Junior Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I started working as an entry level engineer at my current company a little over a year ago. I'm working with my manager to aim for promo in this next half (cycle would take place at the end of the year) to go from L3 -> L4. We both feel reasonably confident about putting up a packet. I also really like my manager and my team. I feel that I'm learning a lot and have decent WLB. Additionally, the L4 compensation range at my current company appears to be near top of market. However, the L4 -> L5 promo timeline at my current company appears to be somewhat slow (2.5-3 years) and there's always some risk that the promotion doesn't go through this cycle. Is it worth passively looking for jobs on the side to cross promote to L4 or should I just focus that time and energy on building a stronger promo packet for this half?

I know that it's in the company's best interest to lowball you: Is there a way to get around this without burning bridges? I'm wary of doing something like getting a counteroffer, since that feels very aggressive. Adding on to this: Even though we're a startup, we do have a fairly defined career matrix. We have levels (junior, intermediate, senior, etc) and a performance review every 6 months where levels are reassessed and promotions/raise are given where appropriate. So that's a path that can be taken.

I’m currently an entry level engineer with 3 years of experience. I’m afraid when I look for another job, the recruiters will ask me what level I am and get down leveled. Is this something I should be worrying about? If the recruiters ask me such question, how should I respond?

I am confident about cracking interviews, but the issue is that I'm not receiving any interview invitations. I successfully interviewed for a Data Science role in Supply Chain and was converted to full-time. However, since then, I haven't secured any interviews. I've attempted to apply with referrals Links, but no luck. Could you please review my resume and provide suggestions for improvement? Additionally, do you have any tips on how to secure more interviews? My usual process involves going to LinkedIn, identifying a suitable job, connecting with many people in similar roles at that company, and requesting a referral before applying for the role. This is my resume -

I graduated University of Toronto computer science (ranked by ARWU as 1st in Canada and 9th in the world) with a decent GPA around a year ago. Following graduation, I applied to hundreds of jobs, networked aggressively, and skilled up as much as possible for around three months straight, every day, for the entire day. I landed a ridiculously small number of interviews, and I ended up landing a low-paying dev job with a stack I did not want in a tiny company with no employee benefits. Not exactly the tech bro dream 🥲. Comparing with many of my peers who have similar backgrounds to me and who landed great jobs straight out of college, it's hard for me to know whether I'm falling victim to LinkedIn survivorship bias (i.e. I'm only seeing those who succeed) or if I am missing something here. Perhaps it's that I didn't do any internships during college, or that the market is bad right now, or that one simply needs referrals to get interviews. I am hoping to gain clarity on this. My formal questions: I am a graduate of one of the top computer science programs in North America, have a decent GPA, and have a portfolio of college projects. It's hard for me to assume my resume is that suboptimal that it undoes those facts. Why are companies not interested in interviewing me? I have two years of experience total at two different companies, both of which are very small consultancies owned by friends of friends, which I suspect may be hurting my application. Is it better to apply for recent grad jobs or internships (which I'm applying for anyway) with no professional experience listed on my resume? Something that I've seen emphasized on Taro is that it is much more attractive to specialize. For example, in the resume course, Alex recommends applying with a small number of technologies you are proficient in / have experience with. As a recent grad not getting interviews, I am (a) nervous I'll get thrown into a tech stack I don't care for, but thereafter only have a real chance at success interviewing for jobs with that stack, and (b) not actually proficient with any tech stack, so not sure I can craft a "specialized" resume. What are your thoughts on this, and what does a strong recent grad resume look like? Thank you very much for taking the time to answer and for Taro's support in the job search!

I have been working at my current company for about a year. I am a junior engineer on a team with mostly senior engineers. My team trusts me to execute independently and I'm pretty confident in my ability to get things done. I want more ownership and I would like to bring value to the team outside of assigned tasks/projects. How would you approach identifying opportunities here?

