Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 22] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Download Alex's resume here: [Alexander Chiou Resume.docx](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NnAx2jYkRTMCQwbdDPPqSj1Fwxkahda-/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109380646850979301783&rtpof=true&sd=true)

If you have any questions about the content of this course or about your career overall, start a discussion in the Taro forum here: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

Come to Taro events and join a resume review meetup: <https://www.jointaro.com/events/>

Join Alex for his Group Office Hours: <https://www.jointaro.com/p/alex-chiou/>

**UPDATE:** We have shut down Taro Networking as a feature. Sorry for the inconvenience 🙏

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 1] - How This Course Works

It doesn't matter if you have mastered 500 LeetCode problems if your resume isn't even good enough to get you the interview to begin with. Writing a stellar resume is one of the absolute highest-leverage things you can do as an engineer yet so many mess it up, making basic mistakes. With this course, you will stop making those mistakes. Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) walks you through his extensive 10+ year Silicon Valley background with rapid career advancement, ending up as a high-performing tech lead making $750k at Robinhood. More importantly, he goes through how he reviewed (and rejected) 1,000+ resumes as he was extensively involved in the hiring loop of all of his prior companies.
- You'll understand why writing a stellar resume is actually quite easy, but the internet makes it hard due to misinformation
- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will understand:
  - 💡 Truly understand the **principles** behind a stellar resume
  - 🗑️ Avoid the common **traps** that make resumes suck
  - 💯 Get **maximum credit** by best framing your experience
  - 📊 Make the right resume based on your **level**
  - 🤔 Know what to do if your resume **isn’t enough**

Managing Up: Understanding Your Boss

Understand the preferred communication style of your boss:

- Preferences/pet peeves

- Strengths and weaknesses

- Work to earn trust

- Share your own style and best environment

Connect with [**Ethan on LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/)

Taro members get a discount to join [Ethan's Level Up community](https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/taro25)

Create An Onboarding Doc

The **onboarding doc** is a reference guide as you join the company. This document is literally designed for you, outlining your role + team, people to meet, and how you can get started. Generally, your manager will provide an onboarding doc for you, but you should feel free to augment or create your own if the doc is lacking. This is a great place to collaborate and deepen your relationship with your manager -- point out further areas of discussion.

Components of a good onboarding doc:

1. Team charter (translated down from the company mission)

2. Partner teams + people

3. Expectations + milestones 

   1. These should be clearly defined so it'll be clear if you achieved the expectation or not

4. Project ideas with t-shirt sizing

5. Engineering rubric or career matrix for your role, if one exists

Reference question: [What should be part of an onboarding doc?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/FL7XdfLsG9Da6YyfbjZ3/what-should-be-part-of-an-onboarding-doc/)

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 3] - Interviewing: Why It Sucks

A lot of software engineers don't really know what happens on the other side (i.e. the interviewer giving you the questions), especially for top companies like FAANG. This lesson teaches you:

- Why interview processes are much messier than job candidates expect
- Why tech interviews are inherently unpredictable and random
- How incredibly hard it is to create a quality interview process that both only lets in good talent while not being too torturous for the candidates
- Why it's near impossible for this dark reality of terrible interviewers and interview processes to ever change

If you want to dive even deeper into the interviewer's perspective, check this out: [\[Masterclass\] How To Be An Amazing Interviewer In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OYKgGZ7syfymlvIJKzuf/masterclass-how-to-be-an-amazing-interviewer-in-tech/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 6] - Embrace The Pain

A defining characteristic of mediocre software engineers is that they run away from problems in their code and avoid confronting hard problems in general. This lesson will teach you:

- Why (and how) you should embrace the pain if you truly want to write better code as a software engineer
- The process to follow to go from writing bad code to good code
- What it means to actually learn system design
- How to level up your technical understanding with an in-depth example from Alex's past about how he truly mastered a deep Android concept and applied that mastery to learn iOS development almost instantly

Did You Just Get Laid Off? This Is How You Should Think About It

Getting laid off is rough and a huge blow to your mental state. This video covers how to have the proper mentality if you are laid off, so you can bounce back.

