Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 2] - Michael's Backstory

Michael saw the transformative power of influence after he left his job at Netflix. This video reveals the new opportunities enabled by cultivating an audience. Michael talks about which platforms he grew on, among Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, a newsletter, and more.

Connect with Michael:

- LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lin-tech/>
- Twitter: [https://x.com/\_michaellin](https://x.com/%5C_michaellin)
- Newsletter: <https://www.michaellinwrites.com/>

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 1] - What Is An Engineer Influencer?

An engineer influencer is an engineer who builds an audience on social media and uses that to kickstart their future startup or business.

Examples include:

- [Rahul Pandey](https://www.youtube.com/c/RahulPandeyrkp) - ex-Meta engineer, who leveraged his 60k followers on YouTube to launch Taro, a career-mentoring app that got into YCombinator

- [Gergely Orosz](https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz) - ex-Uber engineering manager, who used his Twitter following to grow his paid newsletter "The Pragmatic Engineer" to 140k readers in 18 months

- [Daniel Vassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo) - ex-Amazon engineer, who grew his following to 130k followers on Twitter and now teaches a highly successful cohort based class called "Portfolio of Small Bets"

Each of these engineer influencers focused on building their social media following first.

This helped them build credibility, expand their network, and guarantee them a distribution channel for their future product.

Connect with Michael:

- LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lin-tech/>
- Twitter: [https://x.com/\_michaellin](https://x.com/%5C_michaellin)
- Newsletter: <https://www.michaellinwrites.com/>

Taro Book Club: Designing Data Intensive Applications - Chapter 8 (Distributed Systems)

Topic: Chapter 8 - The Trouble with Distributed Systems

In this #taro-bookclub discussion, we'll go over Chapter 8 of [**"Designing Data-Intensive Applications"**](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321) by Martin Kleppmann.

Here's the agenda:

- We’ll break down and discuss the key concepts from Chapter 8.
- There will also be time for any questions and answers you might have.

Please send your questions ahead of time to [**Rohit Katyal**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitkatyal/) in the [**Taro Premium**](https://www.jointaro.com/membership/) Slack, so that they can be included in the discussion. *If you don't have the book or want more details on how this all works, check out the #taro-bookclub channel in the Taro Premium Slack as well!*

Get ready for another engaging and informative session!

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 21] - The REAL Secret For A Top Tier Resume

Unfortunately, it's possible to optimize your resume to the teeth and still not get results. This will be incredibly common for more junior engineers. This lesson teaches you:

- A simple 2-step process to understand how to make an incredible resume
- What to do if you have perfected your resume and you still aren't getting enough interview calls
- Why you are far more powerful than you realize the second you learn how to code and deploy software to production
- How to build impressive side projects that are meaningful on a resume and get you interviews
- How to make impressive open-source contributions that are meaningful on a resume and get you interviews

To dive deeper into building impressive side projects: [\[Taro Top 10\] Building Impressive Side Projects](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/vKUWMgmmaEvzcYUXZs4B/)

To dive deeper into making impressive open-source contributions: [\[Course\] Become An Open Source Master](https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-an-open-source-master/)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 20] - Do Not Lie

The tech job market is incredibly brutal for software engineers, and this can make less ethical approaches far more appealing, including with your resume. This lesson teaches you:

- Why lying on your resume ultimately hurts you far more than it helps you
- What to do instead of lying when your resume is struggling

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 19] - When You Don't Have Enough

A 1-page resume is the golden standard, and engineers usually mess up by going above that 1 page. However, what happens if you're incredibly junior and you're the opposite, having less than 1 page? This lesson teaches you:

- How to stretch your Education section on your resume
- What to do with your resume's project section when you're just a student
- Other simple tricks to make your resume longer and fill up that 1 page

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 18] - Non-Technical Experience

A lot of software engineers don't have a Computer Science degree and switched into software from a non-technical background. So how can those engineers succeed with their resume? This lesson teaches you:

- What transferable skills are
- How to best frame your non-technical experience on an engineering resume, broken down with an in-depth example

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 17] - Projects

In this day and age, 99% of software engineers have a "Projects" section on their resume. Of those engineers, 90%+ of them won't get any benefit from their "Projects" section when it comes to their resume passing the recruiter screen and getting them an interview. This lesson teaches you:

- Why projects are at a natural disadvantage compared to work experience on your resume
- What it takes to make a personal project actually impressive on your resume
- The proper link to include to show your project
- How to make a project GitHub actually have the chance to impress a recruiter and get you an interview

