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

Hi all, hope you're all doing well! TLDR: Is it possible to get promoted from L3 to L4 by changing FAANG companies? Context: Currently 1.3YOE Exp as FAANG SWE at L3/fresh graduate Level 9 months of prior experience as a graduate SWE at a non-FAANG company Work Environment Extremely high workload+stress: 60-85+ hours per week (everyone on the team works these hours so it's not a question of my inefficiency) Consistent weekend work required to meet deadlines Unrealistic expectations, tight estimations and tighter deadlines. Management unwilling to adjust timelines or provide additional resources - results in employees working on sick leave, solving user issues on PTO etc. No senior engineers in my team working within 40 hr/wk, I say this to paint the picture of the working env for people who are 'well settled' into the job. I'd go on but hope this gives an idea. My Performance Exceeds expectations in all categories. Gained significant experience due to the high project throughput. Taking ownership of multiple features. Go-to person for user issues related to certain features. System design experience for small to mid-sized projects. Questions/Concerns: Is promo from L3 -> L4 in FAANG by moving companies, even possible? What should I say if the recruiter asks me for my current job level? - I don't want to be down-levelled if I disclose my current L3 level. - However, I don't want to be dishonest either. What if a recruiter reaches out to my current company to ask about my level? What parts of my experience can I highlight to show I'm performing at the L4 level? Closing thoughts: By the time I prep for interviews and likely land a job I'll probably have 1.7yrs of FAANG exp (L3) and 9 months of non FAANG exp. Hopefully, this is enough for a L4 promo. Ideally, I don't want to grind my health down for a promo. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Awesome platform by the way, it's really helped in my career development and I can't express how grateful I am for Taro :)

Would you be able to share what a good onboarding doc looks like for a company like Meta for example with commentary and personal notes that are added from the individual which can be presented to the manager? Rahul mentions the individual engineer adding personal notes and commentary into the document to pose a collaborative discussion with the manager and I would love to see an example of a good onboarding document with explicit expectations in writing.

TL;DR: founder mode is being deeply involved in the details and not a hands off managerial approach to starting companies popularized by brian chesky and paul graham Nothing much here, just thoughts? Anyone here working in startups going "founder mode"?

I found monotonic stacks and queues to be quite difficult at first, but I felt like it would be worth the effort to become more familiar with them (seems like it would be virtually impossible to come up with them in the context of a DSA interview). My efforts led to me writing an introductory post about the monotonic stack/deque data structure. The post linked above is all text-based, but I realize others sometime learn more effectively through other mediums (e.g., video-based instruction). Curious to know what other resources people have found to be of use!

Let's say hypothetically you did something wrong (e.g. you forgot to show up to a meeting/said something rude that you realized a bit too late was rude) How to actually apologize? Of course the thing to do is take accountability. Do you talk about the context? for example you got very distracted with something so you forgot about the meeting but lets say its not something that's truly like an emergency where its 100% understandable to miss a meeting (e.g. health issue had to goto hospital, this is in the gray area e.g. you were talking with friends and got distracted and forgot) How to not make it sound like an excuse when you give context? Again I would love to know in both personal and professional life how to apologize. I feel like in professional life the angle is somewhat a bit different because a job is a job at the end of the day and often the harm is not felt at an individual level whereas when it comes to apologizing in personal life it's almost always someone close to you and its directly at the person.

I have no idea what to do with the workday goals as a mid-level software engineer. They must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Related). It is not that I lack ambition. It is just that having personal goals that are supposed to positively impact business feels odd to me. I'm spending my time trying to add value to my team and make sure that we deliver. What am I supposed to do with a personal goal? If there is a high reward task that can be done, it will be done by the team. If the task is not valued highly enough by the team, why should I make it my goal to do it? My manager have said that it is ok to have goals that are supposed to be about improving your "character", "skills" or "behaviours", but how can that be measurable? help

I'm a 30-year-old SDE-2 looking to shift my career towards data and machine learning. I’ve started as an Android Engineer and also have experience with React and Node.js. However, I no longer find these areas satisfying. Now, I understand the importance of staying consistent within a domain. For the next decade, I want to focus on a technology that will remain relevant for the next twenty years, without being affected by frequent framework changes. I've noticed that people around 25 years old are able to build impressive projects thanks to good courses and tutorials. Although they make mistakes, it seems likely that within the next two or three years, they will have overcome these challenges. I find data and machine learning more rewarding because they involve answering meaningful questions. Recently, there was an internal opening in my company for a data and ML role, but I didn’t apply because I clearly lacked the necessary skills. However, I believe it’s time to switch and commit to this new direction. Any advice on making this transition smoothly and choosing the right path would be greatly appreciated.

Have upcoming screen round with Snorkel AI's HM who is also the director of engineering. Recruiter mentioned its going to be behavioral. How can I prepare better for this round?

