Taking Amazing Meeting Notes

For any meeting, what should you make sure for it?

True or false: As long as you write down most of what was said in a meeting, you have taken a good set of meeting notes.

What can you do when someone else in a meeting says something really insightful?

Your meeting is winding down, and you have a good set of notes of what was said during the meeting. What should you do next?

Meetings can easily become unproductive unless there is a clear sense of ownership and structure. This segment emphasizes taking initiative and being proactive with note-taking and follow-up.

- **Take initiative to capture takeaways**: Especially when meeting with a manager, take responsibility for writing down notes and summarizing key points. Don’t assume they’ll do it—they likely have too much on their plate.
- **Communicate your intent**: Let the other person know that you’re taking notes because their input is valuable. This builds mutual respect and sets the tone for accountability.
- **Clarify ownership of action items**: Don’t leave to-dos ambiguous. Specify who will do what—whether it’s you, your manager, or another teammate.
- **Create space for note-taking**: Pause briefly during the conversation when something important is said. Say things like “Let me write that down” to signal that you’re capturing key information.
- **Follow up consistently**: Revisit the notes in future meetings and check progress. This keeps everyone aligned and ensures that good ideas don’t get lost.
- **Adapt for walking meetings**: For more casual one-on-ones (like walking meetings), carve out 10 minutes afterward to document and share what was discussed. This keeps the informal meeting just as productive as a formal one.

Make It Easy For You To Receive Help

True or false: If you ask for help on a coding issue, link the entire repo of the codebase you are working on to be safe. This guarantees that helpers have all the context they need.

What can you do to really sharpen your question before asking it?

"I am having trouble getting a button to appear above an image in my webpage. Can someone help with this?" - Which of the following are questions that should have been anticipated beforehand for this question?

The Best Gift You Can Give Yourself When It Comes To Productivity

Which of these is the best gift you can give yourself when it comes to productivity?

True or false: Phones are great productivity tools as they allow us to accomplish almost anything in a really convenient way. This is why we should make sure that we always have our phones close by as we are working.

Where should you have your phone when you are trying to do deep work?

Between flow state and context switching, which is the safer option to invest into to make yourself more productive?

One of the best ways to improve your productivity is to block off chunks of time where you can focus without having to context switch.

Junior Engineers, Avoid This Fake Growth Trap

What's the main change in expectations when growing into senior engineering levels?

True or false: Hustling (i.e. working extremely hard) is a common, healthy way to get promoted.

Why is it bad if you are able to get promoted to senior levels through sheer ultra-hard work and very high raw productivity?

- A lot of earlier-in-career engineers believe that being a better software engineer is all about coding: If you can write more good code faster, then you are growing.
- This is generally mostly true in the beginning, but then it quickly becomes a toxic way of perceiving growth.
- You will hit walls. There are only so many hours in a day, and you can only type so many lines of code per hour.
- As a senior engineer, you need to focus on multiplicative and deeper behaviors.
- If you are able to have the impact of a senior engineer but are working extremely long hours, you are essentially "faking" the appearance of a senior engineer. This working model is not sustainable, and once you burn out, it's a terrible situation for everyone.

Bad Question vs. Good Question Example

Is the following a good question: What are the best open-source projects to work on?

"What are the best open-source projects to work on?" - How can the asker improve this question?

Is the following a good question: Any Java developers here who have worked on ML?

"Any Java developers here who have worked on ML?" - Why is this not a good question?

Is the following a good question: Does anybody know what the front-end engineering interview for Amazon looks like?

"Does anybody know what the front-end engineering interview for Amazon looks like?" - How can the asker improve this question?

Is the following a good question: Can someone recommend me resources for blockchain development?

"Can someone recommend me resources for blockchain development?" - How can the asker improve this question?

Is the following a good question: Is there anybody here who can refer me into FAANG?

"Is there anybody here who can refer me into FAANG?" - Why is this not a good question?

Asking questions is one of the most important skills for an engineer: However, so many engineers struggle with this and ask questions that are bad at getting answers. This is all even more important in the age of AI with tools like ChatGPT.

This video covers an in-depth example of a bad questions vs. a good question:

### Bad Question
*"I'm trying to load an image in my Android app, and it shows up blank. Any ideas on what's going on here?"*

Here's why this question falls short:
- It feels lazy as the asker doesn't share what they have tried already - Did they even do a Google search?
- There's no context on why they're trying to get an image to load - The impact of helping this person is unclear.
- There is 0 relevant code attached: This question forces potential helpers to ask a lot of follow-up questions to give advice.

