Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 11] - Debugging

Debugging is one of the most important skills every software engineer needs to develop. Despite this, many software engineers see bugs as a source of frustration instead of opportunity. This lesson teaches you:

- The mindset shift that has to happen when a mid-level engineer grows to senior engineer when it comes to bugs, particularly large production outages
- How senior engineers solve different types of bugs of a broader scope compared to mid-level engineers

To get better at debugging, check out: [\[Masterclass\] How To Become A Debugging Master And Fix Issues Faster](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ioR6WzamAIUTpySLAr7o/masterclass-how-to-become-a-debugging-master-and-fix-issues-faster/)

Master The Behavioral Interview [Part 19] - Cultural Values

Culture fit is real. A lot of tech companies have toxic culture and don't vet for it properly, but that doesn't change the fact that culture fit is extremely important to running a healthy engineering organization. This lesson teaches you:

- Why cultural values are important
- What you should do to effectively study and internalize the cultural values of a company you are interviewing with
- How to weave a company's cultural values into your behavioral interview answers through an example with Alex for his Meta interview

If you're curious as to how Meta's engineering culture works: ["Is sprint planning and agile not a thing at Meta?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/tB7borE2AWb1KcuFEcon/is-sprint-planning-and-agile-not-a-thing-at-meta/)

Pass On Your Onboarding Knowledge

After you've completed onboarding, one immediate value you can create is making life easier for the next person. Improve the onboarding process, support more junior engineers, and continue building relationships.

Onboarding is fundamentally about building trust. (Remember the [trust meter from the beginning of the course](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-complete-onboarding-guide-for-software-engineers-succeeding-when-youre-new/why-onboarding-matters/)?) Trust is the currency through which you grow your career, and you’re always gaining or losing trust. Trust is how you get influence, which is essential for further career growth.

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 8] - Interviewing While Employed

Finding a job as a software engineer is, in and of itself, practically a full-time job. But should you quit to actually treat it like an entire job? This video teaches you:

- Why currently being employed is usually the best time to find a new job
- The counterintuitive way that having a job boosts your interview performance when searching for another job
- How to find the time to do interview preparation when you're juggling a current job, including emergency levers
- The framework you should apply to determine if you should quit your current job for the job search grind

Mid-Level Engineer (L4) Describes Most Important Skill - Dipika Tiwari

Dipika is a mid-level engineer at Qualcomm.

- **Most important skill**: efficient log analysis. Being able to quickly make sense of the bug report and provide actionable next steps is critical for productivity and trust. 
- **Advice**: keep notes as you ramp up, since that information will likely be useful later on.

Here's the full playlist asking engineers what the most important skill is for their level: [Asking 7 Levels Of Engineers The Most Important Skill](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/J9Io5lDGaYUpI8vGrUyI/)

Helpful links:
- [How Neetcode Got Promoted From L3 to L4 (Mid-Level) Engineer At Google - Tips + Insights](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/mP1jyI09NsCHDsi5yTEX/how-neetcode-got-promoted-from-l3-to-l4-mid-level-engineer-at-google-tips-insights/)
- Taro's top 10 to get promoted from [entry-level to mid-level engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/iBKHYpkjd0BRWWLKQG2j/)
- Taro's top 10 to get promoted from [mid-level to senior engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/AUMiBTvYUv0gcOzuu26V/)
- [Dipika on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dipika-tiwari/)

At Big Tech, You're Just A Cog In The Machine

Many people idolize FAANG companies, because they own these amazing products that everyone uses. However, working on these products is rarely as glamorous as people think: The experience is often worse the more successful the product is.

Here are the core points from the video:

- **Your ownership will probably be super tiny** - This is especially true at non-senior levels (junior and mid-level). Big Tech companies have thousands of amazing, ultra-productive engineers, and there's only so much ownership to go around. It's not uncommon for a Big Tech engineer to make $200k+ per year mainly working on a single button.
- **The work is very incremental** - Since Big Tech's product suite is so mature, it's very hard to find 0 to 1 work there, which people generally find to be more exciting. Almost all "shipped" code is wrapped in an experiment at Big Tech, and a lot of these experiments will fail.
- **It can be hard to feel fulfilled** - It's not the most exciting to own a single widget within a feature within a broader service within the overall product, and it's definitely not something that's cool to share when people ask you what you do.