I am currently working as a Java Developer. FYI, I am entirely new to the Java Dev ecosystem but have prior dev experience with ASP.NET MVC. My team and I are working on modernizing a financial service. We are still in the early stages of the project, still trying to understand the legacy service itself. I was given a document that explains the service's business logic, but it's heavily filled with financial jargon, which none of my teammates are familiar with. We are all tasked to go through the doc. I understand it's a complex task, but I am trying to figure out how to piece it together and contextualize everything: the scope, the input/output structure, etc. Do you have any advice on how to tackle this?

Hello, my background is in full stack development with c# and Typescript stack and I’m 2 years into my career after college graduation in CS degree, all with the same team. I’m interested in a role that is focused on C++ embedded low-level programming which requires experience in C++ and understanding of hardware / memory / pipelining / registers / semaphores, because my interest and work style might be more suited for these type of engineering work. How should I create a study or preparation plan to get myself ready for the interview so I am able to cut into this area? I have around 3-6 months to prepare. What projects and experience can be beneficial?

How can I enhance my soft skills, particularly in navigating leadership challenges? As someone from India for whom English is not the first language, I aim to transition into a senior or staff-level role. Building rapport with peers and juniors is essential for me, but I'm unsure how to foster personal relationships in the workplace. Are there any recommended books on this topic?

When I first joined the workplace, I used to push back on lots of nitpicky suggestions, just like how my suggestions were pushed back by peers who joined with me. I then switched teams and learned my lesson: to shut up and follow orders. Things were going well. Today, there's a small nitpicky suggestion that makes me feel unhappy once again. The suggestion is about a diagram. I think it's clear enough to have one diagram where newly proposed components are colored and existing components are uncolored. He thinks having separate diagrams for the existing state and the new state is clearer. That guy looks like he's moving to a senior level, so I'm better off having a good relationship with him. He sometimes seems to be a nice guy and listens to ideas. I feel he is not that smart when it comes to coding and has difficulties understanding templates. His coding is not stellar. He is not a coding role model, but I actually learn soft skills from him. Do I just need to accept that people are not equal in the workplace, right? It's a power struggle. Sometimes nitpicky suggestions feel like microaggressions and asserting dominance. I rarely see him make nitpicky suggestions to leadership. What's your approach to nitpicky suggestions? Maybe the question could be split into 3 parts What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from people above you? What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from your peers? What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from people lower than you?

Hi, I've been receiving unfair remarks and treatment from my manager. Apparently he has decided I'm "underperforming" because he noticed I show up a few minutes late to meetings and don't post enough on Slack. I've also had two of my 2 tasks delayed, missing deadlines. He has suggested "monitoring" me twice a week, as in having two 1:1 meetings with him - going through my task list on Monday and again through it on Friday. I find this suspicious because I'm already tracking everything I do within the project's task tracker together with other colleagues on this project and we have 2 weekly meetings with progress made on every task where he's also invited to attend. The overview has always been there for him and I've always documented my work. His remarks also go beyond the professional realm, calling me out as "too emotional", can I mention this to HR or is it not a good idea? This is the way he conducted the performance review as well, making statements like these that were not documented on paper. (I went to my skip manager to report him and did not believe me either that he made such remarks) Thought about going to HR and presenting my version of the story, as I find his accusation/statements of not performing ridiculous. He is producing unnecessary stress which is counterproductive to me performing the tasks efficiently. What do you think? Has this ever happened to you? What's the best way of defending yourself in this situation or how could I best protect myself? Could this get even worse?

Last Thursday, my manager and a senior engineer were sick and still went to the office. Friday, I felt a strong itchiness in my throat. Saturday I started coughing. The timeline really suggests I'm infected by my manager. My spouse is probably going to get infected as well. Luckily we are healthy in general and not immunocompromised. I really want to tell my manager in the face that he infected me, but that doesn't seem like a good way to express my thoughts. Maybe I can also try to write something anonymously in the weekly Signal survey. How can I best approach this? Appendix: A few more quotes from my manager and my senior on Thursday: The sick senior: "if it were covid, I would have not come office today" The sick manager in the morning: "I should probably go home in the afternoon to not get your guys infected". Then at 3pm in the afternoon, he said "I'm sorry I really need to go home" and then he left. On Thursday, 6 teammates were in the office. On Friday, only the sick senior and the sick manager were in the office :)

Hi all, In the leadership round of my onsite interview at Pinterest, the manager asked me how to justify an engineering team as a strong team. I don't know how to answer this question well. My answer was considering a team as a unit function: Input: effective manager, strong tech lead, impacted project output: team member tenure, promotion within the team, achievement algorithm: strong communication/collaboration, team goal aligned

Hi team, so I am getting a ton of interviews through agency reachouts, especially from these staffing agencies who support fintech and trading firms/exchanges. There's no catch right? They claim to say they don't represent the company, so you can talk freely about salary expectations as they keep on saying they want to be the person to refer candidates to the companies. Long story short, they claim our incentives are aligned due to their commission. Some of those opportunities definitely are good enough (210 ish in TC for some title-inflated senior roles if we benchmark against FAANG) I am gonna take advantage of this using the 3 tier interviewing strategy that the course recommends cuz ultimately getting into FAANG/Prop Shop/High Growth Startup would be nice and I have those as well lining up soon. I also feel that I need some basic guidance on how to effectively ask for a referral. I think I am noticing that I feel scared to do it due to needing something great of value to add before asking for referrals.

