Building A Career Without Applying To Jobs (From An Eng Director)

[**Daniel O'Shea**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieloshea22/) is a Director of Engineering at X (formerly Twitter) and a 3x exited founder. He founded Laskie in 2020, a platform to help people understand the job market, find full-time work, and take on moonlight gigs. Daniel built a robust job-matching platform with tens of thousands of candidates. Laskie was the first acquisition by Elon Musk at X (Twitter) in 2023.

Throughout his professional career, **Daniel has never applied to a job**. Instead, he leveraged his network to find opportunities where he had an unfair advantage, and then continued to seek opportunities from his jobs and professional network. Almost all engineers suck at this: sending connection requests on LinkedIn is not enough.

In this talk, Daniel will share tactical advice to better leverage your own network, along with lessons from his professional journey. He'll also share data from seeing 1000s of engineers looking for jobs as part of running Laskie.

- Daniel on LinkedIn: [**https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieloshea22/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieloshea22/)
- Daniel on X: [**https://twitter.com/oshea**](https://twitter.com/oshea)

Additional expert networking resources:

- [**"How to network effectively in a tech event?"**](https://www.jointaro.com/question/wx6HewLcKbxNRfMBiAAI/how-to-network-effectively-in-a-tech-event/)
- [**"How do you network effectively within a company?"**](https://www.jointaro.com/question/DwT9GtdYK9nwFV3a7jrU/how-do-you-network-effectively-within-a-company/)
- [**\[Masterclass\] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech**](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tyaPFMXPoz2pmzB7OVzt/masterclass-how-to-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 27] - Continue The Learning Journey

Watching one course is not going to automatically make you master of code quality (or anything really). To really learn these concepts and burn them into your mind, you need to continue the learning journey. What's next:

- If you have mastered code quality, then here's a great skill for you to move on to: [\[Masterclass\] 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/)
- Apply your coding skills to open source! [Become An Open Source Master](https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-an-open-source-master/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 26] - Side Projects & Open-Source

You don't need to work at some fancy FAANG company to learn how to write truly good, high-quality code. Code quality is something that can be improved upon outside of your job and even if you don't have a job! This lesson will teach you:

- The power of **side projects** and **open-source contributions** when it comes to leveling up your technical skills
- How to build side projects that get a ton of users so you can maximize your learning (and your resume strength 💪)
- How to make meaningful open-source contributions that can even get the attention of Big Tech companies

To dig deeper into this topic, go through this thread: ["How to Learn/Practice Clean Code, particularly by oneself?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/6DcTkiS9UJhDkQz1HIAL/how-to-learnpractice-clean-code-particularly-by-oneself/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 25] - Seas Of Newlines

Newlines are necessary everywhere (including this video description), but they're very much something that can get annoying fast in large quantities. This includes code. This lesson will teach you:

- The "Seas Of Newlines" messy code anti-pattern
- How to fix code that's like this and write better code instead

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 24] - Infinite Layers Of Nesting

Nesting is great for birds, but terrible for code. Having too much nesting is one of the easiest ways to make code terrible. This lesson will teach you:

- Why deeply nested code is literally hard to read
- The early-return pattern to unfurl nested code
- How to compress conditionals properly (this includes how not to mess them up)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 23] - Everything In 1 Place

Monoliths and god-classes are 2 of the most common code anti-patterns, especially in Big Tech. They're extremely easy to fall into, and monolithic infrastructure is actually the right call for the vast majority of software as 99% of software is nowhere near the scale of FAANG. This lesson will teach you:

- Why the "Everything In 1 Place" anti-pattern is so damaging, not just for readability but developer productivity as well
- One of the most powerful clean code techniques: **The delegate pattern** (this is how Meta referred to it). It can go by other names, but the core concept is to understand how an interface works. Once you master this pattern, you'll be able to break up any large codebase into readable, focused, modular components. Delegates were easily the most commonly used clean code pattern back during Alex's time at Instagram. Alex goes through an in-depth example from the Taro app itself to walk you through exactly how this technique works.