Here are the core points:
- **Being laid off is not a reflection of who you are** - Who gets cuts in a mass layoff is effectively random, and incredible software engineers will get hit by them all the time. *There is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you get laid off.* Don't let some out-of-touch tech executive's bad decision determine your self-worth.
- **You *will* recover** - This is especially true in the tech industry where severance packages tend to be quite competitive, even generous. Use the time to really process what happened, find peace, and figure out your next move. The silver lining of being laid off is that the door has started opening to your next opportunity: You just need to walk through it.

Related resources:
- ["Aftermath of layoffs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/7Gav09HFuLlGDlM749UY/aftermath-of-layoffs/)
- ["How open should we be to recruiters about employment status?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/Lo8W7fMRFbcwUQ9WyTVF/how-open-should-we-be-to-recruiters-about-employment-status/)

Quick Tips To Get Higher Quality Code Reviews Faster

In this segment, we focus on how to **ramp up effectively and build trust through proactive code review habits**. By learning from past diffs, referencing previous work, and anticipating reviewer questions, we strengthen both our code and our relationships with teammates.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We study past code reviews to ramp up faster**: Reviewing recent diffs helps us identify codebase hotspots and learn how experienced teammates structure context, write test plans, and address feedback.
- **We reference prior diffs to preempt questions**: When making similar changes, we compare our approach to earlier ones (especially from tech leads) and explain why we took a different route—saving reviewers from needing to ask.
- **We proactively comment on our own code**: By flagging areas we’re unsure about and inviting feedback up front (e.g., naming choices or design alternatives), we guide reviewers toward the most relevant parts and show that we care about quality and collaboration.
- **We show respect for reviewer input**: Code review isn’t just about getting approval—it’s about listening. Ignoring thoughtful feedback undermines trust. We strive to acknowledge and incorporate suggestions to create a positive, team-first review culture.
- **We demonstrate maturity through initiative**: These habits—referencing historical context, asking for help, and valuing reviewer input—aren’t just tactical. They signal leadership and self-awareness, accelerating our growth and reputation on the team.

[Masterclass] How To Stop Writing Messy Code As A Software Engineer

It's 10x easier to write messy code instead of good, clean code. The hard part is that unless you have good role models, it's extremely difficult to learn how to write quality code. If you're a software engineer going through this struggle, this masterclass is for you.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **There's no such thing as objectively "clean" code** - A lot of engineers treat code quality as something to "solve" where after they learn the best tech stack/database/framework, they can just plug that in everywhere and win. That's simply not how software works. The reason why writing truly great code is hard is because it's all about the context and nuance. Code that's good in one codebase can be horrible in another.
- **It's all about the user experience (UX)** - At the end of the day, the end-user doesn't care about your code quality. Most end-users have never read a single line of code in their life. The end-user simply wants a good UX, which means that if you need to write code that's a little messy to uphold good UX, you should do that.
- **Feel the pain of your bad code** - True learning comes from struggle, and if you really want to stop writing messy code, you need to see your own code break and struggle. Go outside of the happy flow and dogfood your own products and features aggressively. Read your old code every once in a while and see how horrible it was - If you groan then, that's a good sign of growth.
- **Break down your tasks** - A marquee trait of bad software engineers is that they jump straight into the coding, write a gigantic messy commit, and get demolished in code review. To prevent that, proactively decompose your tasks into smaller ones where each one is ideally 1-3 commits or a few days of work. This lets you come up with an actual plan for the task and invite your teammates' feedback at an earlier stage in development (i.e. before you write much or any code). For an in-depth guide on software decomposition, check out the discussion here: ["How do I make software less overwhelming?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/YseMPDw538jhyS1MWlTs/how-do-i-make-software-less-overwhelming/)
- **Write clean pull requests (PRs)** - It doesn't matter if the code in your PR is bad as long as it's "dressed" well and optimized for your teammates to leave good feedback (which will make your code good!). Write atomic commits, have a real PR title, attach a thorough context section + test plan, and proactively call out tricky areas. Learn how to do all that with the following video and its related resources: [One Diff, One Thesis - What Every Code Review Should Be Like](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/3NAbmgiaY3IpvayNIoVl/one-diff-one-thesis-what-every-code-review-should-be-like/)

