Mid-level Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Hi folks, I have roughly 2 weeks to prepare, I wanted to know thoughts on what should be my plan to give it my best shot?

Main Problem that I am facing right now is implementing a solution correctly.

Hi Taro Community,

I'm wrestling with a question about work hours that perhaps many of you have also encountered. Is it generally advisable to stick strictly to an 8-hour workday, or is it acceptable to work more when necessary? Specifically, if the tasks at hand don't get completed within the standard 8-hour window, should I extend my hours into the night to resolve issues?

Here's my dilemma: I've found myself working additional hours at night to tackle pending tasks. While this has helped me keep up with my workload, I'm unsure about the implications of this practice:

• Should I expect acknowledgment or appreciation from my manager for these extra efforts?
• Is it beneficial to communicate my extended hours to my manager, and could it potentially influence decisions regarding bonuses or other forms of recognition?
• How do managers typically view overtime work, and what is the balance between demonstrating dedication and setting healthy work boundaries?

I'd appreciate any guidance or personal experiences you can share on handling overtime work and how to approach discussions about it with management.

Thank you for your insights.

My brother is very worried about getting a return offer at Meta - he'll be interning there this summer. He reviewed the videos on , but is still confused on who he would assign to review diffs/vouch for his performance other than his EM.

Hello, I've seen the term "maintenance projects" (basically, projects where you do bug fixing most of the time) and green field projects (projects where you write code from scratch).

I've been told that the maintenance projects are generally the ones that you want to avoid since you won't learn much.

I didn't see this view against software projects on TARO, like to divide the projects in to these categories from a high level view and I was wondering if you guys can tell me more about this business view of the software projects.

Are there other categories besides maintenance and greenfield? How can I avoid maintenance ones or recognize them?

After watching the focus-focus-focus video in the level up your , I was thinking where to find place where I can learn stuff under the hood in java and gain higher level of knowledge.

Most books and tutorials out there I believe they focus on superficial stuff, just enough to get things working.

Thank you.

Hello everyone. I work for a consulting company.

My last project finished 2 months ago and I've not been able to find another project within my employer's clients.

People in charge assigning projects asked me if I have experience in a specific set of technologies but they are mostly related to data engineering or AI/ML and I'm a backend developer.

How can I increase the chances to find a project. I don't want to be laid off.

Hi,

I am a mid level engineer. Recently I was given a task which had a tight deadline. I started looking at the task and was stuck as the results from the code run were not as expected while testing. I was unfamiliar with this area of code so tried my best to understand the code and investigate the cause of unexpected result. I raised this with the team and also raised this as a blocker. I mentioned that I did not have confidence in going ahead with the task without understanding the cause of the unexpected results. My team was unhappy with this as the code has been working okay so far without any issues and the unexpected results were likely because of a gap in my understanding. The team assumed that I did not want to do the task whereas my hold up was not wanting to proceed without having a clear understanding of what's going on.

Should I have approached the situation differently? How to work with an unknown or hardly known area of code on a tight deadline?

I have had issues in the past with the team because of performance and other reasons. I have recently improved my performance but fear falling back to the old ways.

Thanks

Some context, last July after getting laid off I started searching for new work with a particular focus on FAANG.

I garner traction with a few companies but am elated when hear from a FAANG head hunter.

I passed the first interview. Scheduled the second and it wasn’t until the confirmation email of the second interview that I saw “Contract”. I was greatly disheartened though I figured I might as well go through the interview process and decide after I’ve lined up all my options. And after talking to the hiring manager I was promised a chance to convert the contract is up.

It was a hard decision, but ultimately I passed up on a well paying senior role at smaller company to take a stab at FAANG.

And I loved it. The engineers I work with are brilliant, the products impacting orders of magnitude more clients than I ever have before and I'm learning.

However, after shipping our first project, the hiring manager that brought me on board switched teams. The projects I've been reassigned to have been largely tech debt and non technical. I have had no direct manager for 4 months with no new one stepping in in the foreseeable future. While conversion is supposedly still on the table, there is no one tracking my contributions and there is a new stipulation of “if the market permits” tacked on top, meaning they have an excuse to prolong the contract rather than give a chance to convert.

The cherry on top of all this is, recruiters from this company have reached out multiple times over the past two weeks but pull out after I inform them that I'm currently contracting for them. This is due to the understandable “external” vs “internal” hiring conflicts.