To get more users on your side project: ["\[Side Project\] How to get more users + interviews?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/Z456XTkusKszxcHjVfYA/side-project-how-to-get-more-users-interviews/)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 16] - Leveling

For the vast majority of engineers, they want to get the highest level they possibly can from an interview opportunity. How you write your resume is a substantial part of achieving this goal. This lesson teaches you:

- How to format your resume based on what level you were at different points in time
- How including your exact promotions can actually hurt you
- When to include your level on a resume vs. not

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 15] - Ordering

Everyone reads top-down, and this applies to resumes as well. This means that you need to be deliberate about what goes first and the overall order of your resume's content. This lesson teaches you:

- The core principle behind proper resume ordering
- The best resume section order for the vast majority of engineers
- The best resume section order for engineers who have 0 work experience (college students, bootcampers, self-taught developers)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 14] - Show, Don't Tell

In order to write a great resume, you need to frame your experience as best as possible, getting maximum juice from the fruit. This lesson teaches you:

- The bar you need to clear in order to show that you have meaningful mastery of a technical area
- How to get metrics to describe the impact of your actions
- What showing looks like vs. telling, broken down through an in-depth example
- The difference between strong verbs and weak verbs
- How the recruiter and hiring manager perception of you drastically shifts depending on whether you used a strong verb or a weak verb

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 13] - ATS Obsession

With so many resumes being sent in to any decent engineer job opening, automation is often deployed to filter out resumes. The big piece behind this is the ATS. This lesson teaches you:

- What an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is
- How the ATS fits into the tech recruiting pipeline and how engineers commonly misunderstand that process
- What engineers usually do to incorrectly optimize for the ATS while sabotaging their overall changes
- What you need to do to properly get past the ATS

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 12] - Esoteric Terms

As a software engineer, it is absolutely critical for you to write a resume that is incredibly easy to understand, particularly for the recruiter (who, as a reminder, is a non-technical person). Unfortunately, it's very easy for engineers to get this wrong. This lesson teaches you:

- Why engineers often unintentionally make their resumes near impossible to understand
- What esoteric terms are and the categories they fall into
- How to get rid of esoteric terms from your resume with an in-depth example

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 11] - Self Ratings

There's tremendous pressure to stand out with your resume as a software engineer, especially as you usually need to beat out 100+ or even 1000+ other engineers to get an interview opportunity. This lesson teaches you:

- Why self ratings don't add any value to a resume
- The dangers behind self ratings on a resume, particularly with more junior engineers

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 10] - Fancy Formats

Creativity is great, and it's a very important skill for software engineers. However, the resume is not a medium for creativity to thrive. This lesson teaches you:

- Why "creative", fancy resume formats are really bad for a tech resume, shown through a very eccentric example
- The principles to follow for a great resume format
- What a resume with an optimal format looks like with a real-life example

If you need inspiration for your resume format, you can use Alex's template as a template. Download it here: [Alexander Chiou Resume.docx](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NnAx2jYkRTMCQwbdDPPqSj1Fwxkahda-/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109380646850979301783&rtpof=true&sd=true)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 9] - I Know (Suck At) Everything

When it comes tech stacks on your resume as a software engineer, less is usually more. This lesson teaches you:

- What employers are looking for when it comes to an engineer's technical skills on their resume
- Why it's dangerous to put a bunch of technical terms (i.e. keyword stuffing) on your resume
- A simple framework to determine whether or not you should put a technical term (programming language, library, domain) on your resume

Take the code quality course here: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 8] - Intro Summaries

It's common practice for engineers (and almost everyone else) to include a paragraph at the very top of their resume summarizing their overall experience and explaining why they're great. This lesson teaches you:

- Why those intro summaries actually hurt you, especially in tech
- What to do instead of having an intro summary

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

Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer [Part 6] - Poor Spelling And Grammar

The vast majority of software engineers don't have English as their first language, and this leads to many basic spelling and grammar mistakes on resumes. Unfortunately, this hurts engineers far more than they realize. This lesson teaches you:

- Why there is 0 tolerance for spelling and grammar errors on a resume (i.e. 1 mistake is enough to get your resume tossed out entirely)
- How spelling and grammar mistakes speak volumes about a software engineer's overall skill
- Basic ways to perfect the spelling and grammar of your resume, even if English isn't your first language

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.