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 18] - Product Hybrid

As a software engineer, you generally want to evolve past the code. There is 1 group of staff engineers who take that to the extreme. This lesson teaches you:

- What the product hybrid staff engineer archetype is
- The exact expectations of a product hybrid staff engineer
- How software engineers are uniquely positioned to hybridize as product managers
- Why most tech companies don't support the product hybrid archetype
- How to become a product hybrid staff engineer

Learn to sharpen your product sense with these resources: [\[Taro Top 10\] Product Management For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/66TyB60SRRmdnm0jmf55/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 13] - Bring Teams Together

Just because you're leading a team's worth of engineers doesn't mean that you're a staff engineer. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference between senior and staff engineers when it comes to the number of stakeholders on their projects
- The difference between senior and staff engineers when it comes to the depth of their XFN (cross-functional) collaboration
- How to align multiple teams, even those you aren't very familiar with

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 12] - Become The PM Right Hand

As a staff engineer, you need to have far more influence on the direction of the product, especially if you work on a product-facing team. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference in the depth of collaboration with the product manager between a senior engineer and a staff engineer
- Why staff engineers often need to partner closely with their product manager
- Which teams place more value on the engineer &lt;-&gt; product manager relationship
- What you should do to deepen your relationship between you and your product manager

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 5] - Finding The Right Team

As a senior engineer, you can work hard and do everything right and still not have a real case to get promoted to staff engineer. This lesson teaches you:

- Why certain teams are far better for a staff engineer promotion than others
- What you need on a team from a seniority perspective to get to staff
- Why it's important for a team to have engineers more junior than you to grow to staff

Asking Great Questions [Part 14] - What Have You Tried?

If you don't do it right, asking questions can seriously damage your reputation among the team and mark you as a low-performer. This lesson teaches you:

- Why engineers in particular are extremely allergic to low-quality questions
- How low-quality questions can put you in the target of a PIP (performance improvement plan)
- A simple way to identify if a question is low-quality or high-quality based on its overall vibe
- 3 core tactics you should try if possible before asking a question
- What it means to masterfully incorporate what you've tried into a question, explained with an incredibly in-depth example

Asking Great Questions [Part 7] - Diversify Your Asks

It is tempting to stick with what you know. When it comes to asking questions, this means asking the same person again and again after they have helped you before. However, this isn't the way to go when it comes to your growth. This lesson teaches you:

- How repeatedly getting help from just 1 person can strain your relationship with them
- The tech industry-specific danger of only having 1 person to answer your questions
- The tactical survival benefit of diversifying the pool of people you ask questions to
- How getting help from a lot of people builds up a huge career asset with long-term social capital, which is crucial for more senior engineers

[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/)

Tech Lead Blueprint 6/17 - Become Technically Strong

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

Startup Employee To Startup Founder: What I Wish I Knew

From 2013 to 2023, Tongbo Huang worked as an engineer or manager at three high-growth companies: Pinterest, Chekr, and Amplitude.

After 10 years working in startups of various sizes, Tongo decided to start his own: [**Sidr Tax**](https://www.sidr.io/). In the past year, Sidr Tax has surpassed 6 figures of revenue and is growing rapidly.

In this talk, Tongbo will share:

- How he thought about taking funding (he previously went through Y Combinator) and why he decided to bootstrap for Sidr.
- How he ended up working on a tax startup and how Shopify is fueling his growth.
- The problem with founders today looking for "exciting" ideas.

Connect with Tongbo here: [**https://www.linkedin.com/in/tongbohuang/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tongbohuang/)

\[Taro Top 10\] Entrepreneurship And Tech Startups: <https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/ArtlSzF17v7cad1K6TJG/>

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 8] - Foster Technical Innovation

As a tech lead, your job isn't only to deliver what's on the table now but figure out what should be on the table in the future. This lesson teaches you:

- A classic mechanism to foster discussion around technical innovation
- The logistics behind brown bag sessions and how to run an effective one

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 7] - System Design Discussions

In order to build high-quality software, you need to go through the process of system design. As a tech lead, you are expected to play a major role in this process. This lesson teaches you:

- What to avoid when participating in system design meetings (i.e. how to not add negative value)
- The overall principles to be helpful in system design discussions
- How to make yourself better at system design through relationship building
- Tactics to provide better input in system design discussions, even if you're not incredibly familiar with the underlying domain

To learn how to write a stellar tech review doc: [\[Course\] System Design Masterclass: Shipping Real Features To Production](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)

Maximizing a Severance Package 2/9 - The Law

There are lots of laws around termination of employment, and they vary widely by country. Let's talk about what companies must (or must not) do when doing a Reduction in Force (RIF) or layoff.

- 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)

[Paper Reading] Netflix : Query Facet Mapping and its Applications in Streaming Services

Led by [Dharin Shah](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharinshah/)

For a Taro Premium discount from Dharin, use his referral link here: <https://www.jointaro.com/r/dharins694/>

This deep-dive goes through how Netflix built their internal query to facet mapping layer to have better understand intent of the query. For example - matching 'anim' to 'Demon Slayer' as higher rank than perhaps 'animal planet'. In this session we dive into the white paper released by Netflix around their implementation.

Link to Paper: [**https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3477495.3536330**](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3477495.3536330)

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 3] - Strategy #1: Catering to Your Strength

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

Negotiation Course: Negotiation Is All About Leverage

The idea of **BATNA** (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) is about your ability to walk away from a deal. It is "*the most advantageous alternative that a negotiating party can take if negotiations fail and an agreement cannot be made.*" This will dictate your success in any kind of negotiation.

**As soon as you want something too badly, and the other party knows that, you will be taken advantage of**. (This is also how Venture Capitalists operate, by the way.)

There are three ingredients needed to gain leverage (and therefore successfully negotiate): 

1. Time (patience)

2. Information

3. Options (leverage)

If you have all 3, you can walk into negotiations with confidence.

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.

Amazon Aurora: Design Considerations for High Throughput Cloud-Native Relational Databases

Session led by [Dharin Shah](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharinshah/)

In this session, we delve into the intricacies of Amazon Aurora, a high throughput, cloud-native relational database designed to meet the demanding scalability and performance requirements of modern applications without compromising on the simplicity of access via SQL. The paper presents a thorough examination of the design considerations that underpin Aurora's architecture, understanding how it achieves unparalleled levels of efficiency and reliability within the cloud. We will explore key concepts such as Aurora's distributed and decentralized approach, fault tolerance mechanisms, and the optimization of data storage and retrieval processes.

Taro Book Club: Designing Data Intensive Applications - Chapter 4 (Encoding And Evolution)

Session Led by: [Lax Meiyappan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshmanan-meiyappan/)

Topic: Chapter 4 - Encoding And Evolution

In this #taro-bookclub discussion, we'll be talking about Chapter 4 of [**"Designing Data-Intensive Applications"**](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321) by Martin Kleppmann.

Here's the agenda:

- Let’s get to know each other with some quick introductions.
- We’ll break down and discuss the key concepts from Chapter 4.
- There will also be time for any questions and answers you might have.

Please send your questions ahead of time to [**Lax Meiyappan**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakshmanan-meiyappan/) in the [**Taro Premium**](https://www.jointaro.com/membership/) Slack, so that they can be included in the discussion.

Get ready for another engaging and informative session!

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.