Break Into Tech And Become A Software Engineer [Part 12] - Pick A Platform

In this lesson, Brian emphasizes the value of choosing the right platform for writing online, with a strong recommendation for LinkedIn.

This lesson covers:

- Why LinkedIn is a great platform for building a professional presence, with less anonymity and trolling compared to platforms like X or TikTok
- The advantage of standing out on LinkedIn, where recruiters and employers are more active, making it easier to connect with professionals
- How while platforms like X and TikTok offer cutting-edge tech content, LinkedIn provides a safer environment to network with verified professionals and receive genuine feedback

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/>

How To Prepare To Leave Big Tech For A Startup

If you’re like [Rahul](https://www.jointaro.com/profile/tTjEXHcTZEYDGh8oUFU2Dy5VFVG2/), you were intent on leaving the bubble of Big Tech to pursue the startup life for a long time. If you have 6 months or 1 year left working in an established company, what can you do in anticipation of your startup journey?

One of the best things you can do is validate the idea of your startup with a side hustle. **Be careful that you’re not using company time or resources or you may later get sued.**

Generally, there are 3 types of projects an engineer can work on: 
1. A project purely for learning, to try out some technology or framework that may have come out recently. 
2. A small business. Also known as an indie business, a micro-Saas, or even something as simple as selling a digital product like an eBook. 
3. A VC scale startup. **This should be reserved for very few companies.** When you take venture capital money, they are looking for a massive return on investment, something like 50x or 100x. That means you’ll be accountable for strenuous growth targets.

Whichever path you choose, go in with your eyes wide open about what your motivations are and whether you’d be happy signing up for the likely outcome. 

An input into the decision about *when* to leave the Big Tech life is to look for some indication of commitment for the customers you’re serving. Are your customers offering you their time, money, or reputation for your product? That’s a promising sign. 

Another reason to leave is that you feel that there’s a narrow period of time when your idea could succeed, e.g. new regulation or a groundbreaking technology.

------

Connect with [Eric on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbahn/)

The Most EVIL Way To End An Interview (And How Not To Do It)

Here are the core points from the video:
- It is **never** okay to end an interview early because the candidate wasn't good enough. This is immensely disrespectful, especially for an onsite interview where the candidate carved out an entire day to do it (likely taking PTO if they are currently working).
- As an interviewer, you are also representing your company. If you do this, you are hurting your company's reputation as people talk - That candidate is very likely to tell others that your company is a horrible place to interview at.
- When this scenario happens, *the proper thing to do is to switch gears and go entirely into maximizing candidate experience* (as your goal isn't collecting signal anymore). This involves:
  - Giving them hints aggressively to help them complete the problem
  - Pair programming with them and trying to teach them - Use your interview to make the candidate a better software engineer!
  - Allocating more time for them to ask questions about the company - Try to get them excited! If you do this properly, they'll want to interview with your company again at a later time. People change - They may come back in a few years and be an absolutely incredible engineer you 100% want to hire.

Related resources:
- [Full session on being an amazing interviewer](https://link.jointaro.com/NhjenQ5vERKwRPdb9) - This is where this clip was cut out from.
- [Full 1 hour+ Masterclass On Acing Your Big Tech DSA Interview](https://link.jointaro.com/VfSeuUFiXNtKa5if7)
- [Full 1.3 hour Masterclass On Acing Your Big Tech System Design Interview](https://link.jointaro.com/Tmqs62Lw7WV4qDw59)
- [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior Leetcode Experience](https://link.jointaro.com/vaNH1hjRUhmF8ibSA)

Tech Lead Blueprint 15/17 - Low Performers

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

Maximize Your Equity And Benefits In Tech [Part 3] - Foundational Tax Concepts

Understanding how taxes work is key to making smart decisions about equity compensation—here are the core points from the lesson:

- Gross income is reduced by payroll taxes and deductions to determine adjusted gross income (AGI) and taxable income, which drives your federal tax liability
- Long-term capital gains (assets held over a year) receive lower federal tax rates than ordinary income, often saving high earners significant amounts
- State tax treatment varies—most states don’t offer preferential rates for long-term gains, and some, like Massachusetts, penalize short-term gains more heavily
- Investment losses can offset gains and up to $3,000 of ordinary income per year, but “wash sale” rules can disallow losses if you repurchase too soon
- The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) may kick in if you're using lots of deductions or exercising incentive stock options, so it’s important to model this in advance

Next steps with Andy:

- [Connect with Andy on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymoranio)
- [Leave feedback and/or sign up for Andy’s newsletter](https://subscribepage.io/taroequitycourse)
- [Schedule a consultation](http://adastrafp.com/contact-us/)

