SWE Internship Survival Guide [Part 20] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Congrats on making it to the end of the course! Here are additional resources to help you follow through with nailing your internship return offer:

- Take the 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/)
- Take the question asking course: [Ask Great Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ask-great-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/)
- Take the onboarding course: [The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-complete-onboarding-guide-for-software-engineers-succeeding-when-youre-new/)
- To become a rockstar (Top 5%) intern: [Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer: L3 To L4](https://www.jointaro.com/course/grow-from-junior-to-mid-level-engineer-l3-to-l4/)

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 15] - Reflection And Practical Exercises

In this video, I provide reflection prompts, practical exercises, and tips for continuous improvement to enhance communication skills. Viewers are encouraged to reflect on recent communications, analyze communication structures, and assess clarity, engagement, listening, adaptability, and feedback. Practical exercises and suggestions for continuous improvement are also shared to help viewers continuously enhance their communication skills.

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

Maximize Your Equity And Benefits In Tech [Part 8] - What, How, Why (ESPP)

Employee Stock Purchase Programs (ESPPs) can offer meaningful value, especially at companies that provide favorable terms or lack large RSU grants. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- ESPPs let employees buy company stock at a discount (up to 15%) with a $25,000 annual contribution cap and often include “lookback” provisions to buy at the lower price between the start and end of the offering period

- Programs with multiple purchase periods inside long offering windows—like those at Adobe or NVIDIA—can dramatically increase the value of purchases if the stock appreciates

- Some companies may impose holding periods before you can sell shares, so it's essential to understand your specific plan’s rules before committing

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/)

Get The Rating You Deserve [Part 16] - Spend Time On Your Career

**In this section, we explored the importance of maintaining an empowering state to sustain long-term success.**

To cultivate an empowering state, we should:

- **Prioritize long-term goals:** Focus on building a sustainable career and avoiding short-term sacrifices that may hinder long-term growth.
- **Cultivate a growth mindset:** Embrace challenges as opportunities for learning and development.
- **Practice self-care:** Prioritize physical and mental health to maintain energy and focus.
- **Build strong relationships:** Foster meaningful connections with others to provide support and inspiration.
- **Maintain a positive mindset:** Cultivate a positive outlook and practice gratitude to reduce stress and anxiety.

By adopting these strategies, we can increase our resilience, motivation, and overall well-being, enabling us to achieve long-term success.

If you want to get personalized support from Yogi, you can reach out to him at [coaching@yogisharma.com](mailto:coaching@yogisharma.com) or schedule an introductory call to dive into your situation at <https://tinyurl.com/meetyogi>.

Gilad’s Take: Motivated IC Auto-Didact

In this video, we deepen our understanding of the manager's role by applying it to a scenario with a high-performing, self-motivated team member. The key takeaway is that our value as managers lies not in the growth that would happen without us, but in the change we actively create.

- We remind ourselves that our **job is to create a delta**—a positive, sustainable improvement that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
- We can influence growth in **two major ways**: by increasing its **efficiency** (helping the individual grow faster) and its **effectiveness** (guiding them toward more impactful areas of development).
- Efficiency may involve assigning growth-aligned projects, introducing mentors, or curating resources that accelerate learning.
- Effectiveness may require **redirecting energy** toward skills with greater business impact, such as shifting from technical specialization to leadership development.
- Ultimately, we commit to **seeking out and enabling the deltas**—changes we directly cause—because that's where our impact as managers truly lies.

If you want to learn more from Gilad, he shares free leadership advice daily on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/giladnaor/?utm_source=taro&utm_medium=course&utm_campaign=cta) and weekly on the[ δeltas newsletter](https://posts.managementdeltas.com/?utm_source=taro&utm_medium=course&utm_campaign=cta)

Ship & Grow 500k+ User Side Projects [Part 15] - ASO

When it comes to mobile apps, you have a much simpler tool in your arsenal to get users. This lesson teaches you:

- What ASO (app store optimization) is
- Why ASO is much simpler than SEO
- The highest leverage thing you can do to optimize your ASO, explained with a simple example
- Basic, largely technical ways to improve your ASO, which you should just already be doing anyways as a good engineer

Make amazing mobile app pictures for free here: <https://app-mockup.com/>

DSA Interview Step #2: Figure Out Your Overall Strategy

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/)

Does Your Job Performance Matter For Building A Startup?

In college, the common wisdom these days for Computer Science students is “your grades don’t matter, just focus on your network and building cool stuff.” 

**Does the same logic apply for aspiring entrepreneurs who are working in Big Tech?**

If you know you want to leave to start a startup, how much should you focus on getting the highest ratings and quickest promotions on the job, vs just doing enough to get by?

