Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 3] - Core Elements Of Communication

In this video, I delve into the core elements of effective communication - empathy, purpose, and responsibility. Understanding and mastering these elements are crucial for successful team interactions and project outcomes. I emphasize the importance of tailoring messages to the audience, defining clear purposes, and ensuring mutual understanding. Viewers are encouraged to adopt a mindset shift towards intentional and thoughtful communication.

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

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 26] - Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Many programming languages are Object-Oriented Programming languages, otherwise known as OOP languages. This lesson teaches you:

- What OOP interview rounds are and when to expect it
- The optimal way to prepare for an OOP interview round
- What a good OOP diagram looks like

[Timeless Career Advice] Startup vs Big Tech

One of the fundamental questions you face as an engineer is where to work. Should you join a startup, medium-sized company, or Big Tech? What are the pros or cons of working at a tech or non-tech company?

Connect with Louie:

- SmallBets community: [**https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro**](https://smallbets.com/?utm_source=taro)
- Twitter: [**https://twitter.com/LBacaj**](https://twitter.com/LBacaj)
- Newsletter: [**https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/**](https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/)

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.

Meta Case Study: The Ultimate Guide To Navigating A PIP

This was a veteran engineer with more than 15 years of experience at other large tech companies before joining Meta.

- **Before**: Hired in as Staff Engineer \[**E6**\], brought in as a domain expert. Worked for almost 2 years before the PIP

- **During**: Not surprised based on rating trends. Main issue was code productivity, inability to use tooling such as version control

- **After**: Struggled with the PIP for a few months, then negotiated a severance package

Joining a company at too high a level is not good

If an employee's performance is subpar, it's better to act on that early, both for the employee and the team.

At a high level, your job is to lead the team and teach others. It’s ok if you don’t know the tooling, but you should not let that get in the way of landing code. Code output was poor.

Negotiation Course: Negotiation Starts Now

It's critical that you only start negotiations when a company has verbally given you an offer.

Leveling is very important since it’ll dictate your salary band and equity. If you’re at a larger company, ask what level you’re coming in at, and see what kind of wiggle room there is.

If possible, talk to the hiring manager or people involved in your interview"

- You can learn advice on what you could work on.
- You can hear what the business need was to hire a role and why they picked you. 

The above points give you “ammunition” for negotiation: you want to understand how badly the company wants you.

Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring

True or false: As long as you have basic proficiency with everything on a job posting, you will get an interview for that job.

How much time does a recruiter spend reading a resume, on average?

True or false: Your resume should be boring and straightforward, especially with its format.

What's the main reason you should avoid the paid flashy resume formats you find online?

True or false: In order to stand out from other applicants, you can use a very unique format to make your resume more memorable to the recruiter, thus increasing your chances.

Become An Open Source Master [Part 11] - Go With The Flow

We can contribute to open source projects by either creating something new or picking up existing work. It's important to communicate with the community owner or maintainer and earn their trust. We can do this by opening discussions, being open to feedback, and starting with small, well-defined tasks.

Example strong pull request (PR) from TinyBase: <https://github.com/tinyplex/tinybase/issues/130>

Connect with James:

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

Why You Should Always Negotiate Your Offers

- Negotiation is particularly life-changing, especially if you're early-in-career. It's also really high ROI as the cost is effectively just a couple emails and some potential awkwardness.
- Negotiation doesn't hurt anyone within or outside the company - It's effectively a part of life when it comes to the hiring game.
- What you negotiate for isn't connected to your costs: It's about getting what's fair given the market rate and your current leverage situation (i.e. do you have other offers).
  - Even if an offer is good given your personal situation, you should try negotiating, especially if it's below fair market rate for that level/company/geography and you have competing offers.
  - You can always do something with extra money!

If you need premier negotiation support, check out our 3+ hour negotiation course: [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/)

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/)

Negotiation Course: Understand What You’re Negotiating For

The most common (and important) parts of a compensation package in tech are: base salary, sign-on bonus, equity, annual bonus. There are other high-value benefits such as a 401k match, paid time off (PTO), and healthcare, but these are typically not negotiable terms. 

It's important to figure out what are the negotiable terms and what are not. e.g. start date is be negotiable: if you don't care about this, you can mention to the recruiter that you're willing to start as needed if the company can offer flexibility on a term that you care about, e.g. salary.

Another important takeaway is that "negotiating a job offer" and "negotiating a salary" are NOT the same thing. You should negotiate the terms of an offer in parallel, not serially. Talk about the whole package rather than talking about individual components.

DSA Crash Course [Part 31] - Get Node Value Walkthrough

In this lesson, Alvin walks through the python implementation for the *get_node_value* problem.

Code along and test your work in the following editor workspace: <https://structy.net/problems/get-node-value?language=py>

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/>

15 SWE Years In 1.5 Hours [Part 15] - Onboarding

You have started a fancy new job at a company you really like. How do you hit the ground running and impress people fast? This lesson teaches you:

- Why being new is actually a superpower, not a weakness like many engineers think
- Why you need to be aggressive and extremely deliberate when onboarding, especially at the very beginning
- What you can do to *add value* while onboarding instead of merely absorbing value

To dive deeper into onboarding, take our course here: [The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-complete-onboarding-guide-for-software-engineers-succeeding-when-youre-new/)

Pinterest Case Study: The Ultimate Guide To Navigating A PIP

This was a non-engineer who had several years of experience before joining Pinterest.

