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 19] - Onboarding

Onboarding is one of the most important processes for any healthy engineering team. Helping the newbies is both critical and rewarding. This lesson teaches you:

- How a senior engineer levels up the team more when helping with onboarding compared to a mid-level engineer
- Different ways to achieve multiplicative impact with onboarding instead of singular, even when you are the one onboarding!

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 15] - Mid-Level Engineer

Mid-Level engineers are engineers who have a good amount of experience but aren't exactly senior yet. Most software engineers fall into this bucket. This lesson teaches you:

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

Negotiation Course: Help Us Help You

Congratulations, you made it to the end of the course, **The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation**! Here are the major takeaways we covered: 

- Negotiation is extremely high leverage
- Negotiate the whole compensation package
- Don’t share information that can hurt you (e.g. salary)
- Negotiate when you have an offer

If you're isolated, you're much more likely to be taken advantage of. The antidote is to engage with the community. Then we can anonymously share your feedback and result to benefit everyone. Together, we'll all succeed 😇

If you netted a meaningful compensation delta from this course ($10K), I'd love to hear from you! Email me at [rahul@jointaro.com](mailto:rahul@jointaro.com). 

Next steps:

- Share + get support: [**joinTaro.com/questions/create/**](http://joinTaro.com/questions/create/)
  - 🧠 Get 10x better advice than anything on Blind or Reddit
- Find community: [**joinTaro.com/events/**](http://joinTaro.com/events/)
  - 🧑‍🏫 Join me for Group Office Hours!

Send me feedback at [**team+negotiation@jointaro.com**](mailto:team+negotiation@jointaro.com)

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 37] - Getting The Offer

Congratulations, you got the offer! However, the journey isn't over yet. This video teaches you:

- The exact steps you should follow after getting an offer (it doesn't even have to be a formal offer letter)
- Why offers are often even more valuable than software engineers think, even the more lackluster ones
- How to communicate with other companies you're in the interview loop for after you have gotten any offer (even a verbal one)

To master the art of negotiation, follow the advice here: [The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-insiders-guide-to-negotiating-your-tech-salary-and-compensation/)

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/>

Ask Me Anything (AMA) with a Meta and Databricks Eng Director - Ritendra Datta

[**Ritendra Datta**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritendradatta/) is a Senior Director of Engineering at Databricks.

Previously, he was the Head of FB Reels and Video Recommendations (Director of Engineering) at Meta, where he worked from 2019 - 2023. Prior to that, he was a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead working at Google in Mountain View. See the [Q&A Ritendra led in the discussion forum](https://www.jointaro.com/question/FaRXsBFD3JpNtFlsmC6Q/im-ritendra-ex-metagoogle-current-senior-director-at-databricks-ama/).

In this Ask Me Anything (AMA), Ritendra answered many questions about tech leadership and career growth!

**Career Preferences in Small vs Large Companies**

Ritendra explained that he enjoys working in smaller, more self-contained companies where he can have a greater impact and more direct relationships with colleagues and superiors. He also highlighted his discomfort in large companies where there are more people than problems and where he would rather focus on technical work than fighting for scope. He ended by stating that his 'sweet spot' is in smaller companies like Databricks or the early days of Google.

**Manager Evaluation and Influence Strategies**

Ritendra discussed how to evaluate a manager and increase influence in a new company. Rahul asked for advice on evaluating a manager, and Ritendra emphasized the importance of empathy, understanding, and a focus on the employee's growth. He suggested asking existing reports about their manager's responses to failure and success, and their approach to career growth. Later, Rahul asked about increasing influence in a new company, and Ritendra advised understanding the company's pain points and focusing on solving them. He cautioned against bringing in new problems to solve, as it can be dismissed due to the existing workload. He also mentioned that introducing a new perspective can also lead to influence.

