Asking Great Questions [Part 10] - Put Yourself On The Line

When you ask a question, you are asking some human(s) out there to spend some time providing you with an answer. To make this process go better, you must do everything you can to prevent the interaction from being one-sided in the wrong direction. This lesson teaches you:

- How to swap the time dynamics behind a question in your favor
- What it looks like to offer your time within a question, explained with an in-depth example
- When and how to take the more extreme route of offering synchronous time, explained with an in-depth example

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 26] - Peer Feedback Squad

In order to get promoted as a software engineer, you need several important people to have your back. This is especially important for senior level and above promotions where you might need 10+ pieces of glowing feedback. This lesson teaches you:

- How to identify the critical peers you need to vouch for you in performance review
- What "feel good" and ultimately near useless feedback looks like, which is what a lot of stagnant engineers are stuck with
- What powerful, meaningful feedback that actually makes a difference in promotion cases looks like
- How your peer feedback should look based on the seniority of the peer giving it to you

Balancing Time Between Your Job And Self Learning

Many engineers hear about personal projects (side projects) as a way to accelerate career growth but are confused about how to allocate time for these projects. This video covers a few strategies to balance time between your day job and self-learning. 

1. **Avoid a Binary Approach:** Don't view your day job and side projects as completely distinct: ideally, the work you do in one is good for the other. This can manifest not only in terms of the skills you're building, but also your enthusiasm for writing code or understanding a domain in more detail. Productivity and fulfillment are often maximized when one can excel at work and pursue personal projects simultaneously.

2. **Learning Integration:** Integrate your learning from both day job and personal projects. The knowledge gained in one domain can be applied to the other, so you become better at both!

3. **Effective Self-Learning:** Passive content consumption, such as watching videos or reading blog posts without active engagement, is ineffective for learning. Instead, explain concepts to others or build something to truly benefit from self-learning.

4. **Company-Career Mismatch:** In larger organizations, the company's objectives may not always align with individual career goals. The responsibility for your personal career growth is yours -- don't delegate this to the company! That's why you need to invest in self-learning and personal projects to build the skills and experiences necessary that are best for you.

5. **Enjoyable Self-Learning:** Instead of focusing on the balance between work and personal learning, find ways to make self-learning a fun and fulfilling experience. Common ways this manifests: hitting the publish button, seeing the download count on your app go up, or seeing comments on a blog post you wrote.

Like most things career-related, you should take a proactive approach to career development. Self-learning is no different!

Related resources: 

- [\[Masterclass\] 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/)
- [How should I set time apart for learning new things?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/FjmcvlTJYssSd5wH2pij/how-should-i-set-time-apart-for-learning-new-things/)
- [How Long to Crank Out a Decent Side Project?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/QA6lCGdPpwAd3xRrpjZ7/how-long-to-crank-out-a-decent-side-project/)
-

[Become A Go-To Person 10/18] Expert Formula Exercise

["Become an expert" template](https://jordancutler.notion.site/Become-an-expert-template-80b8a2dc2c7148bea01d2180adf1c9bb)

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/)

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 10] - Be An Excellent Communicator

One way to envision your role as a tech lead is that you're the "glue" that holds the team together. The core way that glue manifests is through your communication. This lesson teaches you:

- Why excellent communication is vital towards "conducting the orchestra"
- How to communicate empathetically
- How to communicate clearly
- The right amount to communicate (it's often higher than you think)

Turn yourself into a communication master with our course: [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 17] - Fixer

While many software engineers see bugs as a source of frustration holding back their roadmap work, there is a certain group of staff engineers who view them the opposite way. This lesson teaches you:

- What the fixer staff engineer archetype is
- The "gap filler" style of fixer
- The "discoverer" style of fixer and why it's so impactful and well supported at Big Tech companies
- How to become a fixer staff engineer

Level up your debugging skills with this: [\[Masterclass\] How To Become A Debugging Master And Fix Issues Faster](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ioR6WzamAIUTpySLAr7o/masterclass-how-to-become-a-debugging-master-and-fix-issues-faster/)

Negotiation Course: Help Us Help You

Congratulations, you made it to the end of the course, **The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation**! Here are the major takeaways we covered: 

- Negotiation is extremely high leverage
- Negotiate the whole compensation package
- Don’t share information that can hurt you (e.g. salary)
- Negotiate when you have an offer

If you're isolated, you're much more likely to be taken advantage of. The antidote is to engage with the community. Then we can anonymously share your feedback and result to benefit everyone. Together, we'll all succeed 😇

If you netted a meaningful compensation delta from this course ($10K), I'd love to hear from you! Email me at [rahul@jointaro.com](mailto:rahul@jointaro.com). 