Related resources:

- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KWXIrFIR1EIJsvdOdo7u/whats-the-difference-between-big-tech-and-startups-in-terms-of-learning-and-growth/)
- ["What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/bJuagPwOEEy5vkcXKkqh/what-does-it-mean-to-not-have-enough-scope-to-be-promoted/)

"What does your day to day look like?" - 8/19/2022

- *In short, it varies a **lot**.* Startups are extremely unpredictable, and the biggest problem facing the company will change every month or even every week.
- However, there are 2 constants:
  - **Talking with new Taro Premium members** - We chat 30 minutes with every new member to get to know them, make sure they're set up properly within the community, and understand their job and career goals. These meetings add up, and we have a decent amount of them every day.
  - **Talking with Rahul** - There's always a ton going on, and we always have a bunch of ideas on how to evolve Taro, so we need a lot of time to talk each day, usually 45 minutes to 1 hour. According to YC, cofounders falling out is the #1 reason startups fail, so we really want to make sure that doesn't happen.
- We try to get a decent amount of code in every week, but it's hard to find time for it and the company's top priorities are often times not build related.
  - On a side note, the highest build priority for us right now is to really make the Taro web app silky smooth.
- We are fundraising right now, so that's dominating our lives.
- We have a lot of meetings in general as networking is crucial for startups.

One Of Management’s Hardest Tasks: Properly Giving Feedback

This video explores the complexities of effective feedback in engineering management, emphasizing the balance between honesty and empathy. It also highlights how mentoring approaches must evolve based on the experience level of the engineer receiving feedback.

- **Honest feedback is essential for growth**: Engineering managers must avoid both extremes—being overly harsh or too protective of emotions—and instead aim to deliver candid, constructive feedback with empathy.
- **Empathy does not mean avoidance**: Withholding critical feedback to preserve feelings can be detrimental to an engineer’s development; it’s important to be honest even when the message is difficult.
- **Good mentorship goes beyond directives**: Effective managers explain the *why* behind advice, helping reports internalize the underlying principles rather than just follow instructions blindly.
- **Tailor feedback to experience level**: Junior and mid-level engineers often need clear, actionable advice, while senior engineers should be given higher-level guidance and trusted to translate it into execution independently.
- **Mentoring is a skill that evolves**: The ability to adjust mentoring style across a range of experience levels is a key marker of a strong engineering manager.

The Most Misunderstood Part Of Tech Pay - Stock Options

This segment unpacks **stock options**, a type of equity compensation typically offered by startups rather than large public tech companies. It contrasts stock options with RSUs and explains how options function, including taxation and risk.

- **What Stock Options Are:** A stock option gives the right to purchase company shares at a predetermined price (the “strike price”). These are common in startups but rare in large public companies like Google or Facebook.
- **Grant and Vesting Mechanics:** Similar to RSUs, options usually vest over four years with a one-year cliff. The total grant allows employees to buy a fixed number of shares—often a large number—at a low strike price.
- **Value and Risk:** The value of stock options depends on the company’s success. While paper valuations can be high, employees must actually buy the shares (unlike RSUs, which are granted). If the company never goes public, the options might end up worthless.
- **Types of Stock Options:**
  - **ISOs (Incentive Stock Options):** Taxed only upon sale, usually favorable for employees.

  - **NSOs (Non-qualified Stock Options):** Taxed at the time of exercising and again at sale, even if the shares haven't yet generated real money—making them riskier.
- **Tax Implications:** With NSOs, employees may owe taxes just for exercising the option (based on fair market value), creating potential financial burden even before any profit is realized.

This complexity and risk/reward profile is a key difference from the more predictable RSU structure in big tech compensation packages.

DSA Interview Step #2: Figure Out Your Overall Strategy

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [[Taro Top 10] Finding A Tech Job](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/E6R0wVJ5EyCfVnVrlfno/)

1 on 1 Meetings Are An Exercise In Proactivity

Why should you err on the side of creating a 1 on 1 meeting instead of waiting for it to be absolutely necessary?

True or false: Team meetings are more important than 1 on 1 meetings, so you should create them more aggressively for everyone to stay in sync.

Being proactive about setting up one-on-one meetings helps build strong relationships and avoid costly misalignments down the line.

- **Default to setting them up**: It’s better to create a recurring one-on-one and cancel it later than to realize too late that it was needed.
- **Low time cost, high value**: One-on-ones only use two people’s time, making them much less costly than poorly-run team meetings.
- **Prevent bigger issues**: Skipping one-on-ones can lead to being misaligned with key collaborators, which may cause serious problems later in a project.
- **Sync early with core stakeholders**: Especially in cross-functional teams or shared ownership scenarios, early and regular one-on-ones help prevent misunderstandings and build trust.