Building A Metrics Map

In this lesson, we explore **practical techniques** for identifying the input metrics that matter most. Through methods like **metrics mapping** and **customer experience mapping**, we gain a clearer, more quantitative view of what drives our business forward—especially from the customer’s perspective.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We prioritize input metrics and customer interactions**: Too often, businesses rely heavily on output metrics. We recommend looking deeper into input metrics—particularly those tied to customer behavior and experience.
- **Metrics Mapping helps us discover drivers of key metrics**: We start with a business goal or known metric, then recursively ask what drives it and how we can measure those drivers. This technique reveals a broad and useful set of input metrics.
- **The process is recursive and comprehensive**: We drill down from each metric or goal until we can’t go any further, building an extensive network of quantifiable drivers. Repeating metrics across branches is fine—what matters is completeness.
- **The end goal is a flat, exhaustive list of metrics**: While the mapping exercise may begin as a hierarchy, we ultimately compile all the discovered metrics into a single, non-hierarchical list for practical use and monitoring.
- **Finding input metrics is an ongoing process**: This isn’t a one-time task. We continuously revisit and expand our metric set as our business, goals, and customer needs evolve.

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/>

Improve

In the Improve phase, we focus on **deploying resources and initiatives** that shift our input metrics in the right direction, knowing that this in turn drives our desired output results. Improvement at Amazon has always been a cycle of innovation, experimentation, and rigorous measurement.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We prioritize inputs to drive results**: We align our teams, projects, and resources around improving leading indicators—our input metrics—which ultimately influence lagging outputs like sales and customer retention.
- **Click to Deliver Time became a key input metric**: We tracked every step of the fulfillment process and launched targeted initiatives to speed up delivery, knowing it directly impacted customer satisfaction and engagement.
- **We scaled operations through iterative improvements**: Over two decades, we grew our global delivery infrastructure—fulfillment centers, delivery stations, air cargo, and driver networks—through thousands of iterative changes, many of which were experiments that included both successes and failures.
- **We formalized improvement with the Working Backwards PR/FAQ process**: This mechanism ensures we innovate from customer needs, forcing teams to start with a press release and FAQ to define how a proposed improvement solves real problems.
- **Improvement and analysis form a feedback loop**: Every improvement is followed by measurement and analysis. This iterative cycle lets us reinforce what works and eliminate what doesn’t, ensuring continuous refinement of our systems.

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/>

Part 4 [RBP] Clean Up Your Fetch Requests

This lesson focuses on preventing race conditions that can occur when making multiple fetch calls in React components, leading to inconsistent UI behavior and a poor user experience.

- **Identifying Race Conditions:** Understand how race conditions happen when asynchronous fetch requests resolve in an unexpected order, particularly with slow or unreliable network connections.
- **Strategies for Avoiding Race Conditions:** Learn how to use tools like SWR or React Query to manage fetch requests and automatically handle race conditions, or implement manual cleanup logic with an "ignore" flag to discard outdated responses.
- **Improving Code Structure:** Discover how to keep your fetch-related code organized and maintainable, especially when dealing with loading and error states, setting the stage for cleaner solutions covered in the next lesson.

Links:

- Florian’s free web development playlist on YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrnPJCHvNZuDG6BWjUFVxeWyYlve_SVJO>
- Code link: <https://github.com/codinginflow/react-best-practices/blob/fetch-cleanup/src/app/page.tsx>

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 2] - Michael's Backstory

Michael saw the transformative power of influence after he left his job at Netflix. This video reveals the new opportunities enabled by cultivating an audience. Michael talks about which platforms he grew on, among Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, a newsletter, and more.

Connect with Michael:

- LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lin-tech/>
- Twitter: [https://x.com/\_michaellin](https://x.com/%5C_michaellin)
- Newsletter: <https://www.michaellinwrites.com/>

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 9] - Problem-Solution-Benefit

In this video, I explain the Problem-Solution-Benefit framework, focusing on identifying a problem, proposing a solution, and highlighting the benefits. This framework is crucial for gaining stakeholder buy-in. I provide examples and steps on how to apply it effectively.

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

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 2] - John's Success With Recruiting

If you want to hire great engineers, you're in great hands by taking this course. From this lesson, you will:

- Learn about [John's](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/) journey from an engineer to managing an organization of around 100 engineers
- Understand the challenges and strategies involved in doubling an engineering team year after year
- Discover how [John](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/) personally contributed to hiring dozens of engineers and conducted over 300 interviews
- Gain insights into shaping engineering processes and promoting the company’s brand through recruiting events and meetups

Connect with John Egan on LinkedIn: [**https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/)

What People Get Wrong About The Manager To Software Engineer Relationship

In this lesson, we discuss the common mistake that senior engineers commit, which is that they continue to assume that the manager is an authority figure.

This is often the case, but doesn't have to be. David talks about a case in his past job where an IC on the team was more senior than him as the manager. And the IC engineer was objectively more important to the team, indicating the value of this senior-level person not only to getting work done, but also setting direction and giving feedback to others.

Senior engineers should view the relationship with the manager as a partnership rather than a person for whom they must *follow orders*. **The tech lead and manager have different but overlapping responsibilities in helping the team succeed**. Realizing this unlocks a more fruitful collaboration.

Remember, managers will frequently have blind spots that a tech lead can point out. These insights and observations may manifest in actually pushing back on the manager's plans or strategy. This is a role that senior engineers should embrace.

