Unemployed Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Hi, I hope to join at meta as a MLE for ads rankings team (E4)? now, I am a recent Phd grad, I have worked with efficient ML algorithms for my Phd and mostly used Pytorch for work (but no experience with ads). Now, what other technical things (frameworks/tools/whatever you think it'll be useful) can I learn to better equip myself for success?

As a grad student, I was mostly focused on a small project at a time, so I don’t really have large scale design/distributed systems experience. Please share resources (code/just knowledge-wise, any books/papers or links etc?) that you think as an incoming MLE, I should know. Thanks a ton.

TLDR: How to pick side projects

This might have been answered multiple times and a very well-known answer would be working on side projects but I want the answer to be more in-depth so it can be helpful for many engineers.

Please don't answer in a generic way but try to answer this by posing in my shoes

Let's say you have 1.6 years of experience as a Software engineer and 3 years of experience in IT but not in development now if you want to stick to the SE career. This market is very challenging for me to get a job with 1 plus year of experience. I have to convert my IT experience into developer experience and try. But when I give interviews I tend to fail the Hiring manager rounds because they can see the depth of my SE career.

So how to convert my IT experience to SE experience? I have put a lot of effort into Leetcode and now I have gotten to a decent stage the same thing applies to System design as well I have read books blogs etc and getting the depth would be my next target.

We can hear a lot of stories in the past where a person who started his/her career as a tester or a QA and got it converted to Senior software engineer etc by working on problem-solving skills but I don't think this works in the current market.

So I felt I was missing depth. How to achieve a mid-level engineer status where I can effectively tell a lot of stories and challenges I have faced in my career and show bias for action etc

The most simple answer would be to do side projects but selecting a repository and a project is very hard as there are countless repositories and projects.

All I need is a small ignition to start on the side projects then I think discipline would take care of the rest as I was at zero questions at LeetCode a few months ago and now I have solved 250 plus with discipline.

As a founder of an early-stage startup, what are the top things you look for in your first five engineering hires? Are you searching for people who can handle a bit of everything, or do you prefer specialists in key areas? How do you balance technical skills with ensuring they fit well with your company's culture and vision?

Besides their technical know-how, what personal qualities are most important to you in these early hires? Do you value problem-solving skills and creativity over past experience in similar roles or industries? How crucial are soft skills like communication and adaptability, given the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of startups? And finally, how do you make sure these first hires will not only meet immediate project needs but also grow with the company as it expands?

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.

Today I fumbled a technical interview.

I was told by the company I interned at previously to apply for a job posting. The person who knew the role is my manager from my internship there. That same manager I knew in there is now one position under the CTO. He told me it was a role that uses Spring Boot, Docker, and GraphQL. He said there’s a big effort to get GraphQL into the company’s architecture. It said “5+ years experience”, and didn't mention GraphQL, so I didn’t take it seriously. After I applied, the posting disappeared. My manager said the job posting I applied for was “probably just one of those ghost postings”. I had the behavioral where I spoke with the manager: I aced that. Today was the technical. The recruiter I was talking to was telling me this was an interview where I could show off projects, so I took the “prep some projects” approach. Did 3 projects. One using mern and GraphQL, one using typescript and express with rest architecture, and one using spring boot.  So I do that. I also prepped a Google doc with a list of common interview questions for all that I’m expecting. 

When I get into the interview, I get asked about my prior role. They said that showing projects wouldn’t be necessary: and that GraphQL wasn’t in the role. The first 20 minutes went well. I was asked about API stuff. I hear them say “good” sometimes, so I know something is right. Then I start getting asked simple questions I didn’t think to prep for. One was literally “what’s the difference between JDK and JRE”, and I knew what JDK was, but not JRE, and the difference between @override and @overload. I was then asked what Node is, so I tell them it’s a runtime environment (idk how I didn’t piece together what JRE was at this point), but I made a mistake because I should of delved into themes that made node.js incredible, like its event loop. Although I knew the basics of a microservice, it was only the basics. The interviewers were kind, and told me that although I articulated myself well, they’re looking for someone who knew more about microservices, and can code right now.

Luckily, the company told me prior to this that even if this doesn’t work out, they’d still want to hire me. There'll be another chance, but I realized I need mock interview help. I know I’ll need to review the Taro course on getting into and succeeding in interviews, but I also want to find people to do mock interviews with. How can I do that with Taro?