**Director's Tech Role: Problems and Strategies**

Ritendra discussed the common people problems faced by a director in a technology leading role. Ritendra highlighted the issue of conflict within an overgrown organization, where there are too many people and not enough problems, leading to fights over scope and misaligned career aspirations. He also shared his personal strategy of moving to a different part of the company where the problem is less prevalent. Rahul asked about identifying fast-growing opportunities within a company, to which Ritendra suggested evaluating visibility and impact potential. He advised focusing on areas that are important to the business outcomes but not heavily crowded, and not always following the CEO's narrative.

**Executive Presence: Leading Beyond Teams**

Ritendra shared his personal experience of receiving feedback about his lack of executive presence early in his career and his subsequent efforts to develop it. They also emphasized the importance of understanding and executing on leaders' strategies, as well as effective communication with senior leadership. The conversation touched on the importance of taking action items and follow-ups, and maintaining a balance between being assertive and respectful in discussions with senior leaders. They concluded that executive presence is not solely about intelligence or technical expertise, but also about understanding and acting on strategic directions.

**Relationship-Building and Communication Strategies**

Jordan queried how to optimize the value of one-on-one meetings, to which Ritendra expressed his preference for these meetings due to their potential for honest communication and vulnerability. He shared his personal experience of joining a new company to highlight the significance of openness in establishing deep connections with others. Ritendra cautioned against frequent complaining, recommending a balance of 70% positive communication and 30% expressing struggles.

**Managing Difficult Relationships and Career Advice**

If you have a difficult manager relationship, Ritendra suggested that one should make a judgment call on whether the manager has already given up on them and advised seeking an exit if the relationship can't be repaired. He also mentioned that negative performance reviews often lead to further negative reviews, making it less likely for a turnaround. The topic of how much senior leadership knows about struggling mid or senior-level engineers was also discussed, with Ritendra confirming that such information does spread up the reporting chain. Lastly, Rahul asked about Ritendra's relationship with money as he climbed the career ladder. Ritendra stated that beyond a certain compensation, money doesn't significantly change one's quality of life and that he values his daily happiness over a higher salary.

**AI and ML Advice From Experienced Engineer**

Ritendra advises to focus on the areas surrounding the problem at hand, follow industry experts, read Linkedin articles, and listen to podcasts for new ideas. He emphasized that companies typically focus on fundamental knowledge rather than specific details about recent developments. Ritendra also suggested the use of co-pilot tools, such as AI assisted code writing, to make lives easier and recommended learning about the psychology of engineering and technology.

Relevant links:

- See the [Q&A Ritendra led in the discussion forum](https://www.jointaro.com/question/FaRXsBFD3JpNtFlsmC6Q/im-ritendra-ex-metagoogle-current-senior-director-at-databricks-ama/).
- Check out [**Ritendra's Substack here**](https://tldr0.substack.com/) and [**Medium here**](https://tldr0.medium.com/). (He wrote about his prior [**AMA from Blind**](https://tldr0.substack.com/p/a-fascinating-q-and-a-with-meta-employees) here.)
- Check out discussions with another [**Senior Eng Leader, David Pan, here**](https://www.jointaro.com/topic/david-pan/) and [**Rachel Zhao, here**](https://www.jointaro.com/topic/rachel-zhao/).

Rahul's Compensation Journey To $800K (and behind-the-scenes)

In 2021, the last full year Rahul worked at Meta, he made $823K. When he joined Facebook (Meta) in 2017, his total compensation was $390K. See the full details [in the YouTube video](https://youtu.be/inydj1VZ0y0).

In this session, Rahul documents how his yearly compensation more than doubled over the 4.5 years he was employed at the company. This talk will cover details that didn't fit into the YouTube video while exploring angles of it more in-depth.

