Engineering Managers Day-To-Day

In this lesson, we break down what an engineering manager’s day-to-day really looks like—why their calendars are packed with meetings, how they handle technical planning, and why the emotional side of the role is often underestimated.

- We highlight that EM calendars are dominated by 1:1s, alignment discussions, and cross-team negotiations, much of which shields us from logistical or resourcing debates.
- We explain that managers need enough technical depth to estimate project scope, evaluate dependencies, and participate meaningfully in planning without writing code themselves.
- We note that much of the real work happens outside meetings—reviewing docs, giving feedback, writing updates, and communicating progress upward to directors and VPs.
- We emphasize that people management is a huge portion of the job: coordinating collaboration, following up for junior engineers, resolving interpersonal issues, and handling performance challenges.
- We discuss the emotional burden managers carry handling compensation, performance ratings, personal struggles, and burnout and how this makes them part-time therapists as well as leaders.

Overrated Career Goals

We explain which attributes engineers tend to over-prioritize and why doing so often leads to bad career decisions.

Here are the core points from the lesson:

- We see many early-career engineers chase trendy product spaces (ML, AR/VR, blockchain) without genuine passion, ignoring the high risk that trends fizzle and leave teams stagnant; survivorship bias makes the rare success stories seem more common than they are.
- We highlight a similar trap with technical stacks: engineers often assume “more modern is better,” jumping between new technologies and hurting long-term growth, when stable, proven stacks at strong companies typically offer better learning and career durability.
- We show that over-prioritizing level/title or short-term compensation can backfire, since inflated titles at weak companies and high pay tied to terrible work-life balance rarely lead to long-term career success or well-being; growth opportunities and supportive teams tend to drive compensation naturally over time.
- We stress that compensation is multi-variable (base vs. equity vs. upside potential), and examples like Barnes & Noble illustrate how deceptively high salaries may underperform compared to equity-rich tech roles over a multi-year horizon.

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 26] - Cohort Based Courses

Why He Built (And Shut Down) A Meta Internal Tool for Pseudonymous Communication

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 22] - Building Diverse Teams

Tech has a massive diversity problem, and as a hiring manager, you shouldn't make that problem any worse (especially as diverse teams are scientifically proven to be better than homogeneous ones). From this lesson, you will:

- Recognize that common sourcing tactics like source-a-thons and friend-of-friend methods may introduce biases by yielding candidates similar to existing networks
- Learn strategies to actively promote diversity during the sourcing process, such as explicitly focusing on diversity in sourcing sessions to influence the diversity of the candidate pipeline
- Understand the importance of ensuring the top of the recruitment funnel is diverse, as this sets the stage for diverse hiring outcomes
- Discover ways to prioritize efforts in closing candidates, potentially focusing extra effort on diverse or outstanding candidates to ensure equitable recruitment practices

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

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 9] - Source-a-thon

You don't need to only look outwards for candidates - They can often come from within, stemming from your current team! From this lesson, you will:

- Learn how to organize a Source-a-thon by creating a spreadsheet and having your team contribute potential candidates from their networks
- Understand the importance of warm outreach, including using a team member’s name for higher response rates
- Discover the benefits of conducting a Source-a-thon in a collaborative environment to generate more high-quality leads
- Realize the value of leveraging your team’s connections to source candidates who are likely to excel in the role based on previous work experiences

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

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 9] - Community-First Approach

Q&A: Acing Tech Interviews In A Bad Job Market

Check out the full 4.5+ hour course diving even deeper into this session's concepts: [\[Course\] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/)

Get Taro Premium at a discount with our special link here: <https://www.jointaro.com/r/achiou15/>

As a Taro Premium community member, you can get personalized advice from proven tech leads like Alex and Rahul at any time by starting career discussions in our forum and joining [Group Office Hours](https://www.jointaro.com/event/group-office-hours-with-alex-career-direction-company-offer-evaluation-jan19/). 

