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

Assuming code first engineers care deeply about perfecting code while product engineers care deeply about shipping out solutions, how does one put up with an mentor that is a code first engineer to the extreme? The one engineer on my team is known for being a code first engineer: the type that will ask every lesser ranking engineer for rewrites from every PR, takes a week to review small tickets, prefers to miss deadlines instead of pushing decent code to prod, and will not compromise on design decisions until months have gone by. Sure, its great to learn from someone with top-notch code quality with past experience at google. I'm also confident my testing skills have improved a LOT since I started. On the other hand, having to rewrite most PRs I produce just to submit work late has destroyed my reputation as a junior engineer on my team. And for the majority of the time my team lead disagrees with this extreme code first mentality so I end up in the middle of arguments on the smallest design choices, waiting for a resolution before picking a solution. How have you found balance between perfect code and shipping fast?

In the earnings call sundar mentioned "Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers. This helps our engineers do more and move faster" No question here, just thoughts, comments, concerns?

Hi everyone. I posted a couple of weeks ago about a job interview I had with the company that laid me off. As a follow up to that post, the interview consisted of a manager, a senior software engineer, and a mid level software engineer. The senior and mid level devs played front end cop/back end cop with me, and then proceeded to ask behavioral questions towards the end. We all had a lot of fun, we laughed together sometimes, we kept smiling at one another, it was a really good interview. And I got every question thrown at me correct. I came up with a couple answers where I admit I had a textbook-esque response, but many more that was based on my experience. It was one of those interviews where you had a feeling that you just knew you got it. Given the interview prep course here, I knew to tone down my expectations from an "I know darn well I got that" to "I think I got it". As the week progressed, I started to get a feeling that I didn't get it. Well, that feeling was right. And it wasn't anything to do with the interview itself. Apparently, there was gonna be a new manager for the role, and from what I was told, "the new manager is repurposing the requisition". I can't believe it. I nailed the interview on the head, and I still got screwed out of the job. I left them on a high note, but I'm still so furious. Whatever happens, I know for a fact that I have it in me to crush an interview, but I don't deserve to still have to interview, and still be jobless: I feel entitled to the role! I proved that I deserve to work, both to myself AND them. The best I can hope for is the possibility they'll remember I'm a great candidate for a mid level role in the future, but that company is only going to be the place I fall back on if I don't have anything else in the future. I don't think I have a proper word for the sheer frustration I feel. The same company that laid me off, played me AGAIN. I know not to trust this company, but I thought this would at least end in a job offer. Not that some random manager thought the role I applied to wasn't gonna be good for business. How do I deal with this feeling?

I’m at a crossroads in my career at a startup where I’ve grown from an intern to a respected full-time employee with 1.5 years of experience. I currently enjoy excellent pay (15-20% above FAANG standards), strong peer relationships, and the freedom to choose my projects. However, I’m facing two major challenges: Management Issues: My manager lacks both technical and soft skills, which not only hinders efficient work but also shifts the focus from delivering real value to navigating office politics. This environment has lowered the overall motivation among my peers. Lack of Mentorship: There’s no senior leader available from whom I can learn and grow professionally. Given these issues, I’m considering two potential paths: Path 1: Stay at my current company, continue adding value, and leverage my strong internal reputation despite the challenges with management and mentorship. Path 2: Switch jobs to work under better management and in an environment with more mentorship, even though this would require me to spend significant time improving my interviewing skills and risking the loss of my established relationships. P.S I'm very poor at interviewing and estimate that preparing to secure a comparable role matching my current compensation could take 4–6 months of full-time effort. This extensive prep time would temporarily reduce the value I provide to my current team, which concerns me. There is no chance to switch internally. We have just one team. Which path should I choose, considering the growth opportunities and the potential drawbacks?

I believe this will really enable me to be very productive at Meta since this is my team's tech stack. And, I'm an E3 working on getting promoted to E4 for transparency. I sincerely appreciate your contribution.

Hello everyone, I have created website .It's a real estate listings website. I'm feeling of quitting it, because of a poor SEO. Currently I have no users and I don't know how to improve it. Also, because of poor SEO, it doesn't solve the main problem: real estate listing, that should be findable via search engines. Another thing is that I'm competing with market leaders like aruodas.lt and other. So main question is: should I quit and focus my energy on other simpler ideas ?

In this question, Alex answered that the key insight behind rapid career growth is good communication. He points the reader to the "Effective Communication for Software Engineers" course and some other resources. I feel like a ton of effective communication is tacit knowledge, and so finding a good way to teach it outside of observing those who are already good at communication in the context a job is tricky. Specific case studies could be really helpful. I think Alex's course and the other linked resources were a really good introduction to effective communication, but if this is the key skill behind great performance I want to learn more! I've put most of the tips and tricks that Alex taught into practice at my current job and it's really improved my performance and my managers' trust in me already. A huge mindset shift for me was that it's better to risk over-communication than under-communication; it's better to be aligned but slightly annoyed by receiving a lot of messages than not aligned. My question is: What is a good way to go about building my effective communication skills? Are there more really high-quality resources you recommend for building good communication skills?