Thanks,

~Evan

I just graduated college this May and have no job lined up struggling in this really tough market.

Struggling to land a job in this market has me feeling like a failure/I'm doing something wrong even though I did all the "right" things when starting college (get good grades, do LC, get internships, do projects, network)

So fellow members of Taro, do you have any advice on how not to feel down during these trying times? Especially when seeing few classmates land jobs and I'm still struggling here

I hate to make posts like these since its depressing but there's people with far more wisdom than me and I would really appreciate any wisdom you can part :)

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

Hello, few questions which the resume video didn't answer for me (for context i'm a senior engineer with almost a decade of experience including some years working at FAANG):

1. Should I put months for each year for all my experiences or is it okay to just put the years? For example if this hides a 6 month gap? I've heard very conflicting opinions on this!
2. If I'm in a city in California that's not super close to San Francisco, is it okay to just put California and leave my city out so I'm not auto rejected for positions that are in San Francisco, since I'm open to relocation? Also should I say somewhere on resume that I'm open to relocation?
3. Pretty sure the answer to this is no but figured I'd ask! Is it worth going from 1 to 2 pages to list a few side projects that are over a few years old now and didn't really get a lot of users?

I have an interview coming up. It comes with a engineering process interview, which is Q&A to learn about your approach to common situations that occur as an engineer, followed by a values and leadership interview, which is about problem solving and team interaction.

How can i prepare for the engineering process interview? Can I interpret it as behavioural interview or more on technical Q&A? But I see some overlapping with the values and leadership interview so im a bit confused.

As a software engineer, I am obsessed with doing quality work, and I have found that applying the TDD technique has helped me a lot in building quality software products.

But despite my personal experience, I have found that TDD is not really a popular practice in the industry, from what I can see from my LinkedIn network and my last few colleges at work.

Since I see here on Taro that there are a lot of really professional software engineers (I want to be like you guys!), I would love to read your opinions about it

• Does TDD work for you?
• Does TDD work in a big tech company?
• Does it really not matter?

Thanks for reading me!

Hi there,

I would like to know your thoughts and advises about getting a job being immigrant in the USA.

Context:

• I live in México with my wife, who is a software engineer (SWE) and got an offer from a USA company (visa sponsorship) and we want to take the opportunity.
• Since I'm a SWE too (8 YoE), I want to get a job in the USA too!
• But my visa will not let me work in the USA.

I'm thinking that I could:

• Start looking for jobs with visa sponsorship.
• Prepare for interviews.

What do you think about it?

Are there resources that you would recommend me (about anything related)?

Thanks for reading me!

I wanted to ask you how do you normally break up doing vs study when learning something new in software development.

In general I want to be better coder and learn to how better apply my learning and I wanted to make sure I'm not going down a rabbit hole when doing either and most importanly making sure I'm not stagnant.

How do you assess the Financial Health and market stability of a startup before applying for a job there?

Hi, a little bit about myself: I am an entry-junior level software engineer. I just graduated from a coding bootcamp 2 months ago. But before that, I had been doing self-studies. I mainly build with JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Express, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. However, I have knowledge in Python, Redux, OAuth, Jest, Docker, Kubernetes, and some services in AWS. I have been sending out a resume that has a long list of technical skills, but I'm concerned that the very long list might make me appear overreaching and amateurish. That said, I wonder if I should make different versions of my resume.

P.S. I have sent out almost 500 applications, and only 4 reached out to me. I made it to the final round with one company, but didn't make it past the final round.

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

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?

Hello, everyone. It is March 29, 2024 at the time I am creating my first ever post on Taro. This is the Friday night where as of now, I am no longer an employee of a Fortune 500 company I used to work for. I was, how one says in corporate talk, "impacted by a layoff". I was given news of this on March 7th that I had a few weeks before I needed to return all my work technology and leave. This is the night of my last day in the company. People in the company liked me, so they told me to apply and come back again. A LOT of people were willing to let me use them for referral. It was one of the top 10 worst feelings of my life. But, it should not be one of the top 10 worst things to happen in my life. It's on me to make sure of that. I'm only 24, so I'm confident I can bounce back. I was also given a severance package to last me until the end of July. My company provided me outplacement benefits (resume writing, interview prep, etc), but I heard they honestly weren't too helpful. That's why I'm here.