Related resources:
- ["How to Learn/Practice Clean Code, particularly by oneself?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/6DcTkiS9UJhDkQz1HIAL/how-to-learnpractice-clean-code-particularly-by-oneself/)
- ["How to upskill effectively, especially with the software design aspect?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/JALOyWIOCo7UXIMLlUz3/how-to-upskill-effectively-especially-with-the-software-design-aspect/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/iYpRj8XfyzCSaTYnce3y/masterclass-how-to-write-better-code-faster-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Do Amazing Code Review](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/rhRFh49oouaUDhWUvkQb/masterclass-how-to-do-amazing-code-review/)
- [Presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/106NsN9Z9QNvZR_-LMaiVu2rT8Kro_4YwXS44j-rNLXk/edit?usp=sharing)

How One Of FAANG's Biggest Upsides Becomes A Terrible Downside - Peer Pressure

A big reason engineers go to FAANG is to learn from the brilliant talent there. However, this benefit is very much a double-edged sword.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Big Tech is very competitive** - You will be compared to your peers, many of whom will be better and more productive than you are. Most Big Tech companies make this competition explicit by having stack ranking where the bottom 5-15% of engineers are fired or PIPed every performance cycle. This means that if you're not superior to enough of your peers, your job is in danger.
- There are many side effects to this environment:
  - **Imposter syndrome** - Imposter syndrome is rampant at Big Tech where everyone is so insanely smart and hard-working.
  - **Anxiety and fear** - Being a low performer at Big Tech sucks and is almost always extremely stressful. A lot of engineers here spend a ton of time worrying about being at the bottom.
  - **Poor work-life balance** - You will be pushed by your peers to excel. Many of them will also be overachievers who work late, pushing you to do the same.

Related resources:
- ["How does Stack Ranking work (at FAANG) and how can I be proactive at a base level?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/lScy3l2NPIrWvRuHOjcF/how-does-stack-ranking-work-at-faang-and-how-can-i-be-proactive-at-a-base-level/)
- ["How do you deal with zero-sum situations where one's success comes at the expense of another?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/wDZ2LC0AzujhbOOBs43m/how-do-you-deal-with-zero-sum-situations-where-ones-success-comes-at-the-expense-of-another/)
- ["How do you push back against a PIP when it doesn't feel fully justified?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/4fLz0VmshEouTzQl2Iuc/how-do-you-push-back-against-a-pip-when-it-doesnt-feel-fully-justified/)

How To Find A Tech Company That's Less Likely To Do Layoffs

In a bull market like the one from 2014 - 2021, everyone's a genius. While you could work more or less anywhere before and get a couple solid years of career growth, that's not the case anymore. This video covers how you can choose a company that's less likely to do a mass layoff.

Here are the core points:
- **Prioritize profitable companies** - If the company is publicly traded, this is shared in every earnings reports and is easily Googled (i.e. "Is company X profitable?"). A good business needs more money coming in than going out, and companies with fundamentals like these will always be rewarded.
- **Make sure the company is hiring carefully** - The easiest way for a tech company to take on too many costs is by hiring people it doesn't need. If the interview process is too easy or the company is trying to 10x its headcount every year, that's generally a bad sign.
- **Leverage your network** - We all have people who are much smarter than we are within our network, and this is very prevalent in the tech industry. If the best and brightest in your network (i.e. those who really do their homework before accepting an offer) are going to specific companies, there's a good chance those companies have real legs.

Related resources:
- ["Insensitive to talk about applying to a company which has suffered from layoffs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/LH6CCgWMUAVEAHKDDUWc/insensitive-to-talk-about-applying-to-a-company-which-has-suffered-from-layoffs/)
- ["Staying motivated among lay-offs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/EEMkoCSNPzdRToTHjuSb/staying-motivated-among-lay-offs/)

Having The Proper Mentality To Minimize Your Chances Of Getting Laid Off

It's way too easy to start panicking and living in an anxiety-ridden world in this current layoff-rich tech economy. However, this is a very counterproductive mentality to have as a software engineer - This video covers the mindset shift you should make to actually set yourself for success against layoffs.

