DSA Crash Course [Part 43] - Tree Sum Approach

In this lesson, Alvin explores the strategy to solving the following interview problem:

> Write a function, *tree_sum*, that takes in the root of a binary tree that contains number values. The function should return the total sum of all values in the tree.

```
a = Node(3)
b = Node(11)
c = Node(4)
d = Node(4)
e = Node(-2)
f = Node(1)
a.left = b
a.right = c
b.left = d
b.right = e
c.right = f

#       3
#    /    \
#   11     4
#  / \      \
# 4   -2     1

tree_sum(a) # -> 21
```

```
a = Node(1)
b = Node(6)
c = Node(0)
d = Node(3)
e = Node(-6)
f = Node(2)
g = Node(2)
h = Node(2)
a.left = b
a.right = c
b.left = d
b.right = e
c.right = f
e.left = g
f.right = h

#      1
#    /   \
#   6     0
#  / \     \
# 3   -6    2
#    /       \
#   2         2

tree_sum(a) # -> 10
```

```
tree_sum(None) # -> 0
```

If you need additional support taking these DSA skills and actually applying them, take [**Alvin's**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/) *complete* data structures and algorithms course on [**Structy**](https://structy.net/?utm_source=taro). You can try out the concepts yourself in their interactive code editor and learn advanced DSA patterns like stack exhaustive recursion.

Use [**this link to get 20% off**](https://structy.net/purchase?promo_code=taro20) the entire Structy DSA learning experience.

Follow Alvin on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/>

DSA Crash Course [Part 42] - Breadth First Values Walkthrough

In this lesson, Alvin walks through the python implementation for the *breadth_first_values* problem.

Code along and test your work in the following editor workspace: <https://structy.net/problems/breadth-first-values?language=py>

If you need additional support taking these DSA skills and actually applying them, take [**Alvin's**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/) *complete* data structures and algorithms course on [**Structy**](https://structy.net/?utm_source=taro). You can try out the concepts yourself in their interactive code editor and learn advanced DSA patterns like stack exhaustive recursion.

Use [**this link to get 20% off**](https://structy.net/purchase?promo_code=taro20) the entire Structy DSA learning experience.

Follow Alvin on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-zablan-b73a92117/>

How to Crack System Design Interviews - Part 10: Preparation Resources

This video outlines resources and strategies to prepare for system design interviews. We can improve our performance by:

- **Building a strong vocabulary:** Familiarizing ourselves with key technologies and concepts (e.g., Amazon S3, Apache Kafka) helps us communicate ideas effectively and demonstrate practical understanding.

- **Developing theoretical knowledge:** We can gain a solid theoretical foundation through courses like Interview Ready, which covers high-level and low-level design concepts, design trade-offs, and other essential topics.

- **Gaining practical experience:** Mock interviews provide invaluable practice and build confidence for the real interview. Consider using free platforms or seeking discounts if available.

- **Utilizing online assessment tools:** If time is limited, leverage automated online judges to assess and reinforce understanding of system design components and their placement.

- **Prioritizing human interaction:** While online tools are helpful, prioritize mock interviews with experienced individuals for the most effective preparation and feedback.

A few tools mentioned: 

- Mock Interviews: [joinTaro.com/perks](https://www.jointaro.com/perks/)
- [Automated Design Judge](https://interviewready.io/question-list/system-design-judge/?_aff=JOINTARO)
- [General Resources for SD](https://interviewready.io/resources)

[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.

Why Big Tech Companies Do Open Source (From A Director at Meta)

Companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Hugging Face have made enormous contributions to open source. These companies often allocate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to creating or maintaining open source software. Why? 

- These companies often rely on the software for their production code
- Companies can use popular open-source projects as a tool to recruit top engineers
- Engineers familiar with a company's software will onboard faster

[Paper Reading] Deploy ML Models from Lab to Production

Session led by: [Akshika Wijesundara PhD](https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshika/)

If you don't have a Taro Premium membership, you can get it with a discount with Akshika's special link here: [**https://www.jointaro.com/r/akshikw802/**](https://www.jointaro.com/r/akshikw802/)

**WHAT YOU'LL LEARN**

- **Discover the benefits of CI/CD pipelines:** Learn how CI/CD pipelines streamline the model building, testing, and deployment processes, enabling rapid iteration and continuous improvement.
- **Containerize your ML code:** Understand the steps and advantages of containerizing your machine learning code to ensure consistency, portability, and efficient resource management.
- **Leverage the AWS stack for ML workloads:** Explore how to effectively utilize AWS as your cloud infrastructure provider to run and scale your machine learning workloads with ease and reliability.

**WHY THIS TOPIC MATTERS**

MLOps isn't just about fancy models - it's about getting them working for real! Learn how to deploy, maintain, and collaborate on ML projects, making you a highly-demand expert who can turn machine learning into real-world impact.

[Paper Reading] ROSE: Robust Caches for Amazon Product Search

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

ROSE introduces a robust caching system that tolerates misspellings and typos while maintaining the efficiency of traditional caches. The core innovation is a randomized hashing schema that allows ROSE to index and retrieve a vast set of queries with constant memory and time. This system is robust against query intent, typos, and grammatical errors, offering theoretical guarantees of its performance.