## Good Question
The upgraded question is too long (check the video to see it), so here are the core points as to why it's better:
- The user attached everything they have tried.
- There's links to additional context if helpers reading the question want to dive deeper - Keep in mind that they're not embedded directly within the question as huge code blocks can be overwhelming.
- In general, it's very obvious that the asker put a lot of effort into the question and is respectful of everyone's time.

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Learn Quickly In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/u9ldIvrTvV1wfWExccDR/masterclass-how-to-learn-quickly-in-tech/) - The full video where this clip was taken from
- ["How do you overcome the fear of asking stupid questions / bothering people when you need help?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/vNE8kgpx2zdI1wACg9jA/how-do-you-overcome-the-fear-of-asking-stupid-questions-bothering-people-when-you-need-help/)
- [[Case Study] How Engineers Unlock Huge Impact With Artificial Intelligence (AI)](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/gTQZbv0lmmypLPytqw5g/case-study-how-engineers-unlock-huge-impact-with-artificial-intelligence-ai/)

Why Time Is The Most Important Resource In The Tech Industry

Which one of these is a crucial skill working in a top tech company?

True or false: Time is an overpowered, often underappreciated resource.

Easily Level Up All Your Meetings By Taking Notes

What is the most straightforward way to level up a meeting?

True or false: Maintaining a good set of meeting notes can help you substantially with promotion.

Which of the following are benefits of maintaining meeting notes?

Meetings are extremely expensive, because they take time. To make sure that you're not wasting time with your meetings, you should always be doing the simple yet effective task of taking notes.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **For recurring meetings, maintain a running doc** - This applies especially to 1 on 1s and team meetings. *If you're not talking during a meeting, you should be writing*. These notes allow everyone in the meeting to quickly absorb prior context and hit the ground running in the current meeting.
- **Come into every meeting with a written agenda** - >24 hours before the meeting, write down an agenda into the meeting notes doc and let the other other in the meeting know. This will anchor the discussion to minimize its chances of going off-track and shows great initiative on your end. 

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Get Promoted Faster In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/W730BOdrfAIXAEVd8HUf/masterclass-how-to-get-promoted-faster-in-tech/) - The promotion talk referenced in the video
- ["How can I be more active in meetings and earn the respect of senior engineers?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/RtISfsqipLWBhZxvyl69/how-can-i-be-more-active-in-meetings-and-earn-the-respect-of-senior-engineers/)
- ["How to hold people accountable for Action Items/decisions from meetings?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/Jh8xg2KYi9utvUv9jUeO/how-to-hold-people-accountable-for-action-itemsdecisions-from-meetings/)

Properly Learning From Software Engineers More Senior Than You

True or false: What is built by a very senior engineer is more important than how they built it.

When observing very senior engineers, what should you look for to properly learn from them?

True or false: At the top tech companies, the very senior engineers make 5-10x more than their very junior counterparts because they work 5-10x harder than they do.

Which are good examples of questions you can ask when understanding a very senior engineer's behavior?

True or false: At the top tech companies, you are told less and less what to do as you grow more senior, working on more ambiguous projects while having greater freedom to choose what you work on.

As a junior software engineer, it can be daunting understanding the senior and staff engineers on your team. This video covers the mindset shift to make to start leveling yourself from properly observing them, achieving career growth without these engineers having to formally mentor you.

Here's the core points:
- **Observe more senior teammates' behavior** - Principal engineers will usually have 10x the impact of a junior engineer. They don't get there by working 10x as hard - We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Instead of asking yourself *what* these great engineers are getting done, ask yourself, "*How* do these engineers get stuff done?". Marveling over their much larger impact won't get you anywhere - You start really learning from these engineers when you start breaking down the path they took to achieve that impact.
- Here are more specific axes to observe:
  - **Communication** - How do these engineers share status updates and rally the team around their ideas?
  - **Direction** - How do they prioritize projects and select the best ones?
  - **Quality** - How do these engineers protect the sanctity of launches? What kind of feedback are they leaving in code review? What good habits do they have when they submit code? How do they facilitate system design discussions?