Topics:

- What components of compensation matter the most in a typical tech company
- Parts of a company's compensation philosophy which have large consquences, but are not often understood or discussed
- How to think about level and negotiation when job hopping
- The psychology around pay changes, and how people change their spending when hitting certain compensation milestones

Related content:

- [How To Earn Respect Fast - Senior Engineer Onboarding Story](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/FaD8tVGXP6SiRQfee4SD/how-to-earn-respect-fast-senior-engineer-onboarding-story/)
- ["How can I think like a staff engineer?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/RU3Mof8NeEYQP30l6giW/how-can-i-think-like-a-staff-engineer/)
- [This Is Why FAANG Engineers Make So Much Money - Tech Compensation Breakdown](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/1aKjiSKcHDttnyTAYXy4/this-is-why-faang-engineers-make-so-much-money-tech-compensation-breakdown/)
- [\[Masterclass\] Understanding And Optimizing Your Pay In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/gk408yBIV2fa5RjVR213/masterclass-understanding-and-optimizing-your-pay-in-tech/)

[Part 4] Software Engineer Onboarding: Understand Strategic Decisions

Learn the business to make good strategic decisions.

By the time you're a month or more into your job, you should start execution on your projects, but you should continue gathering context about your team and company. You should document key decision points in your work, and reflect on who is involved, how long various steps take, and the level of detail various stakeholders ask for.

------

This is part 4 of a 4 part series from Daniel about how to **most efficiently** and **most effectively** onboard into a new team or company. What should you spend your time doing in the first few months of joining, and how should that change based on your level? 

This masterclass covers this topic from the perspective of Daniel Tomko, a 20 year Big Tech veteran. Daniel spent 11 years at Microsoft and 8 years at Meta in various senior IC and management positions. 

- [Go back to part 1 of the masterclass here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/IYZRmwp33E3TBeFQFr9c/part-1-software-engineer-onboarding-embrace-your-lack-of-knowledge/)
- Connect with Daniel Tomko on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltomko/)
- Check out the [Formation.dev discount](https://www.jointaro.com/perks/) for Taro Premium members
- [How To Figure Out If A Team Is Important To A Company](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/9OwPRwFFSMvEoVj6Zt5Q/how-to-figure-out-if-a-team-is-important-to-a-company/)
- [How To Find A Good Team With Career Growth Opportunities](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/UGIUC9zaGccK0tOarBri/how-to-find-a-good-team-with-career-growth-opportunities/)
- [This Is How You Get Feedback - Making The Process Smooth](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/aGuxjGbFjYb34ofhRxjs/this-is-how-you-get-feedback-making-the-process-smooth/)

"What is the growth plan for Taro Premium?" - 8/18/2022

There are 2 core areas at play here:
1. Empowering Taro Premium members to share their diverse wealth of perspectives and wisdom
2. Tactical areas of improvement

**Communal Sharing**
- Right now, Rahul and I are doing the thing that doesn't scale in true startup fashion: Providing the vast majority of career guidance ourselves.
- However, not only does this not scale, we firmly believe that this isn't the right thing to do long term: Our perspectives are only 2 out of millions of incredible people working in tech.
- Let me be frank: While we've had a diverse range of experience and pushed to understand as many angles of the tech scene as possible, our perspective is narrow. We've only worked in the Silicon Valley. We're around the same age. We spent the lion's share of our careers working at Meta. We're both Asian men. Because of this, there's a lot of stuff we don't know and aren't well equipped to talk about.
- This is where the community comes in. At the time of release of this video, we have ~170 members in Taro Premium, and I've been blown away by the diversity of backgrounds present. If we can enable, reward, and empower all these incredible folks in tech to share their perspectives and help one another, we can create what is truly the greatest repository of tech career advice on Earth.

**Tactical Stuff**
- Our main priority right now is opening up the Q&A career advice platform, so that all members of Taro Premium can easily ask and answer questions.
- While this was recently made possible, there's still a lot lacking. There's no notifications to know when your question has been answered, and we all know that the UI/UX has a ton of room for improvement, especially on web.
- We're working with a contract designer right now to completely overhaul the look and feel of the Taro web app.
- Another thing we want to figure out is member matching. For now, we're mainly matching folks of similar level as the incentives get wonky when you pair folks of different levels. However, this "algorithm" is still quite naive, and we have a long way to go before we can sustainably have folks network with one another in a way where all parties feel like they got value.