15 SWE Years In 1.5 Hours [Part 13] - The Secret To Growing Fast

Getting better isn't about which AI tool you use or what books you read or even which company you work for. How fast you improve comes down to one fundamental skill that most people struggle with. This lesson teaches you:

- Why feedback is the fuel for rapid engineer growth
- How many engineers respond incorrectly when it comes to getting feedback
- The right mentality to have when it comes to feedback overall
- Why an incorrect piece of feedback can actually be a good thing

15 SWE Years In 1.5 Hours [Part 8] - Finding A Job

Finding a job as a software engineer sucks, especially when it comes to your first one. This lesson teaches you:

- How to differentiate yourself from the massive pool of other applicants
- Why most engineers have the wrong mentality going into interviews and how you should flip it to be much healthier
- How to structure your job search (and why you shouldn't just start off grinding LeetCode into oblivion)

To dive deeper into the full mechanics behind landing any tech job (FAANG, startups, etc), take our course here: [Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

DSA Crash Course [Part 10] - Most Frequent Char Approach

In this lesson, Alvin explores the strategy to solving the following interview problem:

> Write a function, *most_frequent_char*, that takes in a string as an argument. The function should return the most frequent character of the string. If there are ties, return the character that appears earlier in the string.
>
> You can assume that the input string is non-empty.

```
most_frequent_char('bookeeper') # -> 'e'
```

```
most_frequent_char('david') # -> 'd'
```

```
most_frequent_char('abby') # -> 'b'
```

```
most_frequent_char('mississippi') # -> 'i'
```

If you need additional support taking these DSA skills and actually applying them, take [**Alvin's**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/) *complete* data structures and algorithms course on [**Structy**](https://structy.net/?utm_source=taro). You can try out the concepts yourself in their interactive code editor and learn advanced DSA patterns like stack exhaustive recursion.

Use [**this link to get 20% off**](https://structy.net/purchase?promo_code=taro20) the entire Structy DSA learning experience.

Follow Alvin on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/>

Master The DSA Interview [Part 28] - Don't Forget: Other Interview Types Exist

Data structures and algorithms are a core part of the software engineering interview loop, but it's important to remember that there are other critical interview types as well, including for FAANG. This lesson teaches you:

- How many engineers who completely fail their Big Tech interview actually did well on the data structures and algorithms portion, wasting all of their LeetCode grind
- How the amount of time you spend on data structures and algorithms preparation will vary based on the types of interviews you have
- How the amount of time you spend on data structures and algorithms preparation will vary based on your level
- General attributes to use to calculate the amount of time you need to allocate to data structures and algorithms

Please ask your recruiter what's going to be on your interviews. Don't be afraid to be a bit aggressive and don't be shy. Follow the advice here: <https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/talk-to-your-recruiter/>

Master the behavioral interview with this course: [Master The Behavioral Interview As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/master-the-behavioral-interview-as-a-software-engineer/)

Master the system design interview with this course: [The Top Ways People Fail System Design Interviews](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-top-ways-people-fail-system-design-interviews/)

Master The DSA Interview [Part 22] - The #1 Tool For DSA Prep

As a mainstay of the software engineering industry for 15+ years, data structures and algorithms have more than their fair share of online resources to help you learn it. This lesson teaches you:

- The #1, time-tested resource to learn data structures and algorithms
- The trap many engineers fall into when learning data structures and algorithms when it comes to tool selection
- How to organically expand LeetCode into the rest of your learning tree
- What to do when you get a FAANG interview

If you're interested in NeetCode, you get a discount on it with your Taro Premium membership. Redeem it here by using code TARO at checkout: <https://neetcode.io/pro?utm_source=taro>

Engineering Management Made Easy: The ABCs for First-Time Managers

How to avoid burnout, enjoy being a manager, and multiply your team’s efforts.

I will share mistakes that I made when I first became an Engineering Manager and what I learned from those, followed by Q & A.

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

Become An Open Source Master [Part 3] - What Is Open Source?

We'll start with an introduction to open source, which encompasses not just software but also data, education, standards, hardware, and access.

- Open-source software is released under a license that allows users to use, study, change, and distribute it for any purpose.
- There are various open source licenses with different levels of permissiveness, but for this course, we'll focus on projects under the MIT license.
- Open-source code empowers users to study and adapt software to their needs, similar to how user scripts or custom style sheets modify websites.
- You can learn from open-source projects like React to understand how companies build complex systems.
- If you make changes, you can fork the project or submit your changes back to the original project through a pull request.

Connect with James: 

- GitHub: <https://github.com/jamesgpearce>
- Twitter (X): <https://twitter.com/jamespearce>

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer [Part 19] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Take the related courses:

- [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Ask Great Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ask-great-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/)
- [Become The Go-To Expert As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-the-go-to-expert-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/)

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 1] - Welcome And Course Overview

Hi everybody, I'm Ryan, and in this course, we'll cover the foundations of clear communication, practical exercises, advanced techniques, and how to adapt as a software engineer. By the end, you'll be equipped to communicate effectively within your team and with other builders. Expect to understand core elements of clear communication, develop a good communicator mindset, and master practical communication structures. Tailor your messages for different audiences and apply these techniques immediately. Join me on this journey to enhance your communication skills!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-wiens/>

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.