This is the Q&A portion of the 1-hour session we did about finding interview success in a bad job market. You can watch that session here: [Acing Tech Interviews In A Bad Job Market](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/Vz4jXfFIeQSSSzonpvH0/acing-tech-interviews-in-a-bad-job-market/)

Related resources for the questions in this video:

- [\[Masterclass\] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - Data Structures And Algorithms](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/V4sTACzfOh22nMVcUV3w/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-data-structures-and-algorithms/)
- ["How can I get more internships?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/k8TNvbobgU1R7ICDWKus/how-can-i-get-more-internships/)
- [\[Masterclass\] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/0WEmTNZOMIh8xAdfO3JH/masterclass-how-to-choose-a-good-company-and-team-as-a-software-engineer/)

Swingy Compensation

While Big Tech compensation packages can be extremely lucrative, they are also highly volatile. Much of the reward is tied to company stock, which fluctuates dramatically and is largely outside any individual engineer’s control. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- **Equity Makes Up the Majority of Pay at Senior Levels** - Compensation often includes base salary, a bonus, and a large portion in restricted stock units (RSUs), especially as engineers become more senior.
- **Stock Price Volatility Can Be Emotionally Draining** - Engineers may become fixated on stock movements - checking daily gains or losses that can translate to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in value swings.
- **Lack of Control Over Equity Value** - Company-wide factors like earnings calls or buyback announcements - rather than individual performance—drive major stock movements. A 26% drop in Meta's stock once erased $250 billion in market cap overnight.
- **Advice: Sell Regularly, Avoid Emotional Attachment** - Diversification and emotional detachment are key. Holding too much company stock creates psychological and financial vulnerability, especially in market downturns.
- **Stock-Based Wealth Is Largely Unpredictable** - Stock spikes and crashes often follow unexpected logic, making it nearly impossible for individual employees to anticipate or influence outcomes.

Ship & Grow 500k+ User Side Projects [Part 17] - Social Media

Social media is incredibly powerful, but there's a harsh power law where 90%+ of users can't extract anything useful from it. This lesson teaches you:

- Why social media is the most inorganic way to get users, which is why you probably shouldn't do it
- 2 of the more powerful social media channels for sharing side projects in particular
- Tips for getting traffic through LinkedIn and why it's a great fit
- How to leverage Reddit effectively, explained with an in-depth example
- The new era way to build a successful product through community and when social media makes sense for you as a traffic acquisition mechanism

Here's how Alex succeeds on LinkedIn: [\[Case Study\] How I Get 500,000+ LinkedIn Post Views Per Week](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tmSAAWJjLcLWqeGWOl4t/case-study-how-i-get-500000-linkedin-post-views-per-week/?playlistId=m62jZgEt7wpL1CC1OdHj)

If you're interested in the Reddit case study, here's the subreddit: <https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRaceTo10Million/>

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 14] - ATS Lookup

When recruiting, you should do your best to ensure the best candidate experience. This is critical during the outreach phase. From this lesson, you will:

- Understand the necessity of verifying candidate information in the ATS to ensure they have not been recently rejected or contacted for other roles
- Learn about different ATS platforms like Greenhouse and Ashby, and how they can help manage candidate interactions
- Discover how to coordinate with recruiting teams to cross-check a list of potential candidates to avoid redundant or inappropriate contacts
- Gain insights into the typical cooling-off periods between rejections and new outreach, which can range from 6 to 12 months depending on company policy

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

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 13] - Get Their Email Address

Even though it's been around forever, email is still a great way to reach people. From this lesson, you will:

- Learn about Clearbit and its tendency to provide corporate email addresses, which may not be ideal for reaching out to potential candidates
- Discover how to use Gmail to predict personal email addresses by experimenting with common naming conventions
- Understand how to use social media handles as a potential lead to guess a candidate's email address
- Explore the use of MailTester to verify the existence of an email address by checking against SMTP servers
- Gain insight into Rocketreach as a highly recommended tool for retrieving personal contact details from LinkedIn profiles

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

The How of the Engineering Career Ladder: Five Essential Foundations for Advancement

Session led by [Shine Garg](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shinegarg/)

Engineering career ladders lay out the “what” of the software engineering career path—what competencies and behaviors are needed at each milestone. However, they often lack guidance on the “how.”