If you want to learn more about Instagram's stellar engineering culture around code quality, check out this in-depth discussion: ["What do mobile testing strategies look like at top tech companies?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/fpySzIO02aQ0sCz5N6dP/what-do-mobile-testing-strategies-look-like-at-top-tech-companies/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 22] - Too Many Comments

Comments is a coding technique everyone learns particularly early, which makes sense as newbies need the extra hand-holding. However, there's a weird phenomenon where code comments go from a good thing to a bad thing very rapidly in your career. This lesson will teach you:

- Why comments are so prolific across code
- How comments end up hurting rather than helping, especially at scale and with large codebases
- What you should do instead of adding a bunch of code comments
- The fundamental mentality around writing good, clean, readable code, which Alex breaks down with a concrete refactoring example

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 21] - Non-Descriptive Names

Naming: It's important for your children but quite important for your code as well. When it comes to your variables, methods, and classes, you should put in the effort to name them properly. This lesson will teach you:

- Why descriptive, high-effort names can add up to add a huge amount of quality to a codebase
- How to identify a poor name in code and the common patterns leading to it
- How much time you should spend on each type of name and how to prioritize accordingly, particularly in code review feedback
- The mentality to convert bad names to good names in code with an in-depth example walking through a classic utility method

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 20] - Code Comment Caches

Code comments can be immensely helpful, but they can be incredibly damaging to a codebase if used incorrectly (which this course will cover even more later on down the line). This lesson will teach you:

- Why engineers will try the very weird "code comment cache" anti-pattern
- The importance of Git, GitHub, and version control platforms in general
- How to not be lazy and properly deal with code that isn't necessary now but may be useful later

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 19] - Code Review Feedback

If you want to grow lightning fast as a software engineer, you need code quality feedback. This is the primary goal the entire "Pull Requests" section of this course is building up towards. This lesson will teach you:

- The algorithm for leveling up incredibly quickly as an engineer, especially for junior and mid-level engineers
- How NOT to respond to code review feedback
- How to gracefully respond to code review feedback to maximize your learning and deepen relationships with your teammates by going through an in-depth example

If you want to dive even deeper into code review, check out our masterclass: [\[Masterclass\] How To Do Amazing Code Review](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/rhRFh49oouaUDhWUvkQb/masterclass-how-to-do-amazing-code-review/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 18] - Have A Test Plan

Test plans are something many tech companies don't do, and it's a shame. Pull request test plans are one of the easiest things you can do as a software engineer to really level up your code review experience and ultimately the quality of your code. This lesson will teach you:

- What a test plan is and the many, many benefits it provides. There's a reason Meta requires engineers to have a test plan in their diffs (pull requests)
- How to creative with your test plans when your code is hard to demo (very applicable for back-end facing engineers)
- The many benefits of having a thorough test plan and the many downsides of not having a test plan
- What the ideal test plan looks like, which we'll cover through a couple in-depth examples

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 17] - Share The Context

Software engineers often have this flaw where they assume that everyone somehow automatically knows what they're doing and the nuances of the spare they're operating within. This often extends to their published pull requests. This lesson will teach you:

- The ingredients behind a high-quality context section on a pull request
- A simple tactic to greatly expedite your pull requests, build respect amongst your team, and get better feedback (hint: It's not just your teammates who can review your code)
- Exactly what a stellar context section looks like with an incredibly detailed, broken down example. This is a trademark sign of high-performing mid-level and senior software engineers

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 16] - One Diff, One Thesis

One of the biggest and easiest ways to level up your code doesn't even lie in the code itself and is about how you split it up when submitting it for code review instead. This lesson will teach you:

- The most common way low-performing software engineers mess up their code when submitting it for review
- Why championing the concept of "One Diff, One Thesis" massively boosts your productivity alongside your code quality
- How to tell whether your pull request follows the principal of "One Diff, One Thesis" or should be broken up into smaller pull requests instead
- How to split up your technical task or project into chunks, so you can map out its pieces to a series of pull requests following "One Diff, One Thesis". We do this with an in-depth example further digging into the login flow

