Negotiation Course: View The Recruiter As Ally, Not Antagonist

Recruiters get a bad reputation, but they can actually help you a lot! The recruiter's job is to get qualified people to work for the company, so there is incentive alignment between both parties.

Instead of viewing the recruiter as an obstacle you must overcome, view them as an ally and a valuable source of information. 

- **Before the interview**,  ask them what will be on the interview and what advice they'd have to prepare.
- **After the interview**, ask them what parts of the comp are likely to change, and build the relationship with them so they can advocate for you.

How do you build a relationship with the recruiter? 

- Say thank you whenever the recruiter shares an update with you: *"Thank you for sharing, I appreciate your clear communication throughout this process!"*
- Show an interest in the job and what makes it unique. Don't ask generic questions. 

Keep in mind that most recruiters are not technical and may not understand the value you bring as an engineer. (Unlike the hiring manager, who will know intimately what role they're hiring for.)

Understand 2 different types of recruiters:

- **Contract (agency) recruiters** are compensated for landing a butt in the seat: they’ll be much more transactional and focused on getting you to accept an offer (any offer).
- **In-house recruiters** will usually NOT see a direct financial gain if you accept the offer. They are evaluated based on goals around recruiting conversion metrics.

Engineer Your Ideal Tech Career [Part 10] - Sophie Novati: The Founder Journey

This video kicks off a section of 4 videos in which you’ll hear from different accomplished engineers on their career paths and what drew them to that route.

Starting us off, [Sophie](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophienovati/) (course author!) provides more context into how she became a founder, the typical founder path, and why she has a deep admiration for the work she does.

Looking for mentorship from tech’s top engineers + 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)

DSA Crash Course [Part 48] - Tree Min Value Walkthrough

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

Code along and test your work in the following editor workspace: <https://structy.net/problems/tree-min-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/>

Become A Debugging Master [Part 9] - Understand The End-To-End Flow

Most engineers waste time guessing at random fixes instead of methodically understanding the flow of what’s actually happening. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Before you fix a bug, deeply understand the end-to-end flow, the intended behavior, and where reality deviates
- Avoid “blind fixes”—randomly adding things like null checks without fully identifying the root cause leads to fragile software
- Break down the system into smaller steps, narrow down the problem area through a process of elimination, and ask better questions based on where things fail
- Understand which components are involved, how they communicate, and what data formats they expect to quickly spot mismatches or errors
- Strong debuggers act like detectives: they map out the flow precisely, isolate the problem, and only fix after gaining clarity on why things broke

DSA Crash Course [Part 57] - Connected Components Count Approach

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

> Write a function, *connected_components_count*, that takes in the adjacency list of an undirected graph. The function should return the number of connected components within the graph.

```
connected_components_count({
  0: [8, 1, 5],
  1: [0],
  5: [0, 8],
  8: [0, 5],
  2: [3, 4],
  3: [2, 4],
  4: [3, 2]
}) # -> 2
```

```
connected_components_count({
  1: [2],
  2: [1,8],
  6: [7],
  9: [8],
  7: [6, 8],
  8: [9, 7, 2]
}) # -> 1
```

```
connected_components_count({
  3: [],
  4: [6],
  6: [4, 5, 7, 8],
  8: [6],
  7: [6],
  5: [6],
  1: [2],
  2: [1]
}) # -> 3
```

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/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/)

How Alex Made An App That Got 80k+ Users In 1 Month

### The Story
- In summer 2016, Pokemon GO took over the world. Alex saw a need for an app to figure out where certain Pokemon were, so he and a friend quickly created a Yelp-style crowd-sourced app tying Pokemon to locations (pulled from the Yelp API). Alex worked on the Android app, and the friend owned by back-end.
- The app immediately saw immense traction, going from a few dozen to a few hundred to a few thousand (3,000+) new installs *per day* within just a week. **After less than a month, the app had been used by 80,000+ people.**
- Alex ran into copyright issues publishing the app as it used Pokemon images. Despite the app being free, ad-free, and not even asking for donations, it kept getting rejected. To hack around this, a server-side flag was created to turn off the images as the app was in review and turn them back on when the app got approved.
- Google Play eventually found out about the trick and took down the app for copyright infringement. However, the app was impressive enough at this point that Alex could include it on his resume, and it helped a lot getting interviews and giving him something to talk about during them.

### Learnings
- *Building a marketplace is extremely difficult* - A marketplace product is one that's a platform and requires a certain amount of some valuable resource in order to be useful: It's not useful on its own in a vacuum. For example, Uber needs a supply of readily available drivers to be useful. In this app's case, it needed data on Pokemon locations, which had to be provided by users.
- *Don't expect users to use the product properly* - In fact, don't expect your users to not be jerks. The app suffered a lot initially as users were uploading blatantly fake data of legendary Pokemon showing up in the wild - Legendary Pokemon hadn't even been released yet during the app's lifespan!
- *Be proactive and think through edge cases* - Zooming out from the prior point, it's just good to do this in general no matter what kind of software you're building, whether it's an entire app or a small feature on some already existing product owned by a FAANG company. Understand how things can get weird and address those scenarios accordingly.