What AI or ML courses help in the career of Database Administrator? Since AI is taking over the world, I would like to learn what helps my career growth

I have 3 years of experience working as a backend developer. I rejected 2 offers because the salary rise was about 12% and I expect at least 30% salary rise. And this brought a doubt in my head. That is, if at this moment should I be looking for more money or more knowledge, expand my network, or what should I be prioritizing. Please, help.

Hi, I'm a Senior Application Engineer with double master's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, as well as a bachelor's degree in Physics. I've been in my current industry for 10 years, with 5 years specifically in my current Application Engineering role. I know some basics of DSA, Java and C++ application development, Linux OS, Docker, Jenkins. I'm looking to make a career shift to increase my salary, aiming for $300K+ in the Bay Area.Usually semiconductor industry does not pay same like software industry. So I am ok to move to software industry as well. I recently watched some of Andrew Ng's Machine Learning videos and found them interesting as I am good at Math and critical thinking. I've also subscribed to Taro for career guidance. I plan to continue working for another 10+ years. Given my current skill level, which I'd describe as semi-beginner in LeetCode, I'm wondering what resources I should focus on and need some career guidance. Should I pursue a PhD and then apply for jobs, or should I prioritize online courses and open-source projects before applying?If online courses what will be good for my level.

Aside from LC questions, what do interviews for senior mobile roles (L5 equivalent), specifically iOS Engineering, look like at FAANG-like companies? If they are system design heavy, are there resources for mobile specific system design questions, since most of content out there is geared towards web system design? How can I best prepare for these interviews? Thanks!

I just finished my first week at my first Big Tech company. I onboarded with another engineer who I'm working closely with on a series of projects. That engineer was really helpful to me this week in getting my environment set up. He knows the tools and frameworks we'll be using a lot better than I do so I'm really grateful he's around to help me. I've thanked him a lot on Slack privately and on our video calls. I'd like to publicly thank him on the company directory. My concern is that if I do that, our manager might see me as the weaker engineer of the two (which I am right now). Should I let that stop me from publicly thanking him? Thanks in advance!

My main worry is if I’m moving too slow but I’ve observed that once I come up with a plan of action in my project and break it down I can move at a jogging type pace and submit one individual piece every day. And still look fine to my peers and like not feel exhausted every day. Even with the coding fluency. Since I’ve worked with off the shelf open source stuff for a bit so I’ve noticed once I know how to get stuff to work (past boilerplate land) the real edge case work usually gets straightforward (avoid npe serialization errors or index) in your single pieces of atomic work and if there’s a more complicated edge case you just handle that separately. My main concern is if this behavior is fine if ur a mid level. Each day in my daily work I just front load my overarching plan and the one piece I am supposed to do today per my plan and just communicate that accordingly. Also sometimes I am not perfect but I find myself catching silly errors before people notice them but I just don’t tell people I’m done and do it in a safe way like test in staging. Is it supposed to feel like I’m doing small pieces that add up over time with this practice? I might be wrongfully thinking every day with software I should be treating it like an intense workout instead of a slow jog with sprint bursts when the problem gets hard. for example there are code changes that can be refactoring but a common use case for refactoring code is finding duplicate code but that’s inherently easier than performance tuning concurrency or shifting focus in a unfamiliar domain which might take a extra day or two to familiarize yourself with the project. My behavior would be to set expectations with people around me and give a plan to others so I don’t get overwhelmed thinking I need to work late to deliver on these seemingly harder projects at the same pace I deliver the easier high volume projects. Is this the behavior you’re expecting of me at mid level? Im sorry but I’m just feeling icky that sometimes behavior over output also means reaping spoils of doing more with less work even at the execution level

Hello, need some advice here. I am a month into my new job - an AI startup, and my founder (who’s also my boss) has been scheduling 1-1s with me every other week to onboard me and give me time to ask questions. I feel like I am wasting this. I genuinely don’t have many questions to ask because I m mostly focussed on trying to complete my tickets as efficiently as possible (there is loads of work to do), and I already have been more or less briefed about the problem we are solving, KPIs and some big picture goals for the team. I have another meeting with him tomorrow. I need some help - any questions on what I should ask?

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?