Here are the core points:
- **Stop freaking out** - It is not healthy to be constantly checking the news for layoffs and having it always take up prime real estate within your mind. *This will ironically make you more likely to get laid off as your performance will suffer.*
- **Your behavior shouldn't change** - The optimal things to do to insulate yourself against layoffs are things you should always be doing anyways. [Building relationships](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tyaPFMXPoz2pmzB7OVzt/masterclass-how-to-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech/), [optimizing your performance review](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/b0B8uqIAUnBLE10jJHJG/masterclass-how-to-navigate-your-performance-review-in-tech/), and [working on a high-impact team](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/9OwPRwFFSMvEoVj6Zt5Q/how-to-figure-out-if-a-team-is-important-to-a-company/) are all necessary for fast career growth in general.
- **Focus on what you can control** - It sucks, but if you're already working a job that you like, it's simply not possible for you to directly control your destiny when it comes to layoffs. Just do your best as you normally should be and hope for the best. Continue treating those around you with kindness, shipping great projects, and improving your skills.

Related resources:
- ["Staying motivated among lay-offs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/EEMkoCSNPzdRToTHjuSb/staying-motivated-among-lay-offs/)
- ["How to survive potential layoffs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ydZFpJz0x8wKUIfd8E1r/how-to-survive-potential-layoffs/)

System Design Series: Taro Playlists [Part 3] - Defining The Requirements

You can [find the full system design doc here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15WaM8Ojan82g0m2mtz6kC2Hiyj0Q6VbjfqRmVNDI3qw/edit?usp=sharing) - Feel free to use it as a template for when you're designing systems at your job!

The concrete details are covered in the doc linked above, so this summary will focus on the "meta" context behind this part and additional commentary:

- It's very important for engineers to clearly understand the requirements of the product as they need to build them.
  - A common failure mode is that the proposed requirements aren't technically feasible. It's important for engineers to call this out as early as possible, which is why it's a valuable exercise for them to really lay out in the requirements in their system design doc and overall process.
  - Very senior product managers may give broad strokes in terms of what the product should do. Another reason why this exercise helps engineers is that it's actually up to them to convert the high-level points from their PM into very concrete features and requirements.
- "Jobs to be done" is a mental framework championed by Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and initial CEO of Instagram. The idea is that every product is "employed" by users to do a certain "job" in their life. This is a very important thing to understand about a product and clarifying this serves as an intermediary step towards creating concrete requirements.
- Something that's missing from this document are designs - This is because Taro has no dedicated design support at this stage. At a more mature company (which you almost certainly work at as the viewer), you would have designs at this stage in the document (it can be its own section). For front-end products, you need to put pixels on screen at the end of the day, so it's crucial for engineers to have designs to really understand the requirements and provide concrete feedback.

Taro at YC's Demo Day (Summer 2022)

Demo Day is an event where Y Combinator-funded companies present to a room full of specially selected investors and press. This is our presentation about Taro. 

Since the presentations are only 1 minute long, the goal is not to cover everything (that'd be impossible), but instead to say enough such that investors want to learn more.

We launched Taro Premium earlier in the summer, so a lot of our pitch focused on the traction we found in a short time.

Thank you all for being on this rocket ship with us. If you want to support what we do even more, [consider joining Taro Premium](https://app.jointaro.com/membership). Right now, we're pretty early so, so we can be very hands-on with each new member!

If you're thinking of doing your own startup someday, here's some resources to help with that:
- ["How did you decide to quit your job and make a startup?"](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/beZzIkLUP28WinNQctlP/how-did-you-decide-to-quit-your-job-and-make-a-startup-9132022/) - In this video, Rahul's cofounder Alex walks through his decision-making process behind starting Taro
- ["Career advancement or building a startup? Which one is harder?" ](https://www.jointaro.com/question/EquWmWjZhqiiujyltreJ/career-advancement-or-building-a-startup-which-one-is-harder/)