Understanding how—and how quickly—you can acquire and exhibit these competencies significantly impacts your career trajectory, financial future, and sense of fulfillment in life.

This talk demystifies the process of climbing the engineering career ladder. Join us to learn the five essential foundations for advancing your career and achieving your goals.

How Managers Hire Great Engineers [Part 18] - Going Above & Beyond

Top engineers can be insanely hard to close, especially as you're often competing with FAANG for them. From this lesson, you will:

- Learn the importance of building a personal relationship with candidates throughout the interview process to increase the chances of closing them successfully
- Discover strategies for multiple touchpoints, such as sending personal emails from the team or senior leaders, to make candidates feel valued and wanted
- Understand how unique gestures like meeting in person or sending personalized gifts can significantly enhance the candidate's experience and likelihood of accepting the offer

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

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 10] - Friend-of-friend

Friendship is magic, especially when it comes to hiring great engineers. From this lesson, you will:

- Learn how to ask people for recommendations, without pre-filtering candidates, to identify strong potential hires
- Understand the importance of not pre-filtering based on market availability, as some candidates may be interested even if they aren’t actively looking
- Discover how using the recommender’s name in outreach can improve response rates

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

Amazon Behavioral Interview [Part 23] - Sacrificing Short-Term For Long-Term (Answer)

This video segment describes a situation where the interviewee had to make a difficult decision to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term value.

- **Identified the Problem:** The interviewee inherited a team with three regional teams operating independently, leading to inefficiencies and hindering the team's ability to scale and meet growing demands.
- **Made a Difficult Decision:** The interviewee made the difficult decision to transition the team from a regional model to a globally aligned model. This decision faced significant resistance from the team, leading to setbacks and the loss of some team members.
- **Overcame Challenges:** Despite the challenges, the interviewee successfully implemented the new model, resulting in significant improvements:
  - Reduced resolution times from seven hours to two hours.
  - Increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) significantly.
  - Improved operational efficiency and team productivity.
- **Learnings and Reflections:** The interviewee acknowledged that they could have improved their communication and change management strategies. They recognized the importance of more proactively communicating the need for change and the potential benefits of the new model to the team.

This example demonstrates the interviewee's ability to: 

- **Identify and address systemic issues:** They recognized the limitations of the existing system and proposed a solution to improve efficiency and effectiveness. 
- **Make difficult decisions:** They made a difficult decision despite facing resistance from their team. 
- **Overcome challenges:** They successfully navigated the challenges of the transition, including team resistance and operational hurdles. 
- **Focus on long-term value:** They prioritized long-term benefits for the team and the organization, even when it meant short-term disruption.
- **Learn from experience:** They identified areas for improvement in their communication and change management strategies.

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

Become An Engineer Influencer [Part 18] - Limiting Beliefs

Taro Book Club: Designing Data Intensive Applications - Chapter 7 (Transactions)

Topic: Chapter 7 - Transactions

Session lead by [**Raj Shah**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/therajshah/), [**Raghu Kalyan**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/graghukalyan/), and [**Kevin Wu**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wkevn/) 

In this #taro-bookclub discussion, we're having a session about Chapter 7 of [**"Designing Data-Intensive Applications"**](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/1449373321) by Martin Kleppmann.

Here's the agenda:

- We’ll break down and discuss the key concepts from Chapter 7
- There will also be time for any questions and answers you might have

Get ready for another engaging and informative session!

The Effect of Interest Rates

We walk through how macroeconomic conditions—especially interest rates—directly affect tech companies and tech workers.

- The federal funds rate guides how expensive it is for banks (and ultimately companies) to borrow money, and while near-zero rates felt normal recently, historically higher interest rates are actually the norm.
- When interest rates rise, the cost of borrowing increases, which makes companies far less willing to invest in long-term bets that may not pay off for several years.
- Because the tech industry is heavily driven by growth funded through borrowing and investment, higher rates trigger spending pullbacks, reduced hiring, and ultimately the contraction and layoffs we’re seeing across the market.

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.