Next steps:

- Share + get support: [**joinTaro.com/questions/create/**](http://joinTaro.com/questions/create/)
  - 🧠 Get 10x better advice than anything on Blind or Reddit
- Find community: [**joinTaro.com/events/**](http://joinTaro.com/events/)
  - 🧑‍🏫 Join me for Group Office Hours!

Send me feedback at [**team+negotiation@jointaro.com**](mailto:team+negotiation@jointaro.com)

Software Engineers - Don't Forget These 2 Things When Considering A Team

These 2 more tactical aspects are often forgotten by software engineers when evaluating a team, even though they are huge influencers on your work-life balance and career growth on a team:
- **Oncall** - You want to make sure that the team has a healthy system there where you aren't oncall too often, and the system is stable (so you don't need to wake up in the middle of the night constantly to fight fires). For more information on how to evaluate the health of an oncall rotation, check out the linked discussion below from an Atlassian Software Engineer.
- **Code review speed** - It is easy for slow iteration here to stack up. If your team takes 3 days on average to review your PR and you need 3 revisions to finalize your commit, that means it will take you 2 entire weeks to land code (which is abysmal). A good team will turnaround code reviews in <1 day.

This clip was taken from our [masterclass on finding the best company/team for you - Click here to watch the full thing](https://link.jointaro.com/F4DDyKfuo3hMhj868).

Related resources:
- ["How do I factor in oncall into my team selection?"](https://link.jointaro.com/3LHQz46Ft1c7ZoXo6) - Question from a Junior Software Engineer at Atlassian
- [Code Review MUST Be Fast, Otherwise The Team Is Unhealthy](https://link.jointaro.com/oxK55E1bkX8nMeNGA)

DSA Crash Course [Part 79] - Non Adjacent Sum Approach

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

> Write a function, *non_adjacent_sum*, that takes in a list of numbers as an argument. The function should return the maximum sum of non-adjacent items in the list. There is no limit on how many items can be taken into the sum as long as they are not adjacent.
>
> For example, given: \[2, 4, 5, 12, 7\]
>
> The maximum non-adjacent sum is 16, because 4 + 12. 4 and 12 are not adjacent in the list.

```
nums = [2, 4, 5, 12, 7]
non_adjacent_sum(nums) # -> 16
```

```
nums = [7, 5, 5, 12]
non_adjacent_sum(nums) # -> 19
```

```
nums = [7, 5, 5, 12, 17, 29]
non_adjacent_sum(nums) # -> 48
```

```
nums = [
72, 62, 10,  6, 20, 19, 42,
46, 24, 78, 30, 41, 75, 38,
23, 28, 66, 55, 12, 17, 9,
12, 3, 1, 19, 30, 50, 20
]

non_adjacent_sum(nums) # -> 488
```

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/)

Principal Engineer (L8) Describes Most Important Skill - Pong Eksombatchai

Pong is a Principal Engineer at Pinterest.

- **Most important skill**: technical communication. As a Principal Engineer, you can't have sufficient impact on your own. Effective technical communication enables you to work through others and advise other teams on the recommended technical path. 
- **Advice**: model the behavior and culture you want. A Principal Engineer is, by default, a role model for the team and org, so their actions set the tone.

Here's the full playlist asking engineers what the most important skill is for their level: [Asking 7 Levels Of Engineers The Most Important Skill](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/J9Io5lDGaYUpI8vGrUyI/)

Helpful links:
- [SWE2 --> Principal Eng in 4 years](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/Lvf1TDKt1R4ZJSCr9BVv/rockstar-software-engineer-story-sw2-greater-principal-in-just-4-years/)
- Taro's top 10 to get promoted from [senior to staff engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/YD8LMCSlE71VUGUbNAWM/)
- [David Pan on what makes a great tech lead](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/uHqZZ15SK19MatEvLSO6/what-makes-a-truly-great-tech-lead-a-vp-of-engineerings-perspective/)
- [Pong on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantat-eksombatchai-268142b8/ )

Introducing The Active Users Problem

In this lesson we talk about a realistic example problem used throughout the course to simulate an AI-assisted coding interview.