The question applies to everyone - but particularly to juniors with little experience using cloud services. For instance, I once built a CRUD web app using Firebase. However, I was wary of providing payment info, given the numerous stories of people getting large bills from accidental overuse or DDoSing. Thus, I wasn’t able to use Cloud Functions, leading to me using Firebase antipatterns. For instance: Creating new user’s profile data in the frontend (instead of a Cloud Function) Building a dedicated backend to securely make third-party API calls Manually versioning my production data by downloading JSON (no backups available on free tier) I even considered migrating my web app to Supabase, which doesn’t have this problem (and is also SQL-based), just so I could avoid doing silliness in my code. More recently, I’d like to build a hacky side project needing a service from Azure (or AWS, or Google Cloud). I could build an MVP in a few hours on the weekend (in fact, I already did - now I just need to connect it to the service). However, I’m wary of providing payment information. I understand the typical policy is to forgive accidental misusages. However, I’d prefer to use these tools properly instead of relying on goodwill (which, as Netlify recently proved, isn’t always reliable). After all, it would be atrocious marketing to punish small players when most of cloud providers’ revenue comes from large, established organizations operating at scale. How might I approach this? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts - I know Taro runs on Firebase!

Back when I was an intern, I worked incredibly hard, often times with late hours. Aside from the personal downside of burning yourself out, is there any other way this can hurt you career? Can it skew the team's perspective of you in a bad way?

For background, I’m self-taught and got my first software dev role less than 2 years ago. I want a new job because this job isn't providing me with the skills needed to keep up with the industry/job market, but in part because I don't have those in demand skills I'm struggling to get interviews. At my current job, I was able to negotiate a large pay raise and because of that, for the first time in my life I’m not anxious about finances, so I'm naturally pretty cautious about taking a pay cut. I code a lot outside of work, so I have skills/knowledge of areas outside of what I do at work, however, it seems most recruiters only value commercial experience with a given tech stack or field. Is it a smart move to sort of ‘take a step back’ in order to get different commercial experience? Or should I just keep grinding and looking for Jr. roles with comparable salaries?

Hello I wanted to get some advice. I noticed I can make it to the recruiter, but I keep failing when it goes to the hiring manger side. I'm not interviewing with any engineers - Any ideas on how I can improve this?

I am inquiring on behalf of my wife. She currently holds an H4 visa and is expected to receive her Employment Authorization Document (EAD) around October 2024. She has a Master's degree in International Public Policy and Management, which is unrelated to UX/UI design. Recently, she completed the "Google UX Design Professional Certificate" bootcamp. She recognizes two main challenges: 1) Her degree is not related to UX/UI design. 2) She has a three-year gap since her graduation in 2020. The reason for this gap is my H1B status, which has not yet led to an i-140, preventing her from obtaining a sponsor for a visa in her field. Initially, she did not plan to seek employment in the US, as she was focused on pursuing public sector jobs in our home country, Thailand. However, after meeting me during her Master's program and my subsequent employment in the US, she decided to stay here with me. I would greatly appreciate advice on how she can break into the tech industry, possibly at a FAANG company, as a UX designer. If possible, please provide a plan or roadmap for her career transition. Your guidance would be immensely helpful.

I unfortunately reached a year gap in my resume. But I recently finished up an accelerator called iga in which develop a game and realise on itch io or steam do you think this will be a solid experience to list in my experience section or go in my project section

I got laid off 6 months into my first job out of college. I'm just struggling to land Jr. SWE interviews in this climate. Other Taro Engineers I've talked to say I have a solid resume with multiple internships, projects, and relevant experience for my level and the people in my limited network are happy to refer me and often say I am a strong fit. But my guess is that despite having a strong resume for my level I'm a junior so I'll need handholding regardless BUT, I'm just barely landing any interviews. Even with referrals. Things I've tried: Applying Applying Applying. I spend 1-2 hours a day just applying because well, I'm not getting much interviews and dont have much else to do. ~1 every 150 apps land me an interview Networking, attending coffee chats, asking for referrals. But I am only a Junior and my network is fairly small and concentrated at previous jobs who are not hiring anymore Often people want to refer me. But their company isnt even hiring anyone with < 3-4 YoE Fellow Taro members, does anyone have any advice or thoughts on landing interviews in this climate? Any advice or words of wisdom is also appreciated in tackling this market.