Extensive experiments on real-world datasets highlight ROSE's effectiveness and efficiency, showcasing significant improvements in Amazon's search engine performance across key business metrics.\
\
In this session we deep dive into the query caching layer at Amazon that allows for far better and robust search performance

[**https://drive.google.com/file/d/13YwkeCc1XwnRVDVkcuE7MKt2r7aqld24/view**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13YwkeCc1XwnRVDVkcuE7MKt2r7aqld24/view)

Taro Book Club: The Pragmatic Programmer - Session 4

Session led by: [Bikram Kashyap](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kashyapbikram/)

In this #taro-bookclub discussion, we'll further go over [**"The Pragmatic Programmer"**](https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X) by Andrew Hund & David Thomas.

Here's the agenda:

- Power of Plain Text
- Shell Games
- Power Editing
- Version Control
- Debugging
- Text Manipulation
- Engineering Daybooks

Please send your questions ahead of time to [**Bikram Kashyap**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kashyapbikram/) in the [**Taro Premium**](https://www.jointaro.com/membership/) Slack, so that they can be included in the discussion. [***If you don't have the book***](https://taropremium.slack.com/archives/C05CKBHPNTU/p1723491587867879) *or want more details on how this all works, check out the #taro-bookclub channel in the Taro Premium Slack as well!*

Get ready for another engaging and informative session!

Become An Open Source Master [Part 16] - Understand The Basics

We need to learn the codebase of a new open source project to contribute effectively. It's important to understand the bigger picture instead of focusing on every single line of code. Some questions worth asking when approaching a new codebase are: what is the purpose of the code, what are the opinions of the developers, and how is the code structured?

Connect with James:

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

Become An Open Source Master [Part 6] - The Right Reason To Do Open Source

The video emphasizes that we should approach open source with the right motivations, focusing on the long-term benefits rather than seeking quick career gains.

- **It's not a shortcut to a job:** Open source requires dedication and time; it's not a quick fix for career advancement.
- **Authentic contributions matter:** Open source work is transparent, showcasing your genuine skills and passion to potential employers.
- **Patience is key:** It takes time to learn, contribute meaningfully, and build relationships in the open source community.
- **Focus on the right reasons:** The primary benefits include making an impact, learning and growing, joining a community, and demonstrating your passion for building.
- **Embrace the challenge:** Navigating large, complex projects and overcoming obstacles in open source can develop valuable professional skills applicable to any work environment.

Connect with James: 

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

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 25] - Conclusion

Congratulations on making it to the end of the course! Please go and hire awesome people now :) 

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

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/>

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 12] - Outreach Basics

So you've found a great candidate - Now it's time to get them into your interview loop. From this lesson, you will:

- Understand the benchmark for a good response rate when sourcing candidates, with 15% as the target for moving candidates forward in the recruitment process
- Learn that email outreaches typically yield higher response rates than LinkedIn InMails and why finding a candidate’s personal email can be more effective
- Discover the advantages of outreach coming directly from an engineering manager rather than a recruiter to significantly increase the likelihood of a response
- Explore tools and methods for finding candidate emails, including using services like Clearbit and experimenting with Gmail to predict email addresses
- Gain insights into how personalizing the outreach process by handling initial replies and interactions can make a meaningful impact on recruitment outcomes

Connect with John Egan on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/​](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwegan/%E2%80%8B)

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 10] - Rephrasing For Clarity

In this video, I delve into the art of rephrasing for clarity, emphasizing its significance in reaching a wider audience and maintaining engagement. Techniques like simplifying language, breaking down complex ideas, using synonyms, and restating key points are explored with practical examples. Viewers are encouraged to apply these strategies to enhance message comprehension and audience connection.

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

Clear Communication For SWEs [Part 8] - The STAR Method 🌟

In this video, I explain the STAR method, breaking down its components - Situation, Task, Action, and Result. I highlight the benefits of using this structured approach in job interviews, performance reviews, and presentations.

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

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 19] - Code Machine

As a software engineer, one of your most powerful tools to land more impact is to write more code. While many engineers write less code as they grow to staff, there is 1 large exception. This lesson teaches you:

- What the code machine staff engineer archetype is
- Why the code machine archetype is quite rare and usually not supported
- How to become a code machine

As this lesson talks about, code machines have both a stunning degree of velocity and quality. Level up your code quality here: [\[Course\] Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 17] - Fixer

While many software engineers see bugs as a source of frustration holding back their roadmap work, there is a certain group of staff engineers who view them the opposite way. This lesson teaches you:

- What the fixer staff engineer archetype is
- The "gap filler" style of fixer
- The "discoverer" style of fixer and why it's so impactful and well supported at Big Tech companies
- How to become a fixer staff engineer

Level up your debugging skills with this: [\[Masterclass\] 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/)

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

Tech Lead Blueprint 16/17 - Chaos And Tech Debt

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

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.