Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 4] - Stay The Course

It's incredibly easy to get distracted with random incoming tasks, especially at a fast-paced company like FAANG. This lesson teaches you:

- The importance of staying the course and sticking to your high-impact, ruthlessly prioritized tasks
- How to diplomatically push back and say "No" (saying "Yes" to everything is one of the easiest ways to destroy your productivity as a software engineer)

Noob Software Engineer vs. Pro Software Engineer

The best software engineers proactively front-load the work to write clean code. They do this by planning ahead to find the best approach and taking the time to "dress up" their code review really well.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Noob Engineer** - Their goal is just to get the code to work. As soon as they get the happy flow functional, they submit the code for review. Their pull request doesn't have good context attached, and the test plan isn't thorough at all. They have to go through many revisions of teammates rejecting their code before they can finally land the commit. After it's landed, there's a high chance it breaks, and now they have to go back to their code to patch it up (or hard revert it).
- **Pro Engineer** - They come up with a plan to implement the best approach and vet it with their teammates. They make sure the code is polished and covers edge cases thoroughly before submitting the pull request. Their PR clearly explains the purpose of the code and has a very detailed test plan demonstrating what it does. Their teammates quickly and smoothly read their code and accept it on the first try. The pro engineer is able to land their commit shortly after submission, and the entire process was smooth for everyone. The pro engineer's reputation within the team grows with every masterful commit they push to production.

This highlight is from our masterclass on "How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer". [Click here to watch it.](https://link.jointaro.com/v6zEgUfQTxoSj33Z7)

Related resources:
- [One Diff, One Thesis - What Every Code Review Should Be Like](https://link.jointaro.com/5Ehehxt6jBR42ui1A)
- ["What can I do to quickly build my reputation as a junior engineer?"](https://link.jointaro.com/hxCTvumsQhUqRAbn6)

System Design Series: Taro Playlists [Part 4] - Covering Edge Cases

The tactics are covered in the doc linked above, so this summary will focus on the "meta" context behind this part and additional commentary:

- You should *always* at least try to cover all the edge cases when building out a product, even if you're a small startup.
  - If you're at Big Tech in particular, you absolutely need to have amazing coverage on edge cases as even an issue affecting just 1% of users could be breaking the experience for 10 million+ people.
- A lot of edge cases are quite easy to cover and are low-hanging fruit. Bad engineers will be lazy and ignore these, supposedly in the name of velocity.
  - **Example:** You have a login form that takes in email. Instead of no-oping, throwing a generic error, or letting them login with an invalid email, validate the email upon submission and show an error message if it's invalid. This will almost always be a 5-10 minute change.
- There's many "playbooks" of edge cases, so coming up with edge cases isn't rocket science - It's largely a solved problem. Here are some examples:
  - **Generic edge cases that apply to any user input:**
    - Input is blank
    - Input is overly long
    - Input is very strong
  - **Generic edge cases that apply to any content collection:**
    - No content
    - A lot of content
    - Content fetch fails
- *Being very diligent around edge cases is also crucial for interviews, both DSA and system design, and is often how Big Tech interviewers differentiate the great candidates from the mediocre ones.*

You can [find the full system design doc here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15WaM8Ojan82g0m2mtz6kC2Hiyj0Q6VbjfqRmVNDI3qw/edit?usp=sharing) - Feel free to use it as a template for when you're designing systems at your job!

Master The Behavioral Interview [Part 3] - The 3 Keys To Behavioral Interviews

In a behavioral interview, you can say literally anything. So what should you say? This lesson teaches you:

- The 3 keys to any effective behavioral interview answer
- How to specifically show each of the 3 keys
- What a good behavioral interview answer looks like vs. a bad one (hint: the good ones integrates the 3 keys while the bad one doesn't)

To learn how Alex built 30 side projects with 5 million+ users combined: [\[Taro Top 10\] Building Impressive Side Projects](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/vKUWMgmmaEvzcYUXZs4B/)

