[Become A Go-To Person 9/18] The Formula For Expertise

A course by [Jordan Cutler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/), Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest and Author of the [High Growth Engineer Newsletter](https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/)

[Become A Go-To Person 4/18] The Benefits Of Being The Go-To Person

A course by [Jordan Cutler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/), Senior Software Engineer at Pinterest and Author of the [High Growth Engineer Newsletter](https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/)

Get a discount on Jordan's newsletter here: <https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/taro>

Tech Lead Blueprint 3/17 - Why do TLs exist?

Connect with Lalit on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalitkundu/>

Tech Lead Blueprint 1/17 - What's The Deal With Tech Leads?

Engineer A claims "*I am the Tech Lead for Engineer B*", while Engineer B claims "*I am the Tech Lead for Engineer A*" 🤔🤔

Lalit has seen several variants of this from his experience as a peer reviewer for Google engineers during performance reviews. Lalit discusses the common desire for the tech lead role, the lack of explicit definitions in tech companies, and the implicit nature of becoming a tech lead.

Connect with Lalit on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalitkundu/>

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 16] - Mentor And Delegate

Many software engineers are naturally lone wolves due to their introverted nature. While this can work out as a junior or mid-level engineer, it quickly becomes unsustainable as you reach senior/staff levels and beyond due to the immense workload. This lesson teaches you:

- Why being a lone wolf is terrible for your productivity
- The importance of uplifting others around you when it comes to getting stuff done
- One of the core virtues the best engineers have, which is particularly needed for mentorship

Here's Alex's Meta mentorship case study: [\[Case Study\] Mentoring Junior SWEs \[E3\] to Senior \[E5\] In Just 2.5 Years At Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/EX9563YnxcJb62cCmetg/case-study-mentoring-junior-swes-e3-to-senior-e5-in-just-25-years-at-meta/?playlistId=oLssVMdTJ9NtX5SX1fek)

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 10] - Organize Your Calendar

Now we know that focus blocks are one of the most powerful weapons in a software engineer's arsenal. So how can we get them? This lesson teaches you:

- How to organize your meetings in the most efficient way
- What you should look out for when it comes to clearing space on your calendar

Maximizing a Severance Package 1/9 - Introduction

You are being laid off, getting fired, or just want to move on - learn how to get the best package as a part of your transition out of your company.

What's In the Course:

- The Law
- Termination Circumstances
- Never Accept on the Spot
- Preparing Your Case
- The Mind of the Manager
- Common Asks and Gives
- Can You Sue?
- Summary

##### [**Ethan Evans**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/) is a retired Amazon Vice President, now sharing his leadership expertise. Ethan has reviewed over 10,000 resumes in his career, conducted more than 2500 interviews, and been part of several layoffs. These career growth courses are developed from his own knowledge and input from his extensive network of fellow coaches and executives.

- 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)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 7] - It's Too Long

Having a resume that's too long is one of the easiest ways software engineers get their resume (and their job candidacy) immediately thrown out. This lesson teaches you:

- The optimal length for a resume
- Why shorter is better when it comes to resumes (and why very long resumes make 0 sense)
- How to convert your years of experience to a resume length
- Tactics to trim down your resume and make it more concise

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 23] - Plot Your Growth Journey

The mid-level engineer to senior engineer promotion takes years for a very simple reason: You need to develop a *ton* of new skills to make it. This lesson teaches you:

- How to prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed on your journey from mid-level to senior
- The standard growth path from L4 (mid-level) to L5 (senior) and what it means to be L4.5
- Why the L4.5 growth path that initially focuses on increasing your engineering excellence is generally the smoothest path to senior engineer

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 13] - Just 1 Sentence Is Enough

As a software engineer, you will often get tasks and projects that aren't fully defined. How you react and are able to perform in these scenarios is a huge factor when it comes to determining your seniority. This lesson teaches you:

- A simple framework to understand the expectations of a senior engineer when it comes to handling ambiguity
- The different components that go into converting a single sentence to a full-blown project

Master The Behavioral Interview [Part 14] - Junior Engineer

Every software engineer starts off as a junior engineer. Junior engineers can't really do anything, but they still need to do pass interviews. This lesson teaches you:

- The expectations from a junior engineer overall and how that reflects in behavioral interviews
- The kinds of stories junior engineers tell in behavioral interviews

Onboarding Strategies For Engineers [Lightning Lesson]

As a new hire, onboarding is your responsibility, not your manager's.

The first few months in your job are crucial for creating first impressions and relationships that can either accelerate your success or limit your potential.

This is one of the concepts we cover in the Senior to Staff cohort-based course in June: <https://maven.com/taro/senior-to-staff>

30% of tech workers leave their jobs within 90 days -- don't be one of them! What you'll learn:

### **My Talk & Observe framework**

Build respect with your new manager and team.

### **4 key questions to ask your colleagues**

Learn crucial context and history from colleagues on your team or adjacent teams.

