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.
I have recently been laid-off, I was working as a Frontend developer for almost two years. I have prepared my resume and started applying for roles but I have not been in touch with the interview scene in a while. Should I just grind Leetcode?
When working on a new task, I often find myself asked to estimate how long a task may take. Luckily, my team is pretty forgiving, but a critical step will be to start more accurately estimating tasks.
How do you get better at breaking down tasks to understand what needs to get done, and then giving proper estimations for how long those tasks will take?
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?
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
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?
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?
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.
Let’s say 2 companies give you different levels, but the compensation is the same. Is it better to have the lower level to have lower expectations? Zooming out, how should I think about level and its overall importance across my career.