In Eric's case, he was was content with doing just enough to get by -- his time and energy was better spent preparing for his startup. Eric was barely getting a Meets All (MA) rating at Meta, and in fact, he was about to be put on a PIP before he left!

Instead of focusing on your ratings on the job, you should instead focus on having positive relationships with the people you work with. You want them to vouch for you as someone who is trustworthy, hard-working, and easy to work with. 

**Your network is your biggest asset as a founder.** Your job is not to be the expert who knows everything. Instead, your job is to have a deep network of people (advisors, friends, employees) who you can leverage to arrive at the best decision. 

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

Become A Debugging Master [Part 17] - Share The Learning

A lot of engineers move on immediately after landing a fix, but the best ones take the time to reflect and prevent similar issues in the future. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Retrospectives help you identify root causes and system weaknesses so you can either prevent a future incident or make it much easier to detect and fix
- A good postmortem analyzes what went well and what didn’t across detection, notification, response, mitigation, and analysis, with detailed documentation to capture all learnings
- Writing a clean, detailed doc with screenshots and explanations makes it much easier for future engineers to learn from the incident without having to dig through chaotic logs or chat threads
- Big tech cultures like Facebook normalize failure and focus on minimizing damage and learning quickly, often using formal SEV reviews to improve systems and processes over time

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 19] - Common Mistakes To Avoid

Networking is really easy to mess up as there's a lot of toxic mentalities you can fall into. This lesson teaches you:

- The #1 way people mess up networking
- How to strike a balance between being pragmatic (having shields up) and being idealistic (helping people)
- Why going outside of your comfort zone is critical for networking
- What fake networking looks like, shown with a very common example among engineers

How To Get Interviews, Secure Offers, and Make More Money in Big Tech

Alan Stein, former executive and hiring manager at Google, Meta, Salesforce, and Tableau shares how jobs are really acquired at the world's top tech companies. 

No BS about resumes, cover letters, or LinkedIn profiles. Rather, Alan shares what actions you should actually take to land more interviews, offers, and earn more money.

Feel free to connect with [**Alan and say hi on LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanjstein/).

The Onus Is On You

In this lesson, we focus on how to approach the engineering manager (EM) relationship effectively, emphasizing that our success depends heavily on how we engage, not on our manager doing everything for us.

- We stress that the responsibility for our career growth lies with us, not with our EM; they’re busy, context-switching across many reports, and can’t automatically know our needs or struggles.
- We explain that EMs need clear direction from us—without input, they can’t create opportunities, remove blockers, or advocate on our behalf.
- We compare managers to an API: they won’t initiate action on their own, but when we “call” them with the right inputs, they can be incredibly valuable resources.
- We reinforce that good managers will support us deeply if we engage correctly, but it’s our job to plug in and guide that support.
- We highlight that initiative is one of the most appreciated traits: EMs love working with engineers who proactively identify problems, propose ideas, and seek impact without needing to be pulled along.

Getting Promoted to Senior Staff Engineer

n this lesson, **Adam Ernst**, Software Engineer at **Meta**, shares the story behind **ComponentKit**, the declarative UI framework that played a pivotal role in his promotion to **Senior Staff Engineer (E7)**. Faced with a rapidly growing Facebook News Feed that was becoming difficult to maintain, Adam and his team reimagined iOS development by adapting the core ideas of React for native mobile applications—years before SwiftUI and React Native became mainstream. He also discusses how he overcame resistance to a radically new approach and the leadership lessons he learned while driving large-scale technical change.

- **Reinventing UI Architecture at Scale:** To address performance issues, crashes, and increasing complexity in Facebook News Feed, Adam developed **ComponentKit**, a declarative UI framework inspired by React that improved maintainability, rendering performance, and developer productivity long before similar technologies became industry standards.
- **Winning Adoption Through Evidence and Collaboration:** Convincing engineers to embrace a new programming paradigm required more than technical excellence. Adam demonstrated tangible improvements through cleaner code and better performance, leveraged trusted allies to advocate for the framework, and found compromises that incorporated ideas from competing internal projects.
- **Strong Conviction with Practical Flexibility:** Adam remained confident that ComponentKit was the right solution for Facebook's highly dynamic feed while acknowledging that no architecture is universally optimal. His experience highlights the importance of understanding trade-offs, tailoring solutions to the problem at hand, and leading innovation through collaboration rather than ideology.

Original podcast link: [**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_OYJF3Mmw**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_OYJF3Mmw)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 12] - Build In Public

It's way easier to have people come to you instead of you having to go to them. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference between inbound and outbound
- Why building in public is such a powerful technique to generate inbound (i.e. talented people coming to you)
- Different ways to build in public

Round Structure

In this section, we dive into one of the most important—and often most hands-on—parts of the ML interview process: the practical machine learning coding and modeling round. This is where we demonstrate how we think and work like real ML practitioners.