The Real Pros And Cons Of Working At FAANG And Big Tech

Working at FAANG and Big Tech is general is put on a pedestal by the vast majority of the industry, but it's not all sunshine and roses. Here's the complete pictures:
- Pros:
  - **Prestige** - If you don't already have one of these names on your resume, adding one makes it 10x better automatically.
  - **Compensation** - This one is the most obvious: These companies pay extremely well.
  - **Consistent foundation** - The biggest one is the learning, especially for earlier-in-career software engineers. It is hard to go into these companies, do well there for a couple years, and not come out as a significantly better engineer. You will get more consistency by setting a baseline for your compensation and level.
- Cons:
  - **Hard to find scope** - In particular, growing to senior can be difficult. So many of the hard technical problems at these companies are already solved, and there are thousands of super talented software engineers looking for scope as well.
  - **You're just a cog in the machine** - At FAANG, you are one talented engineer out of literally 10,000+. The majority of engineers will be doing very incremental work that doesn't feel very fulfilling - There are literally engineers whose job it is to optimize a single button. This is all very connected to the aforementioned con of not being able to find scope.
  - **Work-life balance is dicey** - These companies pay you well for a reason: The bar is high. It can be stressful and tiring to meet expectations, especially if you're transitioning from a non-FAANG company.
- It's also important to remember that you need a much more holistic set of skills on top of coding most of the time to succeed at these companies. For many, this is a pro as it leads to more well-rounded growth, but for others who want to focus more on being builders, it can be incredibly draining.

For a deeper look into what life at FAANG is actually like, join us for our upcoming event: [Should You Work At FAANG? - What Big Tech Is Like For Software Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/event/should-you-work-at-faang-what-big-tech-is-like-for-software-engineers/)

This clip was taken from our [1.5 hour masterclass on finding the best company/team for you, which you can click here to watch](https://link.jointaro.com/F4DDyKfuo3hMhj868).

Related resources:
- [Why You Should Start Your Career At A Big Tech Company](https://link.jointaro.com/9k3HkgfJsTp1Nd2w5)
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9)

Managing Up: Introduction

Managing up is the skill of building ethical and effective relationships with your boss and senior peers. This course will teach you how to do that.

- 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)

[**Ethan Evans**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/) is a retired Amazon Vice President, now sharing his leadership expertise.

He spent 12 years in startups (10 in leadership roles), and then had a 15 year career at Amazon. He has led global teams of 800+ and products with annual revenue above $500M. He holds over 70 patents.

Explaining Your Experience In A Meaningful Way On A Resume

Is this a good resume snippet: Worked on the SIVAD system, using Room, AndroidX, Activities, and Java

How do you make the experience portions of your resume stand out?

Is this a good resume snippet: Champion for unit test coverage for Cool Company's iOS app, increasing it by 20% and reducing the amount of new iOS user issues by 10%

What is the main way people struggle with their resumes?

Is this a good resume snippet: Led the JavaScript migration effort with strong communication, architectural, and code quality skills

- The most common way resumes struggle is that they tell instead of show
- Here's an example:
  - **Telling:** Added unit tests to the Android app with JUnit and Java
  - **Showing:** Increased test coverage of the Android app by 80%, which reduced bug tickets from users by 50%
- In a nutshell, don't just say what you did - Adding an adjective like "great" doesn't automatically make your feat impressive. Prove that you did something great by talking about how you did it and the actual result (which is ideally business impact).
- This method of communication is especially important for resumes as their audience is mainly non-technical: Recruiters. They aren't going to understand the more specific tech buzzwords. You need to write things in more "plain English", so that your accomplishments can be understood as impressive by almost anyone.

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] Get More Interviews: Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/get-more-interviews-write-a-stellar-resume-as-a-software-engineer/) - By taking the course, you get access to Alex's most recent resume!
- [Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/WFJYebwJW2rhviTrQrB3/your-tech-resume-should-look-boring/)
- ["What high-impact achievements should a full-stack engineering intern target for a stronger resume?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/cnEgJuQMKI3G4rqhEkp4/what-high-impact-achievements-should-a-full-stack-engineering-intern-target-for-a-stronger-resume/)

Become A Debugging Master [Part 2] - Why You Should Love Bugs

Bugs are often seen as a nuisance, but in reality, they offer one of the highest-impact ways to grow and succeed as an engineer. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Junior engineers often avoid bugs to chase “cool” feature work, but experienced engineers recognize bugs as critical for making meaningful product impact
- Owning and fixing bugs can accelerate your career growth, even to senior levels like Staff or Senior Staff Engineer, by demonstrating deep technical skill
- Debugging teaches you to dive across teams, codebases, and systems—skills that are rare, valuable, and highly rewarded
- Fixing bugs ensures real, lasting impact compared to feature work, where many experiments and launches often quietly fail
- Mature engineers view the endless supply of bugs as opportunities to create visible, undeniable value by removing problems that directly affect users

Related resources:

- Code quality course: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Girish Patangay: The billion versions of Facebook you’ve never seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXGgc79sGwY)

Having The Proper Mindset For Interviews

True or false: You need to care a lot about your Big Tech interview, because passing it will drastically improve your life. The more prominent it is in your brain, the more likely you are to pass.

True or false: Your input is much more important than the output and results you achieve.

