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

Hi, I am currently working as a Grade 8 (SDE-3) software engineer in Cisco India and wish to work in the Silicon Valley in the US. What is the quickest way to make that happen?

I lied in the standup. I said that I completed a task but I didn't. I was not even close to complete that task. After they ask me for a demo within 1 hour and then I had to say I was having some issues with the project and the meeting should be cancelled. How screwed I am? I feel I lost the trust of my team in my work. How can I recover from this situation?

Hello! I used to work for a large fin tech company but recently got a job at a client-based company. They flew me into the office for an onboarding week and the culture and people are fantastic. I even made a decision to move from DC into the Houston office just cause of the people and weirdly I realized that my personality is a bigger asset than I realized. I enjoy chatting with people, and a Director of Product even told me "I don't usually hold 1:1s with the new folks but your personality was shining so bright!" I only give this info cause I'm not very confident in my technical skills. While I got a great performance review in my last company, it was because of my determination, my willingness to go full stack when no one wanted to, and cause I was very close with the Product and Design team. Tbh that's also cause I don't really nerd out about state management or the newest framework or whatever like everyone else seems to. I enjoy frontend cause I like making pretty things and that's it. I'm not the person who is constantly thinking about how to make our testing process or pipelines better. I can learn those things if I need to but it doesn't come naturally to me. I have admitted some of this to folks at my new company and they've been super cool about it. They even suggested I dabble into a Technical PM role. That's still something I'm chewing on cause while it's silly, I love typing things on my pretty little IDE and I like fewer meetings. But I don't imagine coding forever. In my company, a senior engineer gets to lead a project, manage people, and talk to clients. I'm aiming for a senior role cause I think it aligns more with my natural skill sets as I believe my soft skills are stronger than my technical skills. My manager became a senior recently and told me it was because he was willing to do whatever client project came in whatever language that was required. He's the same age as me and only started coding 3 years ago after a BootCamp. This is his only company but I'll admit, I feel like he's a stronger engineer than I am. I've been in the company for a few weeks, and I've been getting my stories done quickly even though their tech stack is new (but everyone is fast) but I'm not sure how to even become a Senior since I don't know if I will be able to become the rockstar engineer that my manager is. I will move earliest in September so I'm remote until then. Projects also come and go so fast. Any ideas on how to standout?

My last feedback from my engineer manager was, I don't understand the task at work regularly and this is not an isolated incident, it takes too long for me to complete a task. When I seek for help, they point me to a direction to where to look into. After that when we meet at the second time, there is not much progress from where I left off. It seems like I rely on my senior engineer too much, I feel like my approach was asking them for answers. I don't find it sustainable in the long term. Obviously, I want to grow in developing my skills but whenever I get stuck, I get frustrated which add more stresses to me so I procrastinate, whether it is sleeping or playing games. I don't have a computer science degree and come straight out of a coding bootcamp. Maybe that's where I feel lack of confidence or just feel lack of motivation in tackling difficult problems. I am a bit lost at the moment, but I don't want to repeat this kind of behaviour. How do I set myself up for success?

Cursor is an AI first IDE that's been blowing up on twitter recently. I've found it incredibly helpful in increasing the speed of coding especially because it's autocomplete is genuinely one of the better ones ive seen. It's not exactly implementing logic but it's basically autocomplete on steroids If you edit a variable name it automatically prompts you to hit tab to do edit the names of the other variables of if you do something like change a list to a concatenated string it'll start prompting you to edit references to that variable to instead work with string based logic It not only adds code it also knows how to delete code, so if you delete a variable it can prompt you to delete other lines of code using that logic. It also seems to follow context from other files so it can remember your past edits and use it to make future edits. The best way to describe it is just feels like it reads my mind 80% of the time After seeing Ryan Peterman (who I have immense respect for, truly cracked engineer) also talking about it, I'm curious to know people's thoughts on it Also hearing people talk about how the new o1 model is already being a lot better at coding, the direction things are headed I would assume in 1-2 years there's gonna be cheaper lightweight versions of o1 that can help us with more nuanced coding tasks > After trying Cursor, I realize the value of 80% of my technical skills dropped to zero. The leverage for the remaining 20% of skills went up by at least 10x.

