How To Get Interviews, Secure Offers, and Make More Money in Big Tech

Alan Stein, former executive and hiring manager at Google, Meta, Salesforce, and Tableau shares how jobs are really acquired at the world's top tech companies. 

No BS about resumes, cover letters, or LinkedIn profiles. Rather, Alan shares what actions you should actually take to land more interviews, offers, and earn more money.

Feel free to connect with [**Alan and say hi on LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanjstein/).

Become An Open Source Master [Part 15] - Find The Project Community

It's important to understand the bigger picture instead of focusing on every single line of code. Some questions worth asking when approaching a new codebase are: 

- what is the purpose of the code
- what are the opinions of the developers
- how is the code structured?

Connect with James:

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

Become An Open Source Master [Part 5] - The Benefits Of Open Source

We'll discuss the reasons why you should get involved in open source and the benefits it can bring, both professionally and personally.

- **Work on code that matters:** Contribute to projects used by others, gaining a sense of achievement and pride.
- **Improve your coding skills:** Receive feedback and learn from experienced developers, improving your coding abilities and knowledge.
- **Build relationships:** Connect with maintainers, contributors, and users, expanding your network and learning opportunities.
- **Enhance your professional portfolio:** Showcase your skills and experience to potential employers through your open source contributions.
- **Grow your personal reputation:** Gain recognition and build valuable connections within the open source community.

Connect with James: 

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

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/)

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer [Part 4] - Structuring Your Growth

Even though junior engineer to mid-level engineer is the 1st and easiest promotion, it's still a meaningful evolution with many parts. This lesson teaches you:

- The 3 core areas of improvement to grow from junior -&gt; mid-level
- The most important area to improve to make the junior -&gt; mid-level promotion
- How you should process the advice from this course

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 7] - The PREP Method

In this video, I delve into the Prep Method, a framework that simplifies communication by structuring messages into four key components: Point, Reason, Example, and Restate. I explain how each element contributes to clear and concise communication, making it ideal for software engineers and various communication scenarios.

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

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 6] - The Pyramid Principle

In this video, I explain the Pyramid Principle, a powerful communication framework that structures information hierarchically for clear and logical communication. I discuss how to apply it in presentations and communications, emphasizing starting with the main idea, supporting it with arguments, and providing detailed evidence.

**Action requested:** Understand and apply the Pyramid Principle for efficient and effective communication.

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

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 10] - Oncall

"Oncall" is a term that strikes fear into the heart of engineers. However, it's crucial for engineers to embrace oncall as an honorable duty and a place of opportunity as they become more senior, especially as they progress to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- The differences between senior and staff engineers when it comes to their scope within oncall
- How senior and staff engineers respond differently to oncall issues

Watch Alex's oncall case study here: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 6] - You Need Tenure

Software engineers like to give up when their team isn't going perfectly, often interviewing with another company entirely to jump ship. While this can work earlier in your career, it almost always stops as you're approaching staff. This lesson teaches you:

- Why job hopping to a staff uplevel at a top company is almost impossible
- Why you need to be in the same team for 2+ years in order to have a real case for staff
- The ingredients to develop the presence and impact of a staff engineer

Asking Great Questions [Part 25] - How You Should Evolve

It's important to make sure that you're always getting better - As long as you're improving, you will eventually become a rockstar engineer. So how does that work when it comes to judging your question asking ability? This lesson teaches you:

- What seniority does not mean when it comes to asking questions
- What seniority actually means when it comes to asking questions
- A simple framework you can use to evaluate the level your questions are at, split by junior/mid-level/senior+

Asking Great Questions [Part 20] - Make Fulfillment Easy

In order to get what you want, you need to know *exactly* what you want. This can be harder than many engineers realize. This lesson teaches you:

- The importance of reducing fulfillment friction, presented through the perspective of the person fulfilling the favor
- What it means to make fulfillment of your favor easy, shown with an in-depth example covering a common engineering ask
- How the spectrum behind fulfillment friction reduction is actually incredibly deep, especially if you're creative
- Ideas to make fulfillment easier with examples covering 3 more very commonly asked for favors

Asking Great Questions [Part 9] - Be Appreciative

The people who give the best help often have some degree of altruism. When you learn how to appeal to that altruism, you supercharge your chances of getting great answers quickly on your questions. This lesson teaches you:

- How many engineers view showing appreciation incorrectly, seeing it as a transactional action instead of a proactive action
- When to show appreciation proactively
- What it looks like weaving appreciation into your question, explained with an in-depth example
- A lazy way of showing "appreciation" that you should definitely avoid by spending an extra 10 seconds

[Become A Go-To Person 6/18] Become The Product Expert

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/)

Tech Lead Blueprint 17/17 - Conclusion

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

Tech Lead Blueprint 6/17 - Become Technically Strong

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 18] - Procrastination

We all learn how to procrastinate in school - It feels good to wait until the last minute to get something done as this means you got to use all that initial time to have fun! This lesson teaches you:

- Why people procrastinate
- The main tactic to apply to avoid procrastination
- What to do if you simply can't stop procrastinating

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 17] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Congratulations on making it to the final lesson of the course! This lesson teaches you:

- The key takeaways of being an effective tech lead
- Technical items you can take on to start being a better tech lead
- Leadership items you can take on to start being a better tech lead

For further support, start career discussions in the Taro forum to get top-tier advice: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

You can also go deeper with our related courses:

- [\[Course\] Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [\[Course\] System Design Masterclass: Shipping Real Features To Production](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)
- [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)
- [\[Course\] Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/)

Paper Reading: Beyond Next-Token Prediction: Enhancing Language Models with Multi-Token Outputs

Session led by: [Lucia Mocz](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucia-mocz-ph-d-35a98a1b6/)

In this talk, we will look at groundbreaking research on advancing the training of large language models. Traditional models like GPT and Llama rely on next-token prediction, which can be expensive and time-consuming, but this research suggests a more efficient approach: multi-token prediction.

**Key Highlights:**

- **Enhanced Sample Efficiency**: Training models to predict multiple future tokens at once increases sample efficiency, leading to significant improvements in downstream capabilities.
- **Innovative Architecture**: By employing n independent output heads on a shared model trunk, better performance with no additional training time can be achieved.
- **Superior Performance**: 13B parameter models outperform strong baselines on generative benchmarks, solving 12% more problems on HumanEval and 17% more on MBPP.
- **Algorithmic Reasoning**: Multi-token prediction fosters the development of induction heads and enhances algorithmic reasoning capabilities.
- **Faster Inference**: Models trained with 4-token prediction are up to 3 times faster during inference, even with large batch sizes.

Join us to explore how multi-token prediction can revolutionize language model training and performance, especially for coding and natural language tasks.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn about the future of language model training and its practical applications!\
\
Paper: [**https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.19737**](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.19737)

Maximizing a Severance Package 7/9 - Common Asks and Gives

- 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)

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.