- We’ll usually work in a **Jupyter notebook environment**, either in a take-home format or during a live 60–90 minute session.
- The task typically involves a **real-world problem** like text classification or demand forecasting, where we're expected to deliver an end-to-end ML workflow.
- Unlike algorithm rounds, we’re **encouraged to use standard ML libraries** (e.g., pandas, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch) to solve the problem efficiently.
- We’ll be evaluated on how we **explore data, engineer features, choose models, tune hyperparameters**, and **communicate our results**.
- This round is about **thinking like an ML practitioner**, showing that we can handle messy, ambiguous problems using practical tools to deliver meaningful solutions.

If you want to learn even more from Yayun:

- Book 1 on 1 career guidance with her here: <https://calendly.com/your-friend-yayun/1on1>
- Follow her on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/yayunjin/>

This Tool Is Especially Amazing For Big Tech Interviews

Maximize Your Equity And Benefits In Tech [Part 6] - Strategy (RSUs/Bonuses)

Many people default to holding their RSUs without stepping back to ask whether they’d actively choose to buy company stock with a cash bonus. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Since RSUs are taxed as ordinary income upon vesting, treating them like a cash bonus and selling immediately is often a lower-risk strategy—especially when combined with auto-sell and supplemental withholding features some companies offer

- You can also take a more nuanced approach, like retaining a portion based on your net worth, holding for a set period, or setting specific sale triggers, but it's best to define these plans before emotions kick in

- A minimum financial bar is covering tax liability; use safe harbor rules or proactive withholding adjustments to avoid penalties, especially as year-end approaches

- Flow-based budgeting using separate accounts by expense type and timeline can help you allocate RSU income toward irregular goals like large purchases or saving targets

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/)

Autism Allyship and Identity in Tech - By Lee McKeeman & Jaswir Raghoe

[Lee McKeeman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmckeeman/) and [Jaswir Raghoe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaswir-raghoe/) give an insightful talk on Autism Allyship in the tech industry, and how one can discover the power of creating inclusive workplaces for autistic individuals while gaining valuable tips on how to be an effective ally to autistic colleagues.

Lee and Jaswir talk about how autism is a spectrum with individuals having a wide range of abilities and needs. They give a deeper understanding of general biases and assumptions about autism, and learn why it's crucial to challenge them. They expound on the importance of asking autistic individuals about their preferences and needs, while understanding the significance of respecting their boundaries. Jaswir and Lee uncover the value of patience and understanding, as well as the importance of not expecting autistic individuals to always conform to social norms.

Join us in celebrating the diversity of autistic individuals and learn how you can become an advocate for their inclusion in the workplace.

Don't miss this enlightening talk that will empower you to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for all.

Incase you missed it, also check out Lee McKeeman's previous talk about his career journey: [An Autistic Journey To Google Staff Engineer [L6] From Software Analyst](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/nujUVma6boGJxGAQzoiX/an-autistic-journey-to-google-staff-engineer-l6-from-software-analyst-by-lee-mckeeman/)

Maximize Your Equity And Benefits In Tech [Part 16] - Stock Options Strategy

Stock option strategies can significantly affect your financial outcomes depending on timing, tax implications, and company events. Here's the core points from the lesson:

- Early exercise with an 83(b) election can offer long-term tax benefits, especially for qualified small business stock, but requires accepting the risk of losing the money invested
- For non-qualified stock options (NSOs), exercising and holding is risky due to upfront ordinary income tax that isn't offset if the stock later declines
- Strategies like exercising and immediately selling (or cashless exercise) can reduce risk and lock in gains, especially around liquidity events like IPOs
- AMT planning for incentive stock options (ISOs) includes spreading exercises across tax years or alternating years of exercise and sale to manage tax impact and recover AMT credits
- Exercising ISOs early in the year offers flexibility to sell later in the year if the stock drops (avoiding AMT) or hold into the next year for favorable capital gains treatment

For more on why you might want to exercise your ISOs early in the year, [click here](https://adastrafp.com/exercising-isos-early-in-year/). For my AMT Calculator (for informational purposes only, not tax advice), [click here](https://adastrafp.com/amt-calculator/).

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/)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 15] - Have Their Back

Disagreement is everywhere in tech, and it's often quite stressful. However, it's also a prime time for you to deepen your network and relationships. This lesson teaches you:

- Why having someone's back in times of disagreement is so powerful
- The main avenue to have someone's back
- How engineers completely waste the meetings they go to
- How having someone's back against yourself is insanely powerful
- Where so many engineers go wrong when it comes to their mentality around being right

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.