Hi everyone, I hope this message finds you well. I'm currently an SDE-II at Amazon and have developed a keen interest in advancing my career towards AI, specifically in Vision and Autonomous Systems. I am reaching out to seek advice on how to approach this transition within Amazon. I value my current role and team, but I'm eager to align my career with my growing interest in AI technologies. Could anyone share their experiences or advice on how to discuss this career aspiration with my manager and skip level? Additionally, I would be grateful for any guidance on mentorship programs, internal channels, or resources that were instrumental in your career transitions within Amazon, particularly into AI-focused roles. Any insights or recommendations on how to navigate this path would be immensely appreciated. Thank you for your time and help!

Hi Taro Community, I’m a recent addition to my company and have embarked on my journey with a few initial tickets, completing 3 PRs in the span of 2.5 weeks. Alongside these tasks, I’ve been provided with architectural and design documents to help me grasp the broader system. However, these documents are quite high-level and, at times, challenging to comprehend fully, especially without knowing which sections are most pertinent to my current work. Given the breadth of information and my eagerness to effectively contribute, I’m contemplating the best approach to balance my tasks with learning. Here are a few points I’m considering and would love your insights on: Targeted Learning from Documents: Should I consult with my mentor on which specific parts of the document would be most beneficial for me to focus on initially, considering my current assignments? Codebase Familiarization: How should I approach diving into the codebase? Is it advisable to ask my mentor for guidance on specific modules or areas that align with my tickets or overall team objectives? Balancing Tasks and Learning: What strategies have you found effective for simultaneously working on assigned tickets, understanding high-level documentation, and becoming familiar with the codebase? Is there a recommended balance or sequence that could optimize my ramp-up process? Navigating the initial phase and ensuring I’m building a solid foundation is my top priority. Any experiences, strategies, or advice you can share on managing these early stages of onboarding would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your support and guidance.

I interviewed with Meta yesterday for a more junior role (I'm actually more senior) and they said it would kick in immediately for fertility in September upon starting a role with a program which is 18 month long (short term employee program) STE program that converts to Full Time Employment (FTE). They said stock would come then, but not upon start in September. They said they would allow employees (STE/FTE) options to pick the perks of 4, to individually itemize 4-5 choices to make between medical coverage, which as a section on fertility and co-pays for expenses at the maternity level. Healthcare Dental Vision Therapy Stipend Wellness Stipend Family leave, PTO and time away benefits, Financial benefits (401k matching, financial coaching/planning) How long does it take for benefits AND stock (vesting) to kick in typically at any FAANGMULA or OpenAI type of startup company? I personally don't want to wait until September, am likely to accept a more senior role at Apple FTE of course or other AI startup companies where these benefits AND stock kick in right away at an L4-L5 to L6 level depending. That role above it looked like IC4 and I was way overqualified and should be interviewing for at least an L5 position and above.

My employer pulled a bait and switch on me, my job role (SWE) turned into a non-technical one right after hiring and I feel it’s pushing me out of tech. Even moved to another country for this job, I stayed in the job to pay back relocation money & because it was big tech - did not want to leave after 3-6 months in, I’m close to completing the 2 years mark to end the relocation debt. I’m officially an engineer and paid as one, but since the beginning I’ve not been assigned technical work, only small “scripts” or some “data analysis” my manager supposedly needed. I’ve never seen anything I wrote go to production and it’s hurting my self confidence. I’ve already moved to another team after 7-8 months in - because of the lack of technical work and encountered very weird behaviour there too: supposedly it takes 1 year (!!) to onboard onto this team, I’ve never been assigned to technical tasks to this day - it’s mostly been data curation and localization. Their strategy to keep people is to give them overinflated performance review feedback and a handsome bonus and raise every year so they keep their mouth shut to upper management (other offices within Apple). It’s a disgusting tactic. For example in my first year performance review they’ve “made up” projects I had not actually participated in. Management doesn’t care, they say it’s product development and it’s equally important to find solutions that don’t involve code, they have a way of justifying their lies. I’m close to 2 years in and am ashamed of the consequences of this absence from the tech field. In 1:1s with managers or hire ups they always say it’s technical work, but then eventually one finds out it’s data hillclimbing or data curation. I feel my trust has been abused, I’ve moved to another country for this job (jobs in this market are 3 times lower than what I'm paid now so my only chance is remote I guess) and haven’t grown at all professionally. Thanks for letting me share this here, I never thought I’d end up with this dilemma when I was offered this big tech job. I was thinking of anonymously reporting this (company has an anonymous line for this), as having internationals move over for this job and destroying their careers should not be an option. I wish I could just forewarn people somehow about applying here.