My manager had assigned a mentor for me on my team to help onboard me. My assigned mentor asked me about what timing works best for me and I told them I gave them full discretion around timing and cadence since my calendar was basically completely open compared to theirs. By the time we had our first 1:1, it was a 15 minute time-slot right before our daily standup. We would have these mentoring sessions ~2x a week for a few weeks before these mentoring sessions just fizzled out and stopped completely. Now my manager is urging me to continue these mentoring sessions with the same assigned mentor citing that the reason they fizzled out was because my mentor "was not sure whether I wanted to continue the sessions and was waiting for me to set up more sessions if I was interested" even though I had expressed enjoyment of the sessions we have had thus far. Should I be proactive here in reengaging my assigned team mentor and scheduling mentoring meetings with them? I wouldn't mind having a little more time than 15 minutes per session and in a different timeslot than right before standup, but I respect that it is tricky considering the mentor is remote and in a timezone 2 hours behind the rest of the team. I also wouldn't really know what to proactively ask them for during these sessions beyond typical work questions as part of working with them on the same team. How proactive should I be here?

I am a new grad SWE at meta. It has been around 6 months with the team and I am still struggling to be confident. How do I ship code faster? How do I trace through react components or hack files efficiently? I have received feedback around learning to independently scope out timelines and to be more effective at communicating about work. How do I make sure I become a trusted team member? And does the feedback indicate negative performance? How do I turn it around?

I have a question about Alex's course, "Get More Interviews: Write a Stellar Resume as a SWE." Alex mentioned that labeling oneself as a "full-stack" engineer can be a trap for junior engineers, and it's better to focus a resume on either backend or frontend stacks. I unfortunately fall into this category - I have about 1.5 YOE and take on a role of a full-stack SWE. Though I prefer backend development and feel stronger in it (I'll say its about a 65-35 for backend vs frontend), I feel my backend skills alone are not enough to secure a strong backend role. Given this, I’ve primarily been applying to full-stack positions. Does anyone have advice on what I should do? I know this question is primarily for Alex but feel free to share your experiences on how I should navigate this! Thank you!

My sub-team was 3 people (an L5 tech lead, an L4 engineer, and me), but now it’s just me since the others left. My manager is hiring other people in the coming months. How can I best onboard the new people and set myself up to lead the team?

I was going through Alex's DSA course however I don't quite understand a few of the concepts he mentions. For example, Alex mentions that the difference between a yes and a strong yes is that a candidate asks more clarifying questions and edge cases. Aren't these pretty much the same thing? Shouldn't we clarify all of the edge cases in the beginning? Also, shouldn't we discuss alternative solutions before we start coding? Also, time/space complexity as well? I don't think this is the case however because Alex says not to do the happy flow + edge cases all at once but first to code the happy flow -> account for edge cases (after). I think what Alex is trying to mention from this course is when given a DSA problem we should do basic edge case clarification and verbalization of our solution to very quickly get a solution out and then try to come up with more edge cases/solutions to see if we missed anything (as this is how software is built in real life. I wanted to confirm this point. Sorry if this is a ramble.

I’ve recently been applying to various jobs, just in case of an unexpected layoff (golden parachute). Lately, I’ve been motivated to upskill as a developer. I’ve now reached the two-year mark at my company. After the reorg, I have a new manager, team, and director, and I really like this team. My performance over the past six months has been better than it was with my old team. Recently, Google reached out to me for an interview, but I haven’t really studied data structures and algorithms (DSA) due to work. My performance hasn’t been great, and now I also have a phone interview with Meta. On the plus side, my company's stock has surged, and we’ve received bonuses, raises, and promotions. In my last 1-on-1 meeting with my manager, he told me I should be more independent and that my performance is great (hinting at a promotion)—fingers crossed. My family and friends are encouraging me to interview with both Meta and Google, but I don’t really want to leave my current company.