Understanding Performance Review Ratings

- The end goal of a performance review is to assign every employee a rating, which is like a grade in school.
- Know what ratings are good
  - What's average?
  - What puts you in the "danger zone" or on a formal performance improvement plan (PIP)?
  - Which rating is great?
- Understand which rating is necessary for promotion

What Does A High Trust Team Mean For Code Review?

In this closing section, we focus on the importance of **building and operating within a high-trust engineering team**. Trust is not just a feel-good concept—it directly affects our productivity and velocity when shipping code.

- **We prioritize speed and trust in code review.** When we trust our teammates, we don’t block diffs unnecessarily. Instead, we approve with minor suggestions, knowing the author will follow through responsibly.
- **We use “accept with nits” to keep things moving.** For small, straightforward changes—like renaming variables—we leave a “nit” comment but still approve the diff to avoid introducing unnecessary delay.
- **We avoid slowing each other down over trivial issues.** Each extra cycle of “request changes” can delay code by 1–2 days. We conserve team momentum by trusting competent authors to resolve minor feedback themselves.
- **We treat time as our most precious resource.** Code review should add value without becoming a bottleneck. High-trust practices help us operate with both quality and speed.
- **We maintain expectations through communication.** Even when approving with nits, we clarify, *“Please address before landing,”* so everyone stays aligned on expectations without blocking forward motion.

Don't Forget: Code Review Is Public And Has Huge Consequences

In this final segment, we emphasize how **code review is not just a technical exercise—it’s a public, cultural signal**. Especially for tech leads and senior engineers, the way feedback is delivered in code review has real consequences for team morale, inclusion, and career development.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We treat code review as a public cultural forum**: Comments are visible to others on the team and can impact how engineers—especially juniors or new hires—are perceived. Feedback that embarrasses someone publicly can harm confidence and even affect performance reviews.
- **We avoid harsh criticism in public threads**: If we’re truly concerned about someone’s patterns (e.g., lack of testing mindset or carelessness), we give that feedback in private, not in a code review. We follow the rule: *Praise in public, critique in private.*
- **We understand the leadership signal we send**: As tech leads, our tone sets the bar. If we leave demoralizing or curt comments, we implicitly encourage others to do the same—fostering a negative or toxic culture.
- **We handle serious feedback face-to-face**: When needed, we schedule a quick 15-minute conversation to deliver constructive criticism with nuance and care—ensuring it’s received in the spirit of growth, not shame.
- **We use code reviews to build people up, not tear them down**: Every interaction is a chance to create a safer, stronger engineering culture. We remember that what we say—and how we say it—has lasting impact.

Ultimately, we believe that **code review is leadership in action**—and great leaders use it to uplift their teams, not diminish them.

Introduction

Machine learning interviews are brutal—and most engineers prep for them the wrong way. This course flips that on its head. Here’s what's covered in this lesson:

- Your instructor Yayun Jin walks you through her background as an ML lead who’s been on both sides of the interview table. She goes through her journey breaking into the ML world, working across startups and big tech, and interviewing 100+ ML candidates.
- You’ll learn why most prep strategies fail: They're too scattered, too theoretical, and completely disconnected from how interviews actually work.
- We’ll walk you through the course game plan so you know exactly what to expect:
  - 🧭 Learn how to prep for ML interviews with structure instead of chaos

  - 🔍 Understand key differences between ML roles (ML engineer, infra, AI engineer) so you don’t waste time on irrelevant material

  - 🧱 See what great performance looks like in each interview type: coding, modeling, system design, and behavioral

  - 🚀 Get actionable prep tactics tailored for both current ML pros and SWE-to-ML switchers

  - 🎯 Understand how expectations shift based on seniority—so you’re not prepping like a junior when you’re going for a senior role

If you want to learn even more from Yayun:

- Book 1 on 1 career guidance with her here: <https://calendly.com/your-friend-yayun/1on1>
- Follow her on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/yayunjin/>

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.