I'm currently SE2 in my company, which is the earlier side of mid-level and am trying to make progress to SE3 and then senior engineer. Knowing that, how can I start making headway towards that SE3 promo? Do I need to be able to draw the line between my work and business impact?

I have 3+ years in the industry and have been privy to layoffs since 2023. I wish to understand how you view/process these layoffs and is the current situation unprecedented or just a sine wave occurrence in the industry.

I have 2 years of experience in big tech product related teams (Typescript frontend and C# backend) and I want to pivot to more low level teams for better on call and team cultures. AI compiler / accelerators seem like a growing field. What are some good resources to learn? I checked out one Microsoft Maia team that have 12 people. 10 of them are principal level. The team looks highly specialized, which makes cutting into it even harder.

Feedback I got feedback on the last two quarters since I joined the company on three things: Impact - E; Teamwork - M+; Technical Skills - M Except for that, something that I was lacking was leadership & ownership. Current Level: Mid-level. ### Question Focus I wanted here to discuss my struggles in improving my technical skills & leadership. And what mindsets & behaviors I need adopt. My focus is more about getting a good rating & having a good bonus. And less about promotion at the moment. ### Discussion At the moment, I rely a lot of my lead to make decisions about things I work on & focus on. This is due to following aspects: 1. I feel part of it is me not having confidence in myself to know what's right. Since my lead has much more experience in this area & I'm very new to it. 2. The uneasiness of not knowing what's the right approach. It's easy to have another person look at it than dive deep into something you don't look of. 3. Sometimes documentation is not in English at my company & that is a burden into looking at things deeply. 1. It breaks my confidence at times & slows me compared to other people who know that language. New tools & languages 1. C++: I haven't spent much time learning it since I focussed on moving fast & creating impact so far. So that hampered me in setting aside time to learn this language that's used a lot in backend code. 1. And at times I ask people in help for navigating code than I should do myself. 2. I'm also haven't worked much in the backend part before being a MLE but now we all have at my current company but I don't feel any new concepts here I need to know. 3. Design patterns 1. I see these patterns in the code-base. Like how they use configs & classes. I see some other people in my team figuring it out very seamlessly. But I don't know which pattern they are using. 2. And I don't know how time I should spend on this. Since reading a whole book on design patterns would be a lot of time. But knowing them would be useful. Algorithms & ML 1. A big part of my job or my main-job is improving the algorithms & ML models to make more revenue. 2. A lot of times, I see my teammates reading similar approaches in the company & adopting them to our use-case. Sometimes doing so I find it hard. Since the docs of these approaches are not in english at times. 1. So I have ask around some folks to translate things. This severely slows me down. 2. The better way could be to read outside papers/approaches but that takes more time. And may not know if they fit so good to our use-case. Would love feedback on how I can work better on these things what mindsets I can adopt here to make more progress.

It might be a very broad question, but how can I be better at writing design docs? At my current stage, I can get parachuted into a new package, implement a feature and fix some random things on my way out, but I struggle to write design docs. For context, people in my org really drill into the design docs and most of the questions are not really relevant. ~40 people would leave comments on a doc on average, which seems on the higher end across the industry, right? My struggles with design docs are mostly, Difficult to start working on it because I don't really like writing essays Analysis paralysis that I want to have it perfect, but it's just not possible due to all kinds of observability issues (e.g. missing log fields) It's unclear what the project is about so it requires lots of discussion, which takes initiation / social energy Maybe some PTSD for just working with people and trying not to lose my patience The solution to my struggles might be easy - like just get started and don't try to be perfect. Treat the design doc as a discussion instead of a one-shot event. What's your approach to design docs? On a higher level, I can utilize my strength in coding and try avoid design docs, or I can improve on writing design docs. Which option do you think is best?