Why should you not view interviews as a test?

True or false: You shouldn't take any breaks when studying for interviews, because the relentless focus will help you learn the material better.

- *The more you care about your interview, the less likely you are to pass it.*
- Interviews are all about maintaining a nimble, flexible state of mind, so you can react gracefully when hit with a problem you haven't prepared for. This will almost always happen on interviews with tougher companies.
- If you view your interview as a "make or break" opportunity (which it admittedly very well may be) and go into it with a lot of anxiety, you will not have that healthy state of mind. When your interviewer goes off-script, your mental state will likely shatter.
- View interviews as a chance for you to go in and learn from some very smart people, and if you happen to get a job offer, that's a nice bonus. This much more relaxed and positive mentality will reduce your anxiety.

Related resources:

- [\[Taro Top 10\] Finding A Tech Job](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/E6R0wVJ5EyCfVnVrlfno/)
- [\[Masterclass\] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - System Design](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/J3I9fTW9ulr6T9KjxpqY/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-system-design/)

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 2] - Why Most Tech Leads Suck

There are far more bad tech leads than good tech leads. But why is that? This lesson teaches you:

- How tech leads struggle when they have bad intentions
- How tech leads struggle when they have good intentions

How To Properly Learn To Code As A Software Engineer - Do The Simple Thing First

Software engineers are obsessed with using the most modern framework in pursuit of the best code. Ironically, this dogma leads to them writing terrible code.

Here's the core points:

- **Do the simple thing first** - When picking up a stack, use the most basic framework. If possible, don't use a framework at all. By starting with the primitive setup, you will understand its limitations. This means that when you move up to modern frameworks and libraries, you will truly understand the problems they are trying to solve, allowing them to use them properly.
- **You can't "cheat" advanced code understanding** - You can't jump straight to the cutting-edge tech. These abstractions are powerful for a reason: They are naturally complex and require a deep understanding of the overall stack to use. When you try to "skip to the end", you will write bad code. The most terrible code comes from more junior software engineers trying to be smart prematurely with "modern architecture".

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] 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/)

A Powerful Tool For Software Engineer Productivity - Focus Blocks

So many junior software engineers don't manage their calendar well, and this especially hurts their ability to write code and finish tickets efficiently. Don't blindly go into every meeting, especially as a junior software engineer who is often not relevant to the meeting. Be deliberate with your calendar and establish focus blocks.

Here are the core points from the video:

- **So what is a focus block?** - It's a long, uninterrupted period of time for you to focus on a singular track of work. A true focus block should be 4+ hours, ideally an entire work day.
- **Why are focus blocks important for coding?** - Humans are naturally bad at context switching, so focus blocks are just important for productivity in general. Having a focus block allows you to enter a "flow state" where you rate of work ramps up over time and you get more and more into the groove. When it comes to coding in particular, the focus time is crucial as context switching with code is especially painful. It takes a while to deep back into a codebase when you return to a coding task, and there's also practical reasons like rebasing your local and setting up your build environment again.
- **How can I set up a focus block?** - The main "culprit" behind hurting your focus blocks is meetings. Be aggressive about shaving meetings off your calendar where you aren't a core player, especially if you're earlier-in-career. Group the remaining meetings you have onto certain days with the goal of freeing up 1-2 days entirely for coding. 1 on 1 meetings will be the easiest to move. For the meetings you do end up going to, [follow this advice to really participate and get maximum value out of them](https://www.jointaro.com/question/3E3SBCa59z5oDb7AEciw/i-struggle-to-come-up-with-things-that-add-value-to-a-meeting-what-do-i-say/).

Related resources:

- [\[Masterclass\] How To Manage Your Time Optimally In Tech And Achieve More Results](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/rnX9EKpzc43TgGW9MozG/masterclass-how-to-manage-your-time-optimally-in-tech-and-achieve-more-results/)
- ["How do I optimize my sacred hour at work?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/l8dzUVTu99CahofQsYAi/how-do-i-optimize-my-sacred-hour-at-work/)

Tech Lead Blueprint 1/17 - What's The Deal With Tech Leads?

Engineer A claims "*I am the Tech Lead for Engineer B*", while Engineer B claims "*I am the Tech Lead for Engineer A*" 🤔🤔

Lalit has seen several variants of this from his experience as a peer reviewer for Google engineers during performance reviews. Lalit discusses the common desire for the tech lead role, the lack of explicit definitions in tech companies, and the implicit nature of becoming a tech lead.

