Become A Debugging Master [Part 10] - Document Your Process

If you want to debug faster and avoid getting stuck, one of the best habits you can build is writing everything down. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Document your hypotheses, tests, and findings continuously during debugging to create clarity, reduce mistakes, and avoid repeating the same experiments
- Writing things down makes it easier for teammates to jump in, share context quickly, and collaborate effectively when tackling complex bugs
- Even when debugging alone, written notes help you stay organized, maintain momentum, and prevent morale-killing mistakes like redoing work you already tried
- Good documentation habits (like clear pull requests and linking to issues) allow future debuggers to “time travel” and understand why code was written a certain way
- Strong debugging cultures start with individuals — write as you debug today, and your future self (and team) will thank you

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

[Become A Go-To Person 16/18] Recap

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/)

Ship & Grow 500k+ User Side Projects [Part 7] - KISS

Engineers naturally gravitate towards complexity, and it shows in how they communicate and design things. This is a problem when it comes to side projects. This lesson teaches you:

- The beautiful, often under-appreciated value of simplicity
- Assumptions you shouldn't make about the end-user
- What it means to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), explained with an in-depth example

The 4 Paths To Manager Growth. Choose One.

[**Ethan Evans**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/) is a retired Amazon VP who now teaches managers how to break into executive levels.

He shares how to get promoted as a front-line manager (M1). The pre-requisite is that you must do good work. This means motivating your team, delivering results, and organizing them effectively. M1s are focused inward and downward, with most of their time and attention on their team. M2s (managers of managers) focus on the bigger picture, considering how their team fits into the larger organization and collaborating for overall success.

**Four main ways to grow:**

- **Organic growth:** Your team and the company naturally expand, increasing your responsibility.
- **Filling holes:** Someone above you leaves, and you're chosen due to your performance.
- **Reorganizations:** Teams get shuffled, and you absorb parts of others' responsibilities.
- **Lead a new initiative:** Successfully launching a new project demonstrates leadership and initiative, potentially leading to promotion.

When times were good (i.e. metrics were strong and the company was doing well), there was more capacity for people to get promoted. For example, the gold, silver, and bronze medalist (3 people) may have gotten promoted, but in a stagnant company, only the gold medalist would get the promo.

Although you can't control when people leave or if there will be a re-org, what you can do is **focus on being the top performer:** Consistently deliver excellent results, demonstrate strong leadership, and be ready to take on additional responsibilities.

Relevant follow-ups:

- [Would you recommend SDEs try a rotation as an SDM?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/BRNUnPJ0y2BttQhPNmCu/would-you-recommend-sdes-try-a-rotation-as-an-sdm/?playlistId=oz0mnJvHHgM8NfVF7rgp)
- [\[Taro Top 10\] Software Engineer To Engineering Manager (IC -&gt; M Track)](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/oz0mnJvHHgM8NfVF7rgp/)

SWE Internship Survival Guide [Part 10] - Understanding The Codebase

Understanding a large codebase can feel overwhelming at first, but you don’t need to master everything to make an impact. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Use the Pareto principle to focus on the small portion of code that matters most for your project rather than trying to understand everything
- Avoid getting stuck reading docs and aim to quickly build the code, add logs, and view those logs to gain hands-on comprehension
- Identify key parts of the codebase by asking your manager or teammates for pointers and using exploratory techniques like print logging
- Treat code understanding as a “multiplayer” activity by asking questions, pair programming, reviewing commit history, and engaging with teammates
- Operating in multiplayer mode not only accelerates your learning but also strengthens relationships and increases your chances of getting a return offer

[Become A Go-To Person 17/18] Go Deeper: Follow Through

["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/)
- Get a discount on Jordan's newsletter here: <https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/taro>

Tech Lead Blueprint 14/17 - Scaling Yourself

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

[Timeless Career Advice] Promos, Time, and Scope

Analyze

In this phase, we dive into understanding how our **inputs drive outputs**, using structured analysis to detect patterns, pinpoint issues, and reduce variability. Building a culture of disciplined, data-driven evaluation was essential to improving business performance at Amazon.

### Key Takeaways:

- **We focus on understanding input-output relationships**: The Analyze phase helps us distinguish true patterns (signal) from random fluctuations (noise) and enables us to control variability in performance.
- **We use structured mechanisms for analysis**: DMAIC demands that we move beyond ad hoc methods by creating formal processes and tools for analyzing metrics across the company.
- **We built a culture of rigorous data review**: Regular, structured reviews became part of our operating rhythm, reinforcing analytical thinking throughout our teams.
- **We institutionalized the Weekly Business Review (WBR)**: One of our most powerful tools, the WBR was developed to enable comprehensive and recurring analysis, and it remains a central part of how we stay aligned and data-informed across all business units.

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/>

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 14] - Easy Ways To Earn Trust

Gaining trust is always harder than losing trust, but that doesn't mean it needs to be slow. This lesson teaches you:

- How you can earn trust simply by doing your work
- A very natural and technical way to earn trust as an engineer specifically
- Powerful ways to earn trust while scaling up your influence
- The immense power of a $5 coffee ☕️

Related resources:

- Learn how to do good work with our 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/)
- The Instagram oncall revamp case study: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/)

Start Your Day By Eating The Frog

When it comes to productivity, what is eating the frog?

True or false: To ease into your day, the best thing to do when you wake up is something easy and fun like checking your Instagram.

Often Forgotten Team Considerations

We wrap up with two often-overlooked but highly consequential factors when selecting a team: on-call health and code review speed.