I wanted to share an update and seek advice following my first 1:1 with my manager. Based on one of Alex's earlier suggestions, I inquired about how many commits I should aim to have landed after my first month to gauge my ramp-up progress. My manager mentioned that he doesn't track commit counts as a metric. Given this, I'm curious about how I should approach setting tangible goals or milestones for my initial period at the company. Without commit counts as a metric, what would be a good way to measure my progress and contributions during the ramp-up phase? I'd greatly appreciate your insights on this. Following up on my previous message, I've been pondering whether my manager's response regarding not tracking commit counts might be influenced by my recent joining of the team. Is it common for managers to initially downplay the importance of specific metrics like commit counts for new team members, perhaps to alleviate early pressure or for other reasons?

Okay I know people mostly say they work on side projects or contribute to open source, but I enjoy self-study & have always done a cert after using a certain technology extensively at work. For example, I was a Java engineer/consultant for years so it appeared only natural to do the OCP cert and keep it updated. In my current job I've used K8s a lot, so after a few training courses from my company, I took the CKAD. I also enjoy filling in the gaps at work (where there's no training or docs from the company) through Coursera courses/specializations, especially DeepLearning.Ai ones. Does all this reflect badly on my resume? I plan to apply to more senior roles, would someone looking at the list of certs/courses tend to underlevel me or dismiss me? Can't contribute to open source because of my company, also can't publish any apps for now. I've also never seen Senior/Staff engineers with courses/specializations displayed on their LinkedIn profile... am I missing something ?

Context can be found below: > I am a 32-year-old engineer with 7 years of experience. For the past 5 years, I've been working at a startup that is around 10-12 years old and recently went public, serving as a mid-level backend engineer. > > Despite my time at the company, I haven't seen much career growth. I received my first promotion after a year and a half, but nothing significant has happened since then. I'm feeling lost and unsure about my next steps. The work is unmotivating, and I feel like I'm not learning or growing. I'm constantly occupied with production issues, and my manager frequently cancels 1:1 meetings. Even though I receive positive feedback, I know I'm not fully utilizing my potential, which is troubling as my years of experience increase without meaningful progress. > > Currently, I'm extremely demotivated and struggle to find the drive to work each day. I wake up feeling stuck and unhappy with my job. Although I get my monthly salary and perform my duties, I'm no longer passionate about my work. I have the knowledge and skills, but I just don't feel like contributing to this company anymore. > > Can you help? I'm not happy with my current situation. I used to be a curious person, staying up all night coding and learning new things. However, for the past two years, I've been merely going through the motions at work. I want to regain my curiosity and sense of empowerment, so that when I go to bed each night, I feel excited about what I can achieve the next day.

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. Levels.fyi 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!

I am a deep learning research engineer at an early stage autonomous driving startup and I just got an offer for a senior deep learning engineer in the autonomous team at Qualcomm. I am confused about it as compensation is low compared to industry standards but overall a bit higher from my current salary. (The base is quite low, but RSU's make up for the rest). The work is same what I do, so that will be nice. I can either keep looking for other opportunities while staying at the startup or take this. I am not too happy with the offer but it is the best I have right now. I will be shifting to San Diego from NY and will also take a major hit in my social life. Any suggestion on how the culture at Qualcomm is and how their machine learning and AI teams are? I am really confused if it will be worth it.

I was working with a team during bootcamp, and they mentioned that they intentionally have very low test coverage (both unit and integration). This team is more on the back-end side. Is this a bad sign or is there something specific about Meta's culture that I'm missing here?