I see a lot of engineers get excited by new frameworks, and I can’t emulate that same enthusiasm. There are some exceptions (e.g. when I learned about Storybook.js, I was excited to pick it up as it was applicable to my work), but for the most part, I'm just not as excited as other software engineers about picking up the latest and greatest tech. If I’m not going to get my hands dirty with a new framework or use it at work, I just don’t really care for it. What can I do to be better about this kind of learning?

Hi everybody. Last time I posted on here, I was laid off. I'm still laid off, BUT I got an interview where I interned at! It's a medium-sized financial company, looking to expand soon. The people I know in there are pretty high up. I told the recruiter that I was interested in making an impact on the business, and he really liked that about me. They said that no matter what happens with this interview, they're still gonna try to get me a software engineer job within the company. I think it was in a Taro course I saw when I first signed up where Alex said this, but the recruiters are looking for trust that you'll be able to ship production-level code. I've already done this within the company as an intern, and given my manager there at the time is now one guy under the CTO and CIO (the CIO remembered me and approved getting that position open!), I got that company trying to get me back in. Fingers crossed it works, but I'll have a hard time typing if I keep them crossed rather than code to practice beforehand. The team is trying to modernize APIs. In the behavioral/vibe check interview, the manager told me that he has a bunch of awesome APIs he'd like to convince other areas in the company to use, but they're stubborn because their current processes work as they are, and they don't want to put themselves at risk by implementing the new awesome APIs. I'd be expected to act as someone who can have these conversations with these groups about the code and APIs they currently work with, and get them to buy in on the said new awesome APIs. It was originally a senior software engineer role, but they're interviewing me to see if they'd like to lower that to a mid-level role, and then (hopefully) hire me. The role itself uses Node.js, SpringBoot, GraphQL, and Docker. I want to know what plan you guys think I should implement to study this next week and a half before it's technical interview day. I've been building some Node/GraphQL projects, and just worked on a SpringBoot project yesterday, too. A project approach is what I'm doing for this. I can also ask ChatGPT for some good interview questions on these things, but is there anything you guys can lob at me that will help me achieve proficiency (if not mastery) of those technologies in a week's time? Advice, tutorials, strategy planning, etc. I'd really appreciate whatever y'all can throw at me. Thanks so much! Evan

In my team, we own a lot of legacy services. It seems like many of our engineers intentionally avoid these legacy services because they have less impact, and I keep getting pulled into these projects. Even worse, the work is mostly SQL or data engineering, and as a SWE, I'm afraid this will impact my career. How do I get other people into these legacy service project? My manager is making me the only responsible person for this project on a rearchitecture of a legacy system by reducing head count commitment on the project, and I do not want to be the only person responsible for the project for few reasons. I want to stop doing deep dive on legacy systems which has no impact and has high risk. The legacy system just has so much scope that this deep dive is recurring every week that takes up about a day. In addition, I also do not want to be the sole responsible SDE for a project of such a large scope. Because the timeline of the project is long, the headcount may be justifiable, but I do not want to get isolated in a case when something goes wrong, there will be no one to vouch for me. Ideally, I think we would all share the work as a team somehow, but our team has been very separate with a different products, so I am not sure what the best way to approach this would be.

Inspired by this question, Alex mentions that it's risky for the Meta calibration committee to keep someone under-leveled for too long, even if they want it. I am just curious why this is the case. It seems better for the employee to be under-leveled for the reduced expectations/stress and better for the company financially. Thanks!

I don't want my company here because I'm pretty sure my employer will be able to track me down, but I'm on the identity and access management team at a large e-commerce firm. I keep getting this sinking feeling with all the new job titles that are coming up as a result of AI, that I'm in a dead-end area. It's not really security engineering work, it's the bridge between the backend and security where we implement oauth, oidc, saml, passkeys, and few of the other MFA specs. I joined the team a few months ago after getting pretty bored with product engineering work (making some Graphql APIs). Ultimately, I'm a software engineer, but not good enough or knowledgeable enough to be in security engineering. What bothers me though is that enough of a niche to switch to other companies? A lot of postings require knowledge of k8s, CUDA because of the AI boom. I'm very early in my career and quite lost right now looking at the jobs out there. Can anyone chime in?

I have a stable job with a good salary, consistent increments, a healthy work-life balance, and strong trust within my company. However, I feel dissatisfied with my technical skills as an engineer and my ability to perform well in interviews. As I plan for my future, should I focus more on improving my technical engineering skills or sharpening my interviewing skills? P.S I suck at both.