So I guess the question is, should I quit and open up the chance to once again start applying externally? Or would it make more sense to stick around and try for the mythical conversion or even just maintain and study for the inevitable interviewing at the end of the contract? Maybe try being overemployed?

I have tried asking the stand in managers, but they have much bigger fish to fry than the ambitions of a contractor so I would really appreciate some opinions on how I might navigate this period of contracting.

Thanks for the read and your time,

E

Hi all. I suck at following deadline. Every time I signup for some task, I end up either being a mediocre or finish it late passing deadline. I want to come out of this vicious cycle. Please don't suggest things like set timer, break big tasks to small tasks, use calendar all those. It doesn't help me. Please suggest some practical solutions that can be followed. TIA

Hi Taro Community,

I’ve encountered an interesting situation at my company, where I was the sole member in India until recently. In March, we hired an internal manager in India, whom I now report to. In our latest 1:1, he mentioned that I wouldn’t be assigned direct coding tasks possibly until September or October. For now, my work involves renaming elements within the codebase, and while I understand the rationale behind these changes, I’m missing out on more substantive coding work.

Given this context, I’m seeking advice on how to proactively engage with and understand our codebase. Without being assigned direct coding tasks, what are some effective ways to delve deeper into the code, learn its intricacies, and prepare myself for future assignments?

• Should I take the initiative to review and study different parts of the codebase independently?
• Could I propose small, self-initiated coding projects to demonstrate my understanding and initiative?
• How can I use this time effectively to ensure that when coding tasks are assigned, I’m fully up to speed and ready to contribute meaningfully?

Any tips or shared experiences on how to navigate this period would be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your help.

Hi Taro Community,

I’ve often come across the term ‘Pair Programming’ within discussions here and in the broader tech community. However, I realize that I may not fully grasp the various contexts in which this practice is applied. Could anyone shed light on what Pair Programming entails and how it might differ across different settings or scenarios?

Specifically, I’m curious about:

• The essential elements that define Pair Programming
• Variations in approach when it comes to Pair Programming in a remote vs. in-person environment
• The benefits and potential drawbacks of this method from your personal experiences
• Situations or types of tasks where Pair Programming is particularly effective or, conversely, not recommended.

Understanding this could greatly influence how I collaborate with my team and contribute to our projects. Any insights or personal anecdotes on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your help.

I had an interview with a Big Tech company last week. The Hiring Manager told me that he had 2 spots open on his team, one mid L4 and one senior L5. He then asked me what role I wanted to be in. I waffled a bit, but then said the L4 role. I genuinely believe I'd rather be in the L4 role since I've never worked in Big Tech before.

I'm assuming I made a mistake in answering the question though. Similar to how you should never give the first number when asked about comp expectations, I'm assuming the right answer to a levelling question is something like "I'm looking to contribute at the highest level I can".

I imagine this response is the better response for 2 reasons:

1. I might be able to get an L5 role and operate at that level, even if I don't feel that way

2. If they think I'm going for L5, they might give me L4 as consolation, whereas if they think I'm going for L4, I might end up with nothing. This is the "shoot for the moon, land among the stars" strategy.

Can people confirm my thinking is accurate?

Every year, there's a mandatory compensation one on one with my manager. I find the session mostly informational and it's not really a bargaining / negotiation process. Usually when the compensation conversation happens, the performance review was set in stone a few months ago. There's limited things a manager can do.

What do you ask during the compensation discussion? The nitty-gritty of compensation of my current company is thoroughly discussed over different forums and there's more information over the Internet than what my manager could officially tell me. Should I just quickly close the comp one on one to save time for both of us?

Hello! Are there any websites to assist with evaluating startup offers (e.g. salary and equity)? Pave and Carta are focused on providing benchmarks for the offer-givers, not the offer-receivers. seems interesting, but I'm not sure how much I can trust it?

Is it possible to just use Pave / Carta without paying for it?

Thanks!

Interviews typically comprise two main elements: DSA and behavioral assessments. Both demand practice to excel. Reflecting on my own journey, I vividly recall struggling with initial DSA rounds during college (lol I failed to reverse a linked list). However, through some practice through the years, I've significantly improved (one recent interviewer said something like I used up their followups and that didn't happen so often). Nevertheless, I still notice a disparity in my head when solving technical problems in live coding scenarios compared to when I'm quietly practicing on leetcode. The pressure of performing in real-time often induces anxiety, brain fog and being stuck when there's a bug. I believe additional practice could mitigate these challenges.