I switched jobs a few months ago. Recently, I shared with my skip during our quarterly 1:1 that I'm not feeling much of a long-term vision or impact in my current team. He hinted at a potential opportunity to work on a new project crucial for an upcoming product launch. I'm eager for growth but hesitant about switching teams again, considering it would be my third move in a short time. Also, the details of what we'll build, how it'll integrate with other products, etc are still uncertain, as is the org structure for the new project's ownership. This raises concerns about stability. However, I'm inclined to embrace the opportunity, especially after reading about embracing ambiguity for growth from Alex's LinkedIn post. My ultimate goal is to transition to a different org, but I know I need to demonstrate impact first. Any advice on navigating this situation would be greatly appreciated.

I complained to my skip manager about my colleague's (their manager) code review standards, but ultimately discovered deficiencies in the quality of my own pull requests. As a result, I believe I have lost credibility. How can I regain trust and credibility in this situation?

Today during office hours Rahul talked about this a tiny bit (sans the legal), but I'm curious as I've had many friends who worked at Google previously that discouraged me from applying to Google (like 10 years ago) if I still wanted to do a startup (this was long before Area 120 was a practiced thing). Recently, a friend (VC whose girlfriend works at Google) said many people still build venture/angel funds on the side while still working full time for Google. But of course, don't create your startup company using company property (a la Silicon Valley HBO lessons). Questions (1) What companies are flex about having things on the side - a side hustle (but you can't advertise it), examples being two different companies on both ends of the spectrum: Google, Apple etc.)? I've heard some FAANGMULA companies are more stringent than others (Apple being very much against this and super private and only sorta kind supporting open source, vs. others which are all for it and have accelerator/internal incubator programs at the company (Area 120), or even sponsoring ex-employees (a cohort of my class at Verizon Ventures one year was all MIT alumni, ex-Googlers that were sponsored by Google, paid their incorporation fees, I was one of the two weird VR founder people). (2) I've also heard that from friends if you work at Google, you are not allowed to get paid for speaking gigs on your technical expertise or whatever your functional role is at that company (this differs from from Meta I've heard from other friends). Is this true? (3) If you go into a FAANGMULA company, what info (legally) what information do you need to provide the the employer? What docs from the state/federal/govt or whatever) that says you have a a DBA, LLC, S/C-Corp etc. What do you need to disclose more specifically and what documentation and legal paperwork do you have to provide? For example, I currently take consultations and speaking gig money and have revenue (royalties from my book I published years ago) and plan on having an existing app that generates money in the app store that is runs auto-pilot prior to coming into the company. Also note, that I'm aware that this product should not compete with the company's main product lines.** (4) If you are going to start all this AFTER being hired into FAANGMULA, how do you inform your company employer formally (HR, direct report boss), and that your side hustle does and will not interfere with your primary role at the FAANGMULA company hour wise and that you will still meet all of your core duties/goals/tasks/deadlines for the company and this is sort of 'hack on the weekends thing?'

I’ve gone through Taro's courses on communication and asking questions, which were insightful, especially in showing how juniors can learn from senior engineers with deep expertise. However, as an MLE, I face different challenges and would appreciate some insights or thoughts from Alex or Rahul. For context, I majored in math and hold an MS in ML from a top 3 university, so I'd say I have a solid grasp of both the mathematical and practical aspects of ML. Machine Learning can be deeply mathematical, often requiring formal training to fully get it. Some SWEs who transition into MLE roles may lack this foundation, and while they might have been excellent SWEs, the gap in math knowledge can hinder their abilities as MLEs. Here are a few challenges I face with some SWE-to-MLE seniors: Sometimes, my tech lead asks questions that suggest a lack of understanding of ML basics. While directly correcting them doesn’t seem right, what’s the best way to handle this? This becomes a bigger issue when they set project goals that are mathematically infeasible. Without a strong math background, they rely on intuition, making it hard to guide them away from misguided directions. Their informal grasp of ML can also complicate design documents by introducing unnecessary features that don’t align with the project’s objectives. As seniors, they can get defensive and dismiss alternative ideas, which is frustrating, especially when I would need to work on a project with a high risk of failing.