### **How to prevent failure modes**

Too many engineers are surprised with negative feedback in their first performance review -- we'll discuss why.

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 22] - The Project Credit Formula

You have been given your projects for the performance review cycle, and they're okay but not amazing. How can you make the most of this opportunity and cobble together a case for promotion? This lesson teaches you:

- The definition of scope, another tech term that is commonly thrown around but horribly misunderstood
- The overall formula to determine how much credit you get for a project
- How to be creative and get the most credit from every project you work on
- How projects of a certain scope can either by increased by 1 level or decreased by 1 level

Onboarding Tips For Junior Engineers

Your goal as an entry-level engineer is to show autonomy after you've completed onboarding. If you're an intern or new grad, you are not expected to know everything (or much of anything!).

- The most important trait for early career folks is to seek feedback and act on it! **Coachability** is an important criteria for you (this is, in fact, how many interns are judged).
- Don’t “solo carry” a project. Instead, create milestones to measure and show progress. 
- Pair programming is especially valuable for learning from coworkers and building relationships.

Onboarding Tips Within Smaller Companies

Some relevant tips if you're onboarding as an engineer in a smaller company:

- Smaller companies will have less process and, therefore, a less formal onboarding. This means it's more important to get stuff done quickly since you can't rely on a bunch of classes or hand-holding.
  - A good benchmark is to land code within a week
- In a smaller company, a lot of knowledge will be in the heads of a few people
  - Your goal is to find the tenured people and ensure you understand their worldview and prioritization.
- Don’t assume processes or people exist. Especially if you come from a larger company, you should not assume that there is a well-defined QA (Quality Assurance) team or design team.

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 36] - Getting Interview Feedback

The best way to get better at software engineer interviews is to fail a bunch of software engineer interviews. But how exactly do we do that? This lesson teaches you: 

- Why you're probably not getting feedback from the company after you have failed their interview
- What you should do instead after an interview to maximize the learning that you get from the experience

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 23] - Data Structures And Algorithms (DSA)

Data structures and algorithms (otherwise known as DSA) - We've all heard of them before. For many software engineers on the job hunt, it is the bane of their existence (and for good reason). This lesson teaches you:

- When to expect DSA problems during the interview loop
- How DSA problems came to take over the software engineer interview
- Why FAANG and Big Tech companies overall use DSA interviews so aggressively (hint: it's not because they're stupid)

To master the data structures and algorithms interview, check out these resources:

- [\[Course\] Master The Data Structures And Algorithms Interview](https://www.jointaro.com/course/master-the-data-structures-and-algorithms-interview/)
- [\[Taro Top 10\] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 16] - FAANG Or Bust (And Why It’s Dumb)

Software engineers have a deep obsession with "FAANG" often treating it as the Holy Grail of career goals. Unfortunately, this often leads to job searching failure. This lesson teaches you:

- How software engineers greatly underestimate the difficulty of getting into Big Tech and how they should believe and act instead
- Why FAANG companies are generally averse to hiring non-senior candidates
- The many reasons why going to Big Tech later in your career is good for you
- The path most engineers have to take in order to break into FAANG (and why that's perfectly fine!)

If you want to learn more about FAANG and Big Tech:

- [\[Taro Top 10\] Breaking Into FAANG](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/roKqDHgxu4C5CioEFpJY/)
- ["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/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 22] - Too Many Comments

Comments is a coding technique everyone learns particularly early, which makes sense as newbies need the extra hand-holding. However, there's a weird phenomenon where code comments go from a good thing to a bad thing very rapidly in your career. This lesson will teach you:

- Why comments are so prolific across code
- How comments end up hurting rather than helping, especially at scale and with large codebases
- What you should do instead of adding a bunch of code comments
- The fundamental mentality around writing good, clean, readable code, which Alex breaks down with a concrete refactoring example

PIP In Big Tech -- Amazon, Meta, Google

In this section, we cover the path for employees to enter a PIP for three Big Tech companies — Amazon, Meta, and Google.

At **Amazon**, the poor performance rating is called **Needs Improvement (NI)**. Poor performers are put on a Focus, which is a development plan to get back on track. Think of it like a warning. If the focus does not do well, the employee is put on a Pivot, at which point the options are to leave the company or accept a PIP. Learn more here: <https://www.jointaro.com/topic/amazon/performance-review/>

At **Meta**, the poor performance rating is called **Meets Some (MS)** or **Meets All (MA)** Expectations. If the HRBP (Human Resources Business Partner) is part of your review meeting, a PIP is likely. One unique policy of Meta is something called "up or out." This requires engineers to get promoted every few years until hitting Senior Engineer \[E5\]. Learn more at <https://www.jointaro.com/topic/meta/performance-review/>

At **Google**, the poor performance rating is called **Not Enough Impact (NI)** or **Moderate Impact (MI).** A "Support check-in" indicates poor performance and candidate for a PIP. Google is generally more laid-back when it comes to performance compared to other companies. Learn more here: <https://www.jointaro.com/topic/google/performance-review/>

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.