Needless to say, behavior & system design need practice as well. I also tried to sign up to be a interviewer of my company to practice from the other side, but there's not a lot of hiring happening.

I think currently the biggest efforts is to find the companies that are giving interviews.

Which companies are hiring / best for practice? I also heard you can interview with multiple teams in TikTok, which make it a perfect practice land.

What thoughts do you have?

Hello, I have 3 years of experience and I'm an SDE II at Amazon. The Q1 promotion results are out, and I'm surprised to see many fast-track SDE III promotions. It seems to me that when the time is right and stars align, SDE III promotion can be quick, and if you stay in one team long enough, it wouldn't be hard to get to SDE III.

80% of my team are SDE IIs, and I don't see my possibility of SDE III promotion in the next 2 years unless:

1. I find some big opportunities that bring huge revenue to the organization
2. There's a major reorg, and I'm assigned to a new team, and the new team expands
3. My current team shrinks for some reason, I stay, and my team grows again. Interestingly, my team's senior manager and 2 senior engineers actually fall into the third bucket.

What do you think? Should I just relax, keep pace, and grow my skills, hoping for a promotion by job hopping when the market recovers?

I joined Amazon for my first tech job as an SDE I and was able to promote to SDE II after 1 year. Fast forward to 9 months after promotion, My onboarding buddy who has been here ever since the team was founded is leaving. I ended up being the SME for one of the team's projects that makes a lot of $$$, which means a lot of eyes are on it. Although we do have a couple SDE IIIs on the team, they've been more focused on other equally important projects and don't have too much knowledge on this one. I'm starting to feel the weight of the extra responsibility as I often get pinged for escalations, have a lot more say in meetings, and invited to meetings for the roadmap of this project. There was also a recent reshuffle in the Product side and I've become their go-to guy for anything related to this project.

Having joined the industry less than 2 years ago, I kind of feel like things are really moving fast and I'm a bit overwhelmed to be honest. I was still thinking on how to increase my technical depth after promotion, and I'm not even sure if this is a good situation to be in or not. But at the same time, I do want to overcome this and perhaps turn this situation into a growth opportunity.

In my forte review, there were many comments on the expectation of me evolving into a mature leader for the team and this feels like an opportunity to work on that. I'm kind of confused on what direction to take at the moment. What would be some things I can do to make the most of this opportunity and grow my leadership skills? I feel like before all this happened, I was focusing on growing my technical skills and didn't really pay atttention much to the leadership side.

This might be a vague question, so I just wanted to see if anyone has been in this situation and have any advice on how to best navigate this or share similar experiences

Any thoughts/reflections/lessons from the recent incident?

TL;DR of the incident (generated by LLM and verified by me)

The xz backdoor news refers to a critical security vulnerability discovered in the XZ Utils, a widely used compression utility in many Linux distributions.

This vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-3094, was found in versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 of XZ Utils.

It allows a malicious actor to bypass SSH authentication and gain unauthorized remote access to Linux systems.

The backdoor was introduced by a contributor using the pseudonym Jia Tan, who had been involved with the xz project for two years.

The discovery of this backdoor has raised concerns about the potential for other undiscovered backdoors in earlier versions of the library and the implications for the security of Linux systems that rely on this utility.

The backdoor was first detected by Andres Freund, a Microsoft engineer, who noticed an unusual delay in his SSH login time, which led him to investigate and uncover the malicious code in the xz utility tarball used in Debian installations.

The malicious code was designed to interfere with the authentication process in SSH, a protocol used for secure remote logins, allowing unauthorized access to the system.

This vulnerability has prompted urgent responses from the Linux community, with distributions like Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE advising users to update their systems or revert to uncompromised versions of XZ Utils.

The incident has highlighted the importance of vigilance and collaboration within the open-source community to identify and mitigate security threats.

It also underscores the potential risks associated with upstream supply chain attacks, where malicious code is inserted into widely used software components, affecting numerous downstream users and systems

On most projects that I worked it was enough to have a high-level of how the higher picture of the code works and for the most tasks it was enough to copy paste and adapt existing code and for debugging it was also enough to have grasp the high level image.