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 15] - Make It A  Little Better Each Time

We all want to make big, fast strides, but this is often hard to actually achieve. When it comes to leveling up your code quality, a lot of the battle is incremental. This lesson will teach you:

- A framework you can apply to your code repeatedly to make it better and strengthen your coding skills
- How small improvements here and there can really add up over time to increase the quality of a codebase and build up your respect among the team
- An organic trick that Alex and all his mentees used at Meta to strongly succeed on the technical axis and get promoted fast

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 14] - How To Handle Migrations

There is term called "promotion-driven development" where software engineers propose big refactors and migrations to look good but don't fully follow through. This is especially common in Big Tech. This lesson will teach you:

- How to do code migrations properly
- How to judge the quality of a codebase based off of its consistency and how "good, modern code" can actually be harmful to the health of the codebase overall
- The mental and operating model behind how new engineers code, which is especially important if you're a tech lead (never forget this!)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 13] - Lay Out The Plan

It's tempting as a software engineer to leap straight into the code and start being productive. However, this can often cost you time in the long-term, especially with more technically complex tasks. This lesson will teach you:

- Why it's important to create a plan to increase your code quality, move faster, and build up relationships with your teammates
- What goes into a rock-solid coding plan (hopefully you were paying attention during the prior parts of the course!)
- Exactly what a good technical plan looks like with a concrete, real-life example from Taro

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 3] - The Myth About Better Code

So many software engineers and engineering managers don't actually understand the relationship between code velocity and code quality. This lesson will teach you:

- Why code quality and code velocity aren't at odds with one another, completely busting the myth that writing better code makes you ship more slowly as a software engineer. In fact, they actually go quite well together!
- The true, nuanced relationship between how good a software engineer's code is and how fast they move
- Where you want to be as a software engineer when it comes to balancing code quality and code velocity
- How the highest-performing software engineers use their stellar code quality as an asset to move faster and land more impact than everyone else

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 8] - Case Study: Instagram vs. Robinhood

Trying to nail down what good code looks like is equivalent to trying to staple jello to a wall. Almost every software engineer looks up to FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies, and that's what this lesson will cover in-depth with an example. This lesson will teach you:

- The engineering philosophy behind Instagram's Android codebase, its unique attributes, and its priorities
- The engineering philosophy behind Robinhood's Android codebase, its unique attributes, and its priorities
- Why taking Instagram Android code and pasting it into Robinhood would have been terrible despite it being industry-leading in its own context (and vice-versa)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 9] - Focus, Focus, Focus

A lot of software engineers falsely believe that having every tech stack ever on your resume means that you are the perfect interview candidate as you qualify for the most jobs. The reverse is actually true, and championing that strategy leads to massive gains in both your code quality and job prospects. This lesson will teach you:

- The real recipe for being highly paid and easily hired as a software engineer
- Signs that you have become a true technical master in your domain and are now ready to move on to other tech stacks
- How to structure your journey as an earlier-in-career software engineer (5 years of experience or less)
- How to navigate the junior engineer career trap that is "full-stack" engineer
- What hiring managers look for in engineering candidates, especially at Big Tech
- The overall technical mastery trajectory for software engineers and how you can reach the top
- Why focus is so important for your longer-term learning as a software engineer

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 10] - Sweat The Details, Call Out Edge Cases

Building software that "works" is easy. Building software that truly works in all viable scenarios is hard and what separates the great engineers from the mediocre ones, especially at Big Tech. This lesson will teach you: 

- Why mistakes are extremely punishing in software
- The relationship between the happy flow and edge cases
- Why being detail-oriented is an extremely valuable asset in tech, especially for your code quality
- The mental framework to have as a software engineer to proactively call out edge cases in a systematic way

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