If you want to learn how to build your own side projects, check these out:
- [[Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/AI4zi759PSGn6RwIFT6f/masterclass-how-to-come-up-with-100k-users-app-ideas-you-can-build-for-free/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OEuX0KMhcnNSTJ50Voee/masterclass-how-to-build-and-grow-tech-products-to-500k-users-for-free/)

If you're interested in the code of the Android app, Alex took the time to save it here: [https://github.com/Gear61/GO-Database](https://github.com/Gear61/GO-Database).

Missed Estimates

In this segment, we’re challenged with a new scenario: an individual contributor consistently misses their own estimates. This is our opportunity to apply the essence of management—creating positive, sustainable change in organizational performance.

- We frame the issue not just as a problem to fix, but as an opportunity to **create a delta** in this person’s effectiveness and the team’s overall reliability.
- Our goal is to **understand the root cause**—is it due to optimism bias, poor time management, lack of clarity, or systemic issues in the planning process?
- We can introduce **structured changes**: better estimation techniques, mentoring, regular retrospectives, or adjusting sprint planning to account for variability.
- We aim for improvements that are **sustainable**—equipping the individual with tools or frameworks they can continue to use independently.
- As always, our success isn’t in reacting to the problem but in **proactively shaping a better outcome** that would not have happened without our involvement.

If you want to learn more from Gilad, he shares free leadership advice daily on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/giladnaor/?utm_source=taro&utm_medium=course&utm_campaign=cta) and weekly on the[ δeltas newsletter](https://posts.managementdeltas.com/?utm_source=taro&utm_medium=course&utm_campaign=cta)

Define

In this section, we explain how we at Amazon adopted the **DMAIC process**—a structured Six Sigma methodology—to bring clarity and control to our increasingly complex operations. This approach helped us stay focused on what drives business performance, even as we scaled globally and diversified our offerings.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We turned to Six Sigma to manage complexity**: As Amazon grew from a book retailer into a multi-product, international company, we needed a structured way to measure, monitor, and improve our processes. Six Sigma’s DMAIC framework offered exactly that.
- **DMAIC became our operational foundation**: The five steps—**Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control**—allowed us to break down complex systems into manageable parts, identify input metrics, and drive improvements with precision.
- **We embraced Donald Wheeler’s philosophy**: Following his principle that understanding variation is key to improvement, we focused on how changing inputs affects outputs, aligning our culture around continuous improvement.
- **We built clarity into invisible systems**: Since much of Amazon’s operations (software, fulfillment, logistics) were either virtual or distant, we created standard definitions and measurements to make the system’s performance tangible and actionable.
- **We aligned every part of our system to inputs**: From product selection and pricing to software reliability and delivery speed, we learned that managing the inputs across all departments ultimately shaped our outputs like revenue and customer satisfaction.

To dive deeper into Input Metrics Mastery and learn more from Bill and Colin, follow these links:

- Take the full course at their website: <https://workingbackwards.com/>
- Buy the book: <https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595>
- Bill's LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-carr/>
- Colin's LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinbryar/>

Asking Great Questions [Part 23] - Deep Thanks

Your journey doesn't end after you get an answer to your question, quite the opposite. The follow-through after getting a great answer is absolutely critical. This lesson teaches you:

- What a basic thanks looks like and an easy way to level up past it
- 5 more creative ways to give deeper thanks
- Why giving thanks is also a skill with tremendous depth that can unlock tremendous opportunity if you truly become one of the best in the world at it (with one of those opportunities being making everyone want to answer your questions all the time)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 27] - Writing Your Packet

You have gone through the entire performance review cycle and done a ton of amazing work. So how do you now capture all the great things you've done so you have a great shot at promotion? This lesson teaches you:

- How to make writing your self-review/promotion packet easy (hint: it requires following the advice of this course)
- When to start writing your performance review materials
- How to work with your engineering manager to optimize the quality of your promotion packet

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer [Part 16] - Show Your Work

It's not enough to do the work - You also need to do the work to get full credit for it. This lesson teaches you:

- The 2 big components behind showing your work properly
- The differences between junior engineers and mid-level engineers when it comes to showing their work
- How mid-level engineers give far more effective status updates compared to junior engineers, explained with an in-depth example

Learn how to write an excellent project update post here: ["How to get more visibility on work?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/XA0X51AypDLCeVeleJv4/how-to-get-more-visibility-on-work/)

Master The DSA Interview [Part 16] - Alternate Approaches

The beautiful (and sometimes frustrating) thing about software engineering is that almost every technical problem has a ton of possible solutions. This lesson teaches you:

- Why being able to come up with alternate approaches is so important as a software engineer at the top level
- How to have a proper discussion with your interviewer about alternate approaches
- What a great alternate approach discussion looks like, discussed with an in-depth example

Dive deeper into real system design here: [\[Course\] System Design Masterclass: Shipping Real Features To Production](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)

Negotiation Course: Negotiating With An Exploding Offer

An exploding offer is an offer that must be accepted within a time limit (potentially as short as a few hours), otherwise it will expire.