- **Understand the problem context and deliverables:** Build the back-end logic for an active users metrics dashboard, including calculating daily unique active users and rolling 7-day active user counts from messy, real-world log data.
- **Work within a structured codebase:** Learn how to navigate starter code with helper functions (e.g., ID normalization, bot filtering) and focus on implementing two core functions while leveraging provided tests.
- **Set expectations for interview complexity:** Explore how AI-assisted interviews can range from simple LeetCode-style tasks to multi-file, production-like environments—and how this example reflects an average level of complexity.

Come Up With 500k+ User Project Ideas [Part 18] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Join Alex for Group Office Hours (check the bottom right): <https://www.jointaro.com/p/alex-chiou/>

Share your side project idea in the Taro forum: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

Community member made summary of the course: [Side Project Ideas - Summary Doc](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/courses%2Fgeneral_resources%2F%5BSUMMARY%5D%20Side%20Projects%20-%20Coming%20Up%20With%20An%20Idea.pdf?alt=media&token=d7a9aa4e-c02d-4663-ac91-a09547428fe2)

Related courses:

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

Tech Lead Blueprint 9/17 - Tracking Progress

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

DSA Crash Course [Part 62] - Shortest Path Walkthrough

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

Code along and test your work in the following editor workspace: <https://structy.net/problems/shortest-path?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/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/)

How To Influence Your Team Without Authority

Huge thanks to [Ryan Kuck](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-kuck/) for leading this session!

Have you had amazing idea with clear data to support it, but it was rejected? In this event we will talk about why that might have happened, and suggest alternate strategies for next time.

Spoiler alert: We use computers to reach millions/billions of users, but we are very different from computers ourselves. Presenting the best data to another person can actually backfire, unless it is coming from a place of shared goals/values and trust. It isn’t logical, but it is human nature. If you explain a better idea than I presented, and you even have rock solid evidence, I no longer am thinking about the user or our business impact but rather about how I just don’t want to “be wrong”.

Come to this event with your stories of challenges and successes of influencing your engineering team!

To dive deeper, check out these resources:

- [**"How do I lead without authority?"**](https://www.jointaro.com/question/BWv3hFSELbn59mXJbkNB/how-do-i-lead-without-authority/)
- [**\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers**](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 21] - Plot Your Growth Journey

It can be overwhelming looking at all the skills you need to build to grow from senior to staff as both the breadth and depth of the skill development you need to do are massive. This lesson teaches you:

- How to tactically grow 1 step at a time from senior to staff and long-term
- What skills you should develop first to start (or continue) going down your senior to staff journey

"How can I help with what you guys are doing with Taro?" - 9/13/2022

- If you can afford it, please [join Taro Premium](https://app.jointaro.com/membership)!
  - If you work at a Big Tech company, there's a good chance you have L&D (learning and development) budget that you can use to expense Taro and pretty much get it for free! Here's a [template](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xpY2XBKTpiMN-o7U2c1pvqai5afQSVIuGMgQZiB-_Rg/edit) you can share with your manager to get Taro reimbursed.
  - Here are the companies we know of that can reimburse Taro: Meta, Google, Amazon, Robinhood, Airtable, Yelp, Gusto, Shopify, Gusto, New Relic
- Send us your feedback!
  - As an early user of Taro, you have outsized power for taking a bet on us. We listen very closely to all user feedback at this stage.
  - On the mobile apps, we have a "Send feedback" button in your profile.
  - We're also on LinkedIn and the [Tech Career Growth Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/techcareergrowth/shared_invite/zt-lt2tbjcn-LOAVIDuGPI~nkuc4woHDLg).
- If the Taro's content is helpful for you, share it!
  - In the mobile apps, there's a share button on every Q&A and video.
  - We spent a lot of time on the underlying tech for this sharing, using something called "dynamic links". They work on every platform, matching the user to the Taro web app, iOS app, or Android app accordingly.
  - Fun fact: Taro content links will open up within the Android app after you install it and sign-in if you are shared a piece of Taro content and didn't have the app yet.
- If you're on Taro Premium, please share your perspective and answer questions! One of our core goals is to diversify the perspective on the platform.