I've been at my job for a year now as a junior software developer and I'd like to take more ownership and more responsibilities in my team as a step in my growth/promotion. How do I best approach this and how can I frame this conversation with my manager? ### Context I work in a startup-like company. I'd like to own a small part of the high-impact project I'm currently on (I work with 2-3 senior engineers) and/or own another future project. My manager agrees that the next step in my growth is to own a project but she's looking for something that fits my skillset. At this, I'm left wondering if there's something I can do on my end to help make it easier for her or signal that I am ready to own a project. My manager has said I am trending well and doesn't seem to have any concerns with my performance. In my next 1-1, I'm going to ask for any feedback, as well as discuss my 2025 growth plan. Since the work I'm now doing is more fullstack backend-oriented and I was previously mainly fullstack frontend-oriented, I am also actively practicing to become more familiar with our backend technologies/repos via pairing, code reviews, etc. Since I'm a junior, I know I'm judged on code impact so I focus on code quality (writing thorough test plans, code reviews) and code velocity and I have received positive feedback on these things. Also, there have been a couple of promotions in our team this year, so that might have an effect on the scope of projects as my manager likely prioritized their promotion plans. Thank you!

I took up a project that will help me grow to the next level and I set a deadline, and missed the deadline because I didn’t know how long the project will take. My manager was aware of this and it’s not looking good. Although I’ve aligned with my manager and the TL that I was working on multiple projects at once and didn’t know how long the project will take, which caused the missed deadline. I want to take up E4 level projects, but I also don’t want to fail or make the TL skeptical in giving me future projects. I really felt bad about this. This is why I need another mentor within Meta. My current mentor doesn’t even care.

Recently, I was helping migrate my team’s entire codebase from a legacy Java DateTime library to the newer, built-in Java DateTime library. I’ve never performed a migration before, so I don’t have context to know whether this kind of migration is typical (my current team isn’t very good). Some of the features of the migration: The codebase primarily contains poorly written unit tests or tests without assertions (and no E2E or integration tests) Consequently, we tested the application by setting up a separate environment, simulating user flows, and manually verifying results inside the DB The migration took over a month to perform - meaning constant merge conflicts from new changes to resolve What might a migration look like at a good tech company?

For the record, I’m not personally interested in game development - I’m just quite curious. Everyone hears the following complaints across the gaming industry in general: Crunch time Lower TCs I find this quite curious, because I imagine there’s a lot of technical complexity in building games and the numerous tools and engines needed to make them. Games are interdisciplinary, combining art, music, sound design, acting, writing, and game design, to create interactive entertainment software - so I would imagine this presents a unique world of challenges that make it just as complex as “regular” software. Plus, MMOs and games like Fortnite or Counter-Strike have to deal with all the technical complexity of ensuring a good player experience while having millions of players (clients) playing concurrently. In fact, Gergely Orosz has an excellent newsletter on the subject that I found fascinating. Yet, game developers typically complain of lots of crunch time and being underpaid - and, subjectively, the game dev industry is less “prestigious” than SWE. Also, I’ve almost always seen devs listed as “game programmer” or “UI programmer” in the credits, as if their primary job is to just write code (and not build good, complex software at scale). What might be the reason for the differences between game development and regular software engineering?

For context, I joined last month and am an entry level software engineer. I was working on a feature for an entire continent and we realised during validation on the release call that there was a bug in my code which was not spotted earlier in the code review process. I feel really disappointed; even though my manager and teammates have assured me it’s not a big deal, I still think it paints a bad impression of me. How do I come back from this?

Hi I'm a junior software engineer currently working at a bank in Australia, primarily using Java with Spring Boot for about a year now. I’ve received an opportunity to move into a role in a better-funded, more tech-forward team — however, the primary language there is Go. While I’m open to learning and working with Go, I’ve noticed that Go isn’t as commonly requested in Australian job postings compared to languages like Java or JavaScript. Unlike markets like the Bay Area, where companies seem to prioritize general backend experience over specific languages, here it seems many employers still expect direct experience with the language they use (at least that's what I glean from the postings). My question is: if I spend the next couple of years working in Go, how might that impact my ability to transition back into a role using Java or JavaScript or any other language in the future? Would really appreciate your thoughts! Thanks

Hi all, Recently, when I come across hiring posts on LinkedIn, I apply through the given link as well as send a message to the author of the post. Would it be better to wait for a response from the author before applying through the portal, or should I apply through the portal in parallel? I wonder if there is any incentive for the author that they might miss when I apply through the portal, making them less interested in following up on my profile. Also, I think it could be tricky to apply through the portal later, after waiting for x days without receiving a reply. I think if the author is an engineer, they might be interested in a referral bonus. Would the same apply to managers or directors in the company, or do they care more about building a good team than the referral bonus? Any thoughts/suggestions? Or am I overthinking this? Thanks.

I'm looking to deploy my project to get some users. I wanted to ask what the best way services to use as I'm only trying to show off the work mainly and maybe get some users once I get unity app on the stores.

Hi everyone, I was trying to work on E4 Scope project for this half but it wasn't going as planned because there was so much I didn't yet know which was taking me more time to deliver, which delayed our deadline. How can I do this effectively because I need to maintain E4 level traits before I can get promoted to the next level, and performance review is coming soon. I'm feeling sad! Please any advice

I want to make effective use of my time with my manager but I feel I am not. Because I mostly discuss about my tasks and progress that too not in too much detail because my manager is not too technical or doesn't actively code.

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?