Effective Communication Guide [Part 6] - Communicating In A Remote World

- What is lost in a remote work environment when it comes to communication?
  - **Volume:** A lot of ad-hoc communication ("water cooler chats") can't happen anymore.
  - **Depth of presence:** When you're on a video call, it's mainly just your face that's visible. In an in-person meeting, especially 1 on 1 meetings, your entire body is visible, which lets you express a lot more via your body language.
- **If you're comfortable, have video on during calls** - Use your facial expressions to really show that you're listening and truly hearing what the other person or people have to say.
- **Book 1 on 1s very aggressively** - 1 on 1 meetings are the core building block behind strong relationships. In an in-person environment, you will build relationships naturally through other means like team lunch, but since those are lost in a remote environment, you need to lean on 1 on 1s far more.
- **Get really good at technical writing** - In a remote world, especially with teams distributed across multiple time zones, a lot more communication has to happen asynchronously.
  - Project updates are very important in particular. It's much harder to stay aligned when everyone is apart.
  - If you aren't already, try to write a project update for your work every 2 weeks or more.

The Core Principles Behind Writing Great Performance Review Feedback

- Don't procrastinate writing performance review feedback, especially for your peers! It's such a intimate, powerful thing, and if you truly enjoy working with your peers, they deserve meaty, thoughtful feedback from you.
- Keep it organized
  - Have clear sections. If your company has performance review axes, these can usually be used as your sections.
  - Use bullet points. People hate reading essays and paragraphs.
- Be concise: Use your word count efficiently and avoid repeating yourself.
- A lot of resume feedback applies to performance review as well. Use strong verbs, show the impact, and "Show, don't tell".

[Masterclass] Understanding And Optimizing Your Pay In Tech

Related resources:
- ["If my main goal is compensation, would it be wise to learn blockchain tech since it will potentially be the tech of the next couple decades?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/tyS6MzzADqBzt10802Mh/if-my-main-goal-is-compensation-would-it-be-wise-to-learn-blockchain-tech-since-it-will-potentially-be-the-tech-of-the-next-couple-decades/)
- ["How do people in Big Tech deal with constantly fluctuating Stock Prices from their company?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/JhEDkJl8AexlsL4IXBOH/how-do-people-in-big-tech-deal-with-constantly-fluctuating-stock-prices-from-their-company/)
- [[Taro Top 10] Pay Negotiation](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/uyWSc5q79zFw2Ei7w59d/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MdJrfT-wBDI6p-3z2_4rNY8IJwlvj1X7n3E5bmYajFU/edit?usp=sharing)

This Is Why Most Engineering Managers Are Terrible

Let's not mince words: Most engineering managers suck. But why is that? This video covers:

- Why the incentives don't align between engineering managers and engineers
- What the best tech companies like FAANG do to make their engineering managers not suck (i.e. make them align the incentives between management and ICs)
- How the absolute best engineering managers balance the responsibilities of leadership with the needs of their team in a healthy way

To learn more about the software engineering -&gt; engineering manager transition, check out our playlist: [\[Taro Top 10\] Software Engineer To Engineering Manager (IC -&gt; M Track)](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/oz0mnJvHHgM8NfVF7rgp/)

David Pan's Career Journey - Becoming An Engineering Manager

Engineer Your Ideal Tech Career [Part 1] - The 3 Step Framework

Hi, I'm [Sophie Novati](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophienovati/) and welcome to [Formation.dev](http://Formation.dev)'s course on career pathing and pivotal career decisions made in partnership with Taro!

In this video, I introduce a 3-step framework for evaluating your career, making pivotal decisions, and crafting next steps in order to forge your most successful career in software engineering. This includes:

1. Reflecting on day-to-day work that excites and challenges you

2. Mapping that to long-term career goals

3. Plotting out near-term next steps to get you there

Finally, you will hear from other accomplished engineers about how they’ve made these very decisions!

Be sure to follow along at the worksheet linked to leave with an actionable plan.

Looking for mentorship from tech’s top engineers + personalized job hunt assistance and interview prep? [Formation.dev](http://Formation.dev) can provide you unlimited career coaching, technical mentorship, personalized practice, and mock interviews. Join us here: <https://formation.dev/partners/taro>

Worksheet: [Formation - Coding Your Career](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/courses%2Fslides%2FFormation%20Career%20Direction%20Worksheet.pdf?alt=media&token=f6344b78-529a-411e-a449-7a34a8d55fc8)

Tech Career Growth Videos

Our instructional videos provide software engineers with insights needed for career growth. Masterclasses go incredibly in-depth on a specific tech topic while case studies are real examples from established engineering leaders.