However, I worked only on maintenance projects, that weren't very innovative. In order to have the chance to work on a good project how well should I know the tech stack?

For example for the stack: java/spring/elasticsearch/kafka/AWS, should I know the newest annotations or how the framework works under the hood, and probably be able to extend the framework, how to debug machine on VM etc?

Is there any sort of metric with respect to how in depth you should know your tech stack? Because in order to write code in a tech stack you don't need a lot of time to learn if you know the basics, but to write state of the art code I feel like you need years.

In the middle of the hiring process I decided to review the company I had applied to in Glassdoor.

The reviews were very demotivating because they all mentioned multiple waves of layoffs in the last year.

By the time I read the company reviews in Glassdoor I had already had 3 interviews: phone screen, technical interview (leetcode) and system design interview. I performed excellently in all of them. The feedback from the interviewers and the recruiter was really good.

In my last interview with the hiring manager, everything went perfectly until it was my turn to ask questions. I could almost tell he was about to offer me the position. This was the question I asked him:

"When was the last wave of layoffs at <company>?"

He was surprised; I could tell by his facial reaction.

One week later, the recruiter sent me an email with an absurd reason for why they decided not to extend me an offer.

Do you think that the question I asked was the sole reason for my rejection?

WLB also means something different to people and therefore I'm curious what the best way is to discover the "truth" of the team you are interviewing into before both applying and joining a company.

For example, when I worked at Amazon, I did not work beyond 40 hours in either of my teams, but the occasional weekend because I was oncall, and this was fine for me personally. At Google Cloud, I was working longer during the weekdays (self-imposed because this was during COVID and I never worked weekends), but other teams at Google have been more relaxed in general.

I've been told Meta, Amazon and a few others have a poor WLB balance, but then I've also spoken to managers (and experienced it myself in the case of Amazon) that this is team dependant and manager dependant. I also assume it varies by your level.

That said, I'm a DE, so likely the stress level overall is also different to a SWE, hence this post.

I've been a Data Engineer for most of my career and my observation is that scope as a Data Engineer can plateau and therefore I see a lot more L4/5 DE's than L6+. I think it is because you don't impact the bottom line directly and regularly.

At FAANG's I've worked at so far, finding new scope can be difficult even when you are working with stakeholders: it is "easier" to scope/build a product (i.e. SWE work) and show metrics of success to add value vs building a data pipeline which may be limited to them having a reporting need for example which often isn't the case especially in a more established firm.

I moved into a partner facing DE role to help more with scope/stakeholder exposure. The highest impact project I worked on so far is influencing an internal team to change the way we measure a particular metric. This involved mostly stakeholder management and nothing more complex than SQL queries from a technical standpoint. While it was fulfilling, this is also something I 'stumbled' upon and is rare due to challenges like partner scope/vision is limited/slow (their leadership can change and therefore you projects/ideas can), technical challenges of automating things because of larger concerns (e.g. privacy, lack of infra on their side which you have no control over) and so on (you generally have even less control than an internal DE).

In my current role, I am generally able to derive projects, but (in my opinion) they are limited in scope/value: i.e. build a pipeline, deliver an analysis. Therefore, even though the projects 'ticks the boxes' for an L5, it is not really driving a 'transformation' as an L6+ would. I also directly asked my manager what are some of the hardest problems we have, and have been told we have a lot, yet, I'm not hearing or seeing them.

Given the situation, would you:

1. Move to a SWE role internally at FAANG for a more established path 'up' (not sure this resolves the scope problem especially at FAANG as I think SWE-DE's can almost be even harder to get to L6+ on because they generally lack stakeholder visibility and focus on more top down work?).
2. Seek roles outside of FAANG where the scope of the work is already scoped to L6+ e.g. Airbnb so the 'heavy lifting' has been done in terms of scope.
3. Refine your scoping strategy within you own team, and if so, how?

Note: my motivation is to thrive at work, this isn't for a promo, just incase the post comes across as promo-focused. :)

When it comes to software engineering or landing out features or doing tasks I feel I excel in them but when it comes to showing my task to a wider audience I don't think I do a great job at it. Does anyone have any tips on how to do effective demo of your work?

I'm specialized in mobile engineering anything specific to it would be very helpful.