- **Before**: 90 days after joining, was told they needed to improve

- **During**: “Completely blindsided” when placed on PIP at the 4 month mark. Goalposts kept shifting, didn’t receive feedback until 4 weeks later

- **After**: Took the termination after taking leave for interview prep

Hate Data Structures And Algorithms? Turn It Into A Habit

Set aside 30 minutes, 2-3 times a week, to build a regular habit out of learning data structures and algorithms.

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/)

How To Put The Interviewer On Your Side

At the end of the day, passing a software engineer interview is about convincing another person that you're competent. The best interview candidates behave in a way that naturally puts the interviewer on their side. Weak interview candidates behave in a way where the interviewer becomes their opponent. This video covers how to do the former.

Here are the core points:
- **Always be communicating** - Nobody can read minds. By regularly explaining your thought process, you are keeping your interviewer in the loop and giving them the maximum chance to fully understand you and your skill. Communication is an especially important axis for Big Tech.
- **Be very careful asking for hints** - If you haven't made a lot of progress on the problem, asking for a hint is effectively asking the interviewer to solve a good amount of the problem for you. This severely reduces the signal the interviewer gets on your abilities. *If you ask for hints too aggressively, you may be tanking your own chances.* For deep dive of the dynamics of interview hints, [check out our video here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/QFZxCLSuUDRYysvBBFLR/how-to-handle-hints-in-a-software-engineer-interview-without-failing/).
- **View your interviewer as a human not an obstacle** - While it's true that you need the rubber stamp from the interviewer to pass, focusing on that too much will negatively show in how you interact with and communicate with your interviewer. When you view your interviewer as another person and have empathy for their situation, you will understand what they're looking for and be much better equipped to show that signal.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [Effectively Learning Data Structures And Algorithms (DSA) For Software Engineer Interviews](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/XwpMMY3ss97zOrXJQ7Xr/effectively-learning-data-structures-and-algorithms-dsa-for-software-engineer-interviews/)
- ["How can I show to a Big Tech company that I'm likely to succeed there?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ZpqoWC1zi3wMTXBUsS2B/how-can-i-show-to-a-big-tech-company-that-im-likely-to-succeed-there/)

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 15] - Cover Letters

Cover letters are one of many roadblocks predatory tech companies put in your way during the application process. They convince software engineer job candidates that they can win with gushy words, but this is almost never the case. This lesson teaches you:

- The very minimal impact cover letters have on the hiring loop
- The rare situations where cover letters can actually work
- What to do if a cover letter is required for a company you aren't genuinely ultra-passionate about

Do This To Stop Wasting Time In Your DSA Interviews

True or false: You should tackle the easiest, most trivial parts of a data structures and algorithms problem first, just to get it out of the way and boost your confidence.

True or false: A lot of the time, the interviewer won't care if you don't code out every single piece of the entire solution.

Why shouldn't you prioritize writing the simple utility methods your overall solution needs?

True or false: If you are 100% confident that your solution doesn't have bugs, just tell your interviewer you are done and kick the conversation back to them to save time and move on to the next problem.

You can save a lot of time during your data structures and algorithms interview by not having to write any utility functions.

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/)

Negotiation Course: Closing The Deal

If you’re willing to sign the offer, **you have manufactured leverage you can use to squeeze out additional compensation with high probability**. Tell the recruiter you’re willing to sign the offer immediately if they can give you X, where X is a bit higher than the current offer.

A good choice is to ask for an extra $10K-$20K in sign-on bonus. Companies are willing to do this since it’s a one-time cost but they can guarantee you sign. But $10K is be life-changing for many people.

Making the final request focused on salary or equity is a bit more difficult since it often requires more people’s approval. Your goal in this final round of negotiation is to propose something quick and a no-brainer for the company.

Phrasing:

> I'm eager to use my experience to have impact quickly at \[COMPANY\]. I'm willing to sign the offer today if you can add a signing bonus of $15,000. This would make the offer compelling for me so I can commit to \[COMPANY\] for the next phase of my career.

Ideally you want things in writing. Some recruiters will tell you they can’t put it in the formal offer until you’ve verbally agreed, which is fine, but in that case, you can still ask them for a quick email recap with the numbers included.

Engineer Your Ideal Tech Career [Part 13] - Daniel Tomko: Choosing The Tech Lead Route

Lastly, we have [Daniel Tomko](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltomko) (ex-Meta, ex-Microsoft, Head of Instruction at Formation) reflect on his experience as a Tech Lead.

He points out some common misconceptions, how the role may vary company to company, and then shares a real-life example of the great magnitude and scale of impact that being a tech lead can drive.

Looking for mentorship from tech’s top engineers (like Daniel!) + 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.