- More from David: <https://www.jointaro.com/topic/david-pan/>
- [Onboarding as a Tech Lead at Robinhood in 1 Month](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/X8vpfJooDpsX915ouC00/case-study-becoming-a-tech-lead-again-in-just-1-month-after-joining-robinhood-from-meta/)
- [The EM "Partner In Crime": The Tech Lead](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/uZQZlS6tdXbztajM0tqa/the-em-partner-in-crime-the-tech-lead/)

Amazon Behavioral Interview [Part 7] - Overcoming An Unanticipated Obstacle (Answer)

This video segment focuses on an interviewee's experience overcoming a significant obstacle in achieving a key goal.

- **The Obstacle:** The interviewee encountered an issue with their company's customer satisfaction (CSAT) measurement system. They discovered that the current process, where Escalation Account Managers (EAMs) were responsible for sending out CSAT surveys, introduced significant bias. Some EAMs were selectively sending out surveys only to customers they expected to give high scores, artificially inflating the overall CSAT score.
- **Overcoming Challenges:**
  - **Resistance to Change:** The interviewee faced resistance from some EAMs who were hesitant to relinquish control of the survey process.
  - **Technical Limitations:** Implementing an automated survey system presented significant technical challenges, requiring collaboration with the tooling and automation team.
- **Impact and Mitigation:** The initial implementation of a more accurate CSAT measurement system resulted in a temporary dip in the overall score. However, the interviewee proactively communicated this potential drop to leadership and addressed concerns.
- **Long-Term Results:** Over time, as the team addressed underlying issues and improved customer service, the CSAT score gradually increased, eventually exceeding the previous level.

This example demonstrates the interviewee's ability to identify and address a critical issue, overcome resistance to change, and ultimately achieve a positive outcome despite encountering significant obstacles.

Learn more about Alan's job search program, Kadima Careers, using this [discount link](https://signup.kadimacareers.com/mQBsDvu).

Asking Great Questions [Part 22] - Learn To Fish

Getting the answer to your question isn't enough: If you want to respect the person who helped you, make sure to follow through on the end-to-end learning. This lesson teaches you:

- A common mistake engineers make when getting an answer that's too shallow
- What engineers should do to follow-up on an answer and get full value
- Why it's better to potentially annoy your helper with more questions now instead of later
- The difference between knowledge and mastery, why the latter is so critical for your career, and how asking great questions is intrinsically tied to mastery-building

Come Up With 500k+ User Project Ideas [Part 17] - Just Keep Building

Failure is a part of life and software side projects are no exception. This lesson teaches you:

- The builder mindset you absolutely must have to succeed with side projects
- Why a failed side project really isn't that bad, especially if you're following the advice from this course
- How Alex made several stupid side projects destined for failure so you don't make the same mistakes he did

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 20] - Everyday Is Networking Day

Networking doesn't need to be hard. In fact, it should be easy. This lesson teaches you:

- What networking should feel like when you're doing it properly
- Why networking shouldn't feel like a hard, conscious, extra effort
- Ways to make networking seem more natural
- One of the most common mistakes engineers (and introverts in general) make when it comes to networking and maintaining relationships

Become An Open Source Master [Part 20] - Share What You Learn

Share what you learn as you go on your open-source journey. We can add comments to the code, write wiki pages or articles, or even file issues in the codebase to better understand. When we're ready to start contributing, we should pick a task, dive into the code, and start experimenting with it by adding print statements or breakpoints. This will help us get familiar with the code and the build process so that we can be more effective when making meaningful contributions.

Video reference: [10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_qE1iAmjFg)

[How to learn a new codebase fast](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/DX27hiXPJ4G7Czk2mwLL/how-to-learn-a-new-codebase-fast/).

Connect with James:

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

Asking Great Questions [Part 19] - Give Them An Out

Most engineering favors don't get fulfilled. If you're cognizant of that and incorporate it into your question, you can counterintuitively *increase* your chances of getting the favor. This lesson teaches you:

- Why making it easy for your favor to be turned down increases your standing with the person you're asking for a favor from
- What it means to give the helper an out with your question, explained with an in-depth example

Asking Great Questions [Part 24] - Give More Than You Take

The counterpart to asking a question is answering a question, but it's not exactly right to call them opposites as they actually go hand-in-hand! This lesson teaches you:

- How engineers fail to attract and even repel the best engineers to help them
- What you should do to make altruistic, high-performing engineers (i.e. the people you really want answering your questions) want to help you
- Why answering others' questions is one of the best ways to get great people to answer your own questions
- A very tactical self-serving benefit to answering questions and teaching others

15 SWE Years In 1.5 Hours [Part 20] - Conclusion

Congratulations on making it to the end of the course! The goal of this course was to capture Rahul's biggest, broadest, higher-level learnings across a multitude of core software engineering subjects. While this is indeed valuable, it's impossible to master a massive topic like all of data structures and algorithms in just 5 minutes

To go deeper into these subjects, we recommend following our learning path here: [Become A Better Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/learning-paths/become-a-better-engineer/)

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.