What I've done in the meantime is update my résumé. I also have a plan of action for how I want to handle this upcoming first week of the job search. I want to build small-scale projects of each programming language on my resume which showcase understanding of mid-level to advanced topics of the skills I list in my stack. I want to treat my job search like a 9-5 job, where half the work day is spent building meaningful connections, applying strategically, and interview prepping (I need a LOT of that now), and the other half is spent on coding, be it refining what I think I know and adding new skills: hopefully getting chances to contribute to open source and giving back to the community.

I think I need to work on things such as making my résumé stand out, ensuring my interview prep is rock solid, and finding opportunities to show what I can do.

In the meantime, I'll check out some content that Alex and Rahul have on Taro, but I want to ask everyone else how I can refine the best way to begin my approach. What do you all think I can do?

Thanks!

I applied for a position and didn't get it but the recruiter said I could send him the role I'm interested in. I have sent him a position I was interested in and he responded earlier but when I reached out again I didn't get a response. Do you think it appropriate to call/ email him again when it has been a few months?

Also how to make sure you clear grasp of said fundamentals. I just say this cause it's never really keeping with all the latest technologies it's all about understanding said fundamentals. Also is there some learning path to follow I feel as if I never felt like I'm learning and to be a successful junior I need to find the best way to learn for me.

Hello, I've seen a lot advice on here about doing side projects that are front-end focused and visible to recruiters, and it seems that Android/ iOS apps are a great way of doing that.

I'm in a position right now where I have about 3 years of web development experience and so most of the positions I'm applying for are web dev related, although I'm open to any. I decided to start working on an iOS app because I thought it'd be fun and the app would actually be useful to me + others.

I do have a side-project on my resume I did involving TypeScript/React, and so I was wondering if creating an iOS app with Swift and putting it on my resume would kind of hinder my chances at web dev jobs or would it still be something that could help land me an interviews for those jobs?

Thank you,

Hamza

Hi all, I'm currently job searching after being laid off (junior engineer with 2.5 years of experience) and I know after browsing around here that side projects are heavily encouraged (especially Android apps) to boost up your portfolio and chances of getting an interview.

What are your opinions on doing certifications? I am making my way through an AWS Solutions Architect course while doing side projects - is it a complete waste of time or is it worth balancing along side project work?

Thank you!

Hey Everyone,

I’m currently working on an iOS application, that has already been deployed on the App store. I’m still experimenting with it internally with a few friends, but I noticed that for some of them, when the app is installed it is just displayed as a blank screen or with missing icons or default font colors.

The app passed through App store screening before it was deployed, but I suspect that there is a compatibility problem. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions on what the cause might be, and how I may resolve it.

Link to see the screenshots of the normal and buggy versions of the app:

Link to download app:

A little about the application --> It is a security surveillance iOS app that aims to minimize criminal illiteracy by providing citizens with technology for staying aware, secure, and connected. It includes features such as direct messaging, rapid alert system, sensory data monitoring, and a siren observability module.

I'm open to sharing my code too for a review, but only privately. Thank you so much in advance!

Hello I wanted to ask anyone whats a good place to look for hackathons Im looking for event so I can really get the grasp of working with others and across meeting new people

I was unfortunately let go from my previous company in mid November of last year. Took Nov/Dec of last year off to rest and fully cope. Now that the new year is here, I'm starting the job hunt.

Recently, I found out that a previous employer - not the most recent one - has an opening right now. I left that company on very good terms so I can easily get the job, but I'm not interested at all in that role for the long term as I'd like to work at a US company (preferably big tech, but even startups / midsize would be fine to start). All my experience has been at small companies.

I am extremely confident of my interviewing ability especially with the ability to prep full time. But will I have any difficulty in getting interviews if I don't have a job currently? Should I take the job at the old employer, wait it out 6 months, then start applying to better companies then? Or should I ignore the old employer, take a month to prep, and then start applying to the roles I want now?

Some other potentially relevant info:

• Currently based in Canada. Visa won't be an issue
• 6 YOE, have been Senior for the last 2 years
• Will be applying to L5 roles at the bigtechs, with the expectation of getting downleveled
• Money isn't a huge issue, I have savings to last me through the summer and can borrow more from family if needed (although I would like to have things wrapped up by May 1st)