This Is Why You Should Work For Big Tech

So many engineers want to work for FAANG and for good reason: There are lot of career benefits that Big Tech is exceptionally good at providing.

Here are the core scenarios where Big Tech is a slam dunk career choice for you:
- **You are earlier in career** - Big Tech will give you a rock solid foundation across all levels: Learning, compensation, job prospects - You name it. When you're younger, you will generally be more flexible with work-life balance (i.e. you're more physically able to work longer hours), so you will be better equipped to deal with the stress of Big Tech.
- **You need money** - More money is almost always useful, and if you live in a very high cost-of-living area (e.g. SF Bay Area), it becomes necessary. Big Tech gives a consistent, incredibly high income.
- **You value stability and are risk-averse** - Even with the layoffs, these companies are some of the safest places to be. Compared to peer companies, they have done far fewer layoffs across their lifespan and they have rock solid, wildly profitable business models.

Related resources:
- ["I want to land a job in a big tech as a SWE - How to do it?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/MWJfUBnnUr8CKYFCO8bp/i-want-to-land-a-job-in-a-big-tech-as-a-swe-how-to-do-it/)
- ["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/)

Was Getting A Masters While Working Worthwhile? From a Distinguished Engineer

Andrew Zhai was a Distinguished Engineer at Pinterest.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2013, Andrew started working at Pinterest in Computer Vision. Within a few years, he decided to do a part-time Masters degree from Stanford to build his foundational knowledge of Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

Andrew says the academic rigor and the courses helped him achieve success in industry. For the Machine Learning (ML) field in general, the field evolved quickly enough that going 'back to school' was worthwhile.

[Andrew on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-zhai-2796ab34/)

Related:

- [Does having a Master's mean I can expect a salary equivaent of a 2 YoE SWE?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/YSMUN3uxDmGLqKxIvmXI/does-having-a-masters-mean-i-can-expect-a-salary-equivaent-of-a-2-yoe-swe/)
- [Do I need to do masters in Computer Science to move ahead in career?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/tKuUT3ELEa1uCGBuMykX/do-i-need-to-do-masters-in-computer-science-to-move-ahead-in-career/)
- [Is an online Master's Degree in Computer Science worth it for a non-CS Bachelor's degree holder with 2 YOE?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/Qth4ohK7HbHTEC83dwIJ/is-an-online-masters-degree-in-computer-science-worth-it-for-a-non-cs-bachelors-degree-holder-with-2-yoe/)
- [Rahul's Computer Science Masters Degree from Stanford in 7 Minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDu6slRfLY4)

How To Handle Hints In A Software Engineer Interview Without Failing

The best software engineer interview performances feel like a collaborative experience between the interview candidate and the interviewer. If an interview is going well, you will be supporting them as the interviewer and maybe giving hints. However, both sides need to be careful about how this happens.

Here are the core points from the video:
- Giving hints is tricky. There are some situations where it's good and some where it's bad.
- In general, you should lean towards giving less hints as an interviewer to maximize the signal you get.
- *Don't give hints when the candidate is desperately fishing, and they have no idea how to solve the problem.*
  - **Fishing example**: "Can we use a binary tree for this?" (they didn't explain their thought process at all prior to asking)
- Fishing questions like the one above are tricky as you can't answer them normally:
  - **If you say "Yes":** You reveal the core pattern behind the problem, solving way too much of the problem for the candidate. At this point, they have failed the question.
  - **If you say "No":** The candidate is one step closer to the core solution via process of elimination. This sets them up to keep fishing until you say "Yes".
- When the candidate is fishing, say something like, *"How do you feel about it? If it makes sense, we can try building it out."* Flip the question back to them and push them to think through it more.
- Give hints to bridge small gaps. If the candidate is 90%+ of the way there, just give them the hint so everyone can move on.
  - A common scenario here is that the candidate has almost all of the solution working minus some trivial 1-liner. You are losing signal by having them struggle on this trivial piece and not working on other, larger problems. In this case, just give them the 1-liner.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - Data Structures And Algorithms](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/V4sTACzfOh22nMVcUV3w/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-data-structures-and-algorithms/)
- [[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 Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior LeetCode Experience](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ZYiTbN21FsqFxFdpwt5a/how-alex-got-into-meta-with-0-prior-leetcode-experience/)

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.