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

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 4] - What ACTUALLY Makes Code Good

Code quality is one of the most misunderstood topics in software engineering due to a combination of engineering laziness and misinformation. This video will teach you:

- What ACTUALLY makes code good and high-quality and why we're even software engineers to begin with
- How to have proper empathy for the end-user
- The common mistakes software engineers make when determining how good code is, including a very common misconception about how FAANG works
- The true value of clean code patterns and how they add value to the end-user instead of just being buzzwords (that can potentially make the code worse when used incorrectly)
- The #1 guiding principal when it comes to writing truly high-quality code

DSA Crash Course [Part 8] - Anagrams Approach

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

> Write a function, *anagrams*, that takes in two strings as arguments. The function should return a boolean indicating whether or not the strings are anagrams. Anagrams are strings that contain the same characters, but in any order.

```
anagrams('restful', 'fluster') # -> True
```

```
anagrams('cats', 'tocs') # -> False
```

```
anagrams('monkeyswrite', 'newyorktimes') # -> True
```

```
anagrams('paper', 'reapa') # -> False
```

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/>

What The Optimal Discussion On Code Review Looks Like

- Code review feedback lives on a spectrum of minor to major. Here are the 2 extremes that generally shouldn't happen:
  - **Minor**: Syntax issues, formatting nits, commit message grammar
  - **Major**: Redoing the entire approach, architecture teardown, questioning whether the code review should even exist
- You want to avoid talking about minor issues as these should be caught via automation with linters.
- While major issues should definitely be called out on a code review (better late than never), these problems should have been caught prior to the code was written during the technical design and overall planning phase for the project. If you find yourself doing this, you should zoom out and question if the team has the proper processes in place to proactively write good code instead of reactively preventing it from getting merged in at the last minute.
- Some examples of good code review discussion:
  - Calling out an uncovered edge case
  - Suggesting a more descriptive name for a class or method
  - Modularizing the code by making a common interface or utility method

Related resources:

- ["How to give better code reviews without full business context?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/vio35mw1SYWM8AYojB2w/how-to-give-better-code-reviews-without-full-business-context/)
- ["How to review code in another language/ from another team?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/B79W3aWc8xMB8cCULFdJ/how-to-review-code-in-another-language-from-another-team/)

Become An Open Source Master [Part 2] - How This Course Works

We'll explore the benefits of open source and how to contribute to existing projects in this course.

- Understand the benefits of open source and the mindset needed to work effectively in the open source ecosystem
- Learn how to get involved in someone else's project, understand their codebase, and make meaningful contributions
- Explore how contributing to open source can benefit your career by showcasing your skills and building your professional profile.
- This course won't cover how to create your own open source project or what it's like to work on one from within a company.

Connect with James: 

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

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 2] - Why Is The Staff Promotion So Hard?

Countless senior engineers hit a wall as they push for staff. This lesson teaches you:

- How the Staff Engineer role in and of itself is special by being a relatively new career invention
- The easiest way to tell if a Senior Engineer isn't ready to become a Staff Engineer
- Why the Staff Engineer promotion is fundamentally different from prior promotions
- Why many teams can't support an additional Staff Engineer promotion
- How you can be performing as a Staff Engineer and still not get the promotion

Get The Rating You Deserve [Part 1] - Course Outline

**In this course, we'll explore strategies, principles, and tactics to effectively convert the value you create into the rewards you deserve.**

- **Unleash Your Potential:** We'll address common pitfalls and biases that hinder career advancement, empowering you to overcome obstacles and achieve your goals.
- **Mindset Matters:** By shifting your mindset and adopting a positive, empowered perspective, you can accelerate your progress and achieve significant results.
- **Proven Strategies:** We'll delve into specific strategies and tactics that have been proven to be effective in maximizing your career potential.
- **Real-World Insights:** Through real-world examples and case studies, we'll illustrate how these principles can be applied to your specific career situation.

If you want to get personalized support from Yogi, you can reach out to him at [coaching@yogisharma.com](mailto:coaching@yogisharma.com) or schedule an introductory call to dive into your situation at <https://tinyurl.com/meetyogi>.

15 SWE Years In 1.5 Hours [Part 2] - Learning How To Code

In order to become a software engineer, you need to learn how to code. This lesson teaches you:

- The optimal way to use tutorials
- Why tutorials can easily start *hurting* your learning progression
- The dubious value of books when it comes to learning how to code
- An incredibly effective and altruistic way to truly learn technical material

Follow the advice here to understand any new codebase fast: ["What is the effective way to understand new repository in order to make the required changes in that repo?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KoxB3UU2zWC9pdYU6Rx0/what-is-the-effective-way-to-understand-new-repository-in-order-to-make-the-required-changes-in-that-repo/)

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.