Here are the core points from the lesson:

- We explain that on-call quality can make or break your work-life balance, and many early-career engineers don’t evaluate it; the two key questions are how *frequently* you go on call and how *painful* it is (night pings, fire drills, number of incidents).
- We highlight that not all on-call is equal—middleware teams or teams responsible for triaging other teams’ outages often have disproportionately stressful rotations unless strong runbooks exist.
- We emphasize that code review speed is critical for learning and momentum: slow iterations (1–3 days per review) compound quickly, turning a small change into a week- or multiweek-long process and severely limiting growth for junior and mid-level engineers.
- We define healthy expectations: reviews returned within a day are ideal, &gt;1 day is a yellow flag, and &gt;2 days per revision is a red flag because it throttles how often you ship and how fast you improve.

Tech Lead Blueprint 17/17 - Conclusion

FAANG Is Too Cushy? How Big Tech Engineer Founders Often Fail

Eric Bahn, a VC from Hustle Fund, talks about the common failure modes of founders who previously worked in Big Tech.

Some of the questions we discuss:
- Does success in a Big Tech job translate to founder success? Seeing how things are done "properly" in a FAANG (or equivalent) company is very valuable. However, the skills needed to start from scratch are very different.
- How Rahul thought about leaving Meta after 4.5 years to start Taro: **when you start a new product or company, no one cares about you**. It is very, very hard to get people to care about you, to even give you the time of day. That's why having distribution networks are so important.
- How long is *too* long in a Big Tech company? If you've been at a FAANG company for 6+ years, is that a negative signal for your ability to start a company? Obviously this depends on the situation, but it's important to be aware of the perception.
- What are the most common failure modes of ex-FAANG founders?

------

- Connect with [Eric on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbahn/)
- This is a re-post from [Rahul's YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/63b6A8A3kAU)

This Is Required To Put The Interviewer On Your Side

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [[Taro Top 10] Finding A Tech Job](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/E6R0wVJ5EyCfVnVrlfno/)

Maximize Your Equity And Benefits In Tech [Part 4] - What And Why (RSUs/Bonuses)

Equity compensation takes center stage in big tech careers—here are the core points from the lesson:

- RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) are a major component of compensation in public tech companies and grow more significant with seniority
- They're granted based on stock price at the time and typically vest over several years, often with cliffs and monthly or quarterly schedules
- Vesting structures and timing vary by company; the value ultimately depends on the stock’s price at the time the shares vest
- Companies use RSUs to conserve cash, encourage retention through "golden handcuffs," and align employee incentives with shareholder value

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/)

How to Crack System Design Interviews - Part 8: Technical Competence

This video analyzes the technical aspects of a system design interview, focusing on how our design choices are evaluated. Here's what we need to keep in mind:

- **Thoughtful design choices:** We must justify our technology choices (e.g., Cassandra) with clear reasoning connected to the system's needs and demonstrate awareness of alternative solutions.

- **Multiple solutions and trade-offs:** We should showcase our technical depth by considering various solutions (e.g., push vs. pull models) and understanding their trade-offs (e.g., SQL vs. NoSQL databases).

- **Real-world examples:** We need to incorporate practical, real-world examples of technologies and products to illustrate our design choices and demonstrate practicality.

- **Deep technical knowledge:** We should possess a strong understanding of the technologies we propose, including their internal workings and how they compare to alternatives.

- **Feedback and iteration:** We must be receptive to feedback on our design choices and demonstrate the ability to adapt and improve our solutions based on the interviewer's input.

[Gaurav Sen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gkcs/) has conducted 1000s of system design interviews while working at Uber and building his [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@gkcs) to 500K+ subscribers. His platform [InterviewReady](https://interviewready.io/?_aff=JOINTARO) combines video explainers, live Zoom classes, and an automated System Design Judge.

Laid Off. What’s Next? The Case For Optimism

NOTE: This video was published in January 2023.

If you lost your job, right now is actually a great time to get laid off. It's obviously not fun to wake up and discover that your work access has been cutoff, but all things considered, you're going to be ok.

Many laid-off tech workers are getting generous severance packages which can be used for a well-earned vacation, taking time between jobs, or starting your own project. Historically, tons of companies were started in the midst of a recession, including Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Uber, and Instagram.

- [\[Masterclass\] How To Survive Tech Industry Layoffs](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/axnVXYox5QeOneqcoyuH/masterclass-how-to-survive-tech-industry-layoffs/)
- [Inside The Layoff Era of Big Tech (Meta, Google, Amazon Layoffs)](https://www.jointaro.com/blog/inside-the-new-layoff-era-of-big-tech/)
- [Checkout all the layoff resources + discussions on Taro](https://www.jointaro.com/topic/layoffs/)

Other resources:

- [PG's essay about startups in a recession](http://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html)
- [Laid Off Tech Workers Quickly Find New Jobs](https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-find-new-jobs-11672097730)
- [Taro's LinkedIn community](https://linkedin.com/company/jointaro)

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 4] - The Recruiting Funnel

In order to master the recruiting funnel, you must know the key terms and strategies for optimizing the hiring process. After this lesson, you will:

- Learn the definitions of sourcing, outreach, and closing, and how they fit into the recruiting funnel
- Understand industry averages for recruiting metrics and how to use them to benchmark your process
- Discover where managers can have the highest impact in the recruiting funnel, particularly at the top and bottom stages
- Gain insights on how to troubleshoot and improve conversion rates throughout the funnel
- Focus on attracting and closing top talent to make your recruiting process more efficient

Connect with John Egan on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/>

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 7] - Play The Long Game

Patience is a virtue, and it's incredibly important for engineers. This lesson teaches you:

- Why human nature makes relationship building more of a long-term endeavor
- How the difficulty of adding yourself in your network scales with their important and power
- How networks generally form organically and why this nature fundamentally makes them something you need to wait on (but it's worth it!)

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.