get them done with a certain speed and quality? Are you judged on them in any way?
I'm a new E3, and I know that there's the up-or-out promotion timeline to E4. I was wondering how much of a challenge this level-up generally is and what are the main things to keep in mind with this promo?
I'm a native Android developer, and I really enjoy doing the work. However, I want to make sure that I'm well setup across my career overall - Does Android have good prospects in tech going forward? On a related note, how does it correlate to future opportunities and growth within Amazon?
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?
I was told that exceeding expectations doesn't necessarily mean that you're operating at the next level, so I would like to get more clarity here. What does it mean to exceed expectations in a way that's building up towards promotions vs. not?
I've heard this advice a lot, and I would like to get more clarity on what that concretely means. In particular, what does a junior engineer being proactive look like? Can someone provide examples?
Some additional questions:
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?
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?
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.
Some additional questions:
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?
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.
Would you recommend software engineers try a rotation as an SDM (software development manager)? What benefits or drawbacks would you say would come from making that switch to SDM?
For people who work on side projects: I was wondering what is your system when it comes to coding at work and then coding after work? How do you divide your time effectively between the two?
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?
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.
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?
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.