So it's been 3 months at my startup. The day I get there, I see that our product is way worse than advertised (ie. saying we had 20 core features when we actually had 2). That's okay I guess, the team was just selling their vision during the interview process. After 1 month, one of the cofounders quits. The next day, another one of the cofounders quits. I'm panicking, but I realize I'm stuck here because it's my first job. (looks bad if I leave so early) After another month, we get an impromptu Zoom invite. 1/3 of the engineers have been fired. Everyone is working 60+ hour weeks at this point to keep the same velocity. The firings were not due to lack of funding btw. And just the other day, we had mid year reviews. The CEO says my engineering speed is slow. (he claims to be able to do in 1 day what I do in 1 week) However, he's never been a SWE before so not sure how he knows. My gut tells me to leave, but where will I go? Hopefully I can strive for a FAANG company or somewhere that has a strong engineering culture, but I feel pretty trapped right now. Reflection: I think part of the issue may be that the CEO wants FAANG-level performance + ridiculous work hours while providing only 60-70% of the actual comp of these firms. Something about expectations and leveling seems to be amiss here Personal Context: I have no problems getting interviews (thankfully, even as a new grad) because I spent a few months contributing to open-source. Just debating if it's worth cracking out the LeetCode for a few companies

I'm a junior engineer, and I have a second-round software developer interview coming up where the format is as follows: Group technical interview with three product managers (director, senior, senior) and one software engineer. I can't find any more information about this interview online (Reddit, Glassdoor), and the HR coordinator/recruiter has not answered my follow-up question in terms of live-coding. The first round was a behavioral recorded video interview with nine questions, and I feel like I did not over/undersell experience. Any tips for how to prepare for this interview or redirects to existing Taro questions with this information would be appreciated. I would be glad to provide more information as well; I am trying to manage my nerves.

I just had an amazon behavioral interview. I'm a new grad SWE and interviewing for a non technical customer success role. The interview was 3 behavioral questions. I tried to use STAR as much as possible but the interview was really like 15 ish minutes for the 3 behavioral questions. The interviewer did not follow up for 2/3 questions. At the end I asked 3 questions. total time was 20 minutes. Is it a red flag that my interview was only 20 minutes? I think I was able to answer the behavioral questions and I mentioned the impact of my work/results at the end though I will admit I didn't go into super depth on the results part and focused more on the actions I think. This was my first real behavioral interview as well.

These days companies are making candidates wait weeks for an offer decision so that they can interview more people. Is it a bad idea to tell them that you have another offer to prevent this even if you don't really have another offer?

Hi there, everybody. I was aiming to build a few applications to present in interviews. Last week, I was building a small-scale Spring Boot application with the help of a tutorial. The project I was working on was meant to retrieve data from a database using PostgreSQL to provide multiple choice DSA questions. I was creating an automated study buddy for technical interviews. Unfortunately, I've been trying to figure out some technical issues and database connectivity mishaps for some days, unfortunately to no avail. Currently, I'm working through a Node.Js tutorial to build an application geared to help me keep track of the things I'd like to do during my job search, so I can always stay on task. I don't know if I'm going to run into some more issues that plague me. The thing is, I'm learning a LOT from both experiences. Now I feel I can have an educated conversation on the trade-offs of monolithic and microservice architectures... and I LOVE what I'm learning. I'd really like to have at least 3 small-scale projects handy that I'm using to automate my own life and make this job search easier for me. Of course I'm going to continue to try to plow through these issues, and I'm not here to necessarily ask for help with my applications (although I won't say no if someone wants to help). It'd be great if I can explain how I solved these problems, because I know the challenging problems I've solved are what I'd want to highlight to people in an interview. But let's say if the day comes where I have an interview and DON'T have a "finished" product, yet I still have these code samples that I can defend and show that I've gained a great deal of experience from... would it be a good idea to present these in an interview? Thanks for the help, Evan