**Exploding offers are often fake** and you can take longer than the supposed deadline. However, you should protect yourself in the small chance that the explosion is real by having backup options.

If you face an exploding offer, the first step is to understand where the urgency is coming from:

> What’s the timing constraint? I’ve dedicated 3 weeks interviewing here and enjoyed meeting the team, but I'm curious why there's such an urgency at this point in the process?

A few options for how to request more time: 

- **(less effective)** Explain that you’re still collecting data and wrapping up the process so you’d like another week. Something like: "*I’m in the last round with the company so I’m confident I can get back to you by Monday.*"
- **(more effective)** Ask for more information. "*One thing I heard in the interview is that many of the mobile developers have transitioned to work on dev infra, which is interesting for me. Could I chat with someone who does made that transition?*" 
  - In a similar way, you can also request to chat with folks in the management chain, e.g. the director or VP.
  - When Rahul was at Meta, he’d do calls with people who got offers coming from Pinterest

Worst case scenario, you have to renege or quit shortly after joining. You should avoid this if possible (there is potential reputational damage), but we'll talk about this scenario in the next video.

Negotiation Course: How To Practice Negotiation Skills

Just like anything else, practice makes perfect. But conceptually understanding negotiation and practicing negotiation is very, very different.

Be aware of the difference in the incentives and working model between a job negotiation (once every 2 years) and your operational model on the job (every day).

- One (the job) is built on shared understanding, sharing vulnerability. There's a clear incentive to make life more comfortable for people around you.
- One (the negotiation) is **not** built on shared understanding. The person who wins is the person who can tolerate discomfort.

The upshot of all this is that negotiation is extremely important but you don’t get to practice much. Verbalize the advice and practice in conversation with a friend or family member.

[Become A Go-To Person 8/18] Other Ways To Develop Exptertise

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/)

[Part 2] Software Engineer Onboarding: Learn the Workflow

To make the hard work easier, learn the workflow and process first.

**A big mistake new engineers make**: they dive in directly to a project and start landing code/landing impact. You goal is be curious about the testing and deployment procedures, along with the workflows and processes. One way to do this is to deliberately pick the simplest possible bugs and code changes to make, so you can exercise the workflow. 

- [Use Code Review Feedback For Hypergrowth](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/aBRgdYpUfnUpoyWG4qZC/use-code-review-feedback-for-hypergrowth-meta-prodigy-engineer-story/)
- [How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/iYpRj8XfyzCSaTYnce3y/how-to-write-better-code-faster-as-a-software-engineer-11192022/)

This is part 2 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 to part 3 of the masterclass here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/7l4Nr4hQf8Pv8zfGZwh4/part-3-software-engineer-onboarding-understand-tactical-decisions/)
- [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/)

Negotiation Course: Recognize The Information Asymmetry

First, let's make clear a harsh truth of the world: Companies are economically incentivized to pay you as little as possible, even if you think they're generous.

**You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you ask for.** Many candidates are unaware how high compensation can go, and therefore never ask about it. This leads to them being underpaid, and the information asymmetry is used to benefit the company.

Recruiters and companies talk to candidates every week or even every day. On the other hand, you probably only talk to a few companies every few years. So recruiters have way more information about what you’re likely making and what you may expect.

Break Into Tech And Become A Software Engineer [Part 10] - Why It's Better To Share

In this lesson, Brian explains the value of building in public as a tool for personal accountability, skill development, and community building.

This lesson covers:

- How building in public holds you accountable to your goals and helps you communicate more effectively, a key skill for software development
- The importance of using public sharing to connect with like-minded people and build a supportive community
- Why building in public improves your discoverability and can lead to networking, job opportunities, and genuine collaboration

If you need extra help breaking into tech, join Brian's exclusive, cohort-based bootcamp (just 10 students per batch). Use this special link for $800 off: <https://www.parsity.io/taro>

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianjenney/>

[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/)

Come Up With 500k+ User Project Ideas [Part 6] - Your Idea Is Worthless (For Now)

While the idea behind a side project or any tech product is extremely important, ideas as a whole are usually placed on a pedestal they don't deserve. This lesson teaches you:

- Why ideas are initially worthless
- What truly makes a side project valuable (hint: it's not that much about the idea)
- Why you shouldn't build out the vision of that random MBA you just met for 0 pay and 10% equity

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.