Related resources:
- ["What's the core insight behind quick growth?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nJ762p255cGyuth36H6w/whats-the-core-insight-behind-quick-growth/)
- ["How do you get the most out of mentorship?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/IbuZydz0QzsVVqESVaxQ/how-do-you-get-the-most-out-of-mentorship/)

How To Supercharge Your Resume As A Junior Engineer

What's the best way to juice up your resume after you have gotten the basics?

True or false: As long as you can code and have a polished resume, that is enough to comfortably find a job.

Why are side projects such an effective tactic?

True or false: You can get something extremely close to work experience without having a formal job, all from the comfort of your own home.

So many junior engineers struggle for a very simple reason: They haven't taken the time to build real software. In this video, we talk about how earlier-in-career software engineers in particular need to stop dancing around the core issue and just start writing the code.

Here are the core points:
- **Resume optimization only goes so far** - At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how well your resume is formatted. If the underlying material isn't good, you don't have a real portfolio. If you are looking for your first job, this means that you need to be creative with what you put in.
- **Use side projects to create your own experience** - You don't need a formal company and work experience to write practical code that matters: You can do it completely on your own as long as you have a decent computer and an internet connection. It is easier than ever before for anybody to deploy their own app or website, all for free.

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Write A Stellar Tech Resume That Gets You More Job Opportunities](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OnQV2V3J8DYVBBuGbZx6/masterclass-how-to-write-a-stellar-tech-resume-that-gets-you-more-job-opportunities/) - The full video this clip was taken from, which includes a link to Alex's resume
- ["What technologies or stacks should I create a project to add in my resume for entry level software jobs?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/c0DiG5ureLbkZ1mKD9Rf/what-technologies-or-stacks-should-i-create-a-project-to-add-in-my-resume-for-entry-level-software-jobs/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OEuX0KMhcnNSTJ50Voee/masterclass-how-to-build-and-grow-tech-products-to-500k-users-for-free/)

Explaining Your Experience In A Meaningful Way On A Resume

Is this a good resume snippet: Worked on the SIVAD system, using Room, AndroidX, Activities, and Java

How do you make the experience portions of your resume stand out?

Is this a good resume snippet: Champion for unit test coverage for Cool Company's iOS app, increasing it by 20% and reducing the amount of new iOS user issues by 10%

What is the main way people struggle with their resumes?

Is this a good resume snippet: Led the JavaScript migration effort with strong communication, architectural, and code quality skills

- The most common way resumes struggle is that they tell instead of show
- Here's an example:
  - **Telling:** Added unit tests to the Android app with JUnit and Java
  - **Showing:** Increased test coverage of the Android app by 80%, which reduced bug tickets from users by 50%
- In a nutshell, don't just say what you did - Adding an adjective like "great" doesn't automatically make your feat impressive. Prove that you did something great by talking about how you did it and the actual result (which is ideally business impact).
- This method of communication is especially important for resumes as their audience is mainly non-technical: Recruiters. They aren't going to understand the more specific tech buzzwords. You need to write things in more "plain English", so that your accomplishments can be understood as impressive by almost anyone.

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] Get More Interviews: Write A Stellar Resume As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/get-more-interviews-write-a-stellar-resume-as-a-software-engineer/) - By taking the course, you get access to Alex's most recent resume!
- [Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/WFJYebwJW2rhviTrQrB3/your-tech-resume-should-look-boring/)
- ["What high-impact achievements should a full-stack engineering intern target for a stronger resume?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/cnEgJuQMKI3G4rqhEkp4/what-high-impact-achievements-should-a-full-stack-engineering-intern-target-for-a-stronger-resume/)

Making Every Single Meeting You Have Effective

What do you absolutely need to do with every single meeting in order to make it effective?

What is the most important question you should be asking yourself constantly during a meeting?

Setting clear goals for every meeting ensures focus, alignment, and efficiency. Rather than drifting through discussions, this mindset helps make the most of everyone's time.

- **Define the meeting goal upfront**: Whether the goal is to build a relationship, align on a decision, or explore a specific topic, clarify it before stepping into the meeting.
- **Hold the goal in mind throughout**: Actively track whether the conversation is moving toward the intended objective—even as you engage in real-time dialogue.
- **Course-correct if needed**: If the meeting strays off-topic or stalls, use the goal as a guidepost to refocus the discussion or adjust expectations.
- **Reflect afterwards**: Evaluate whether the meeting achieved its intended outcome. If not, determine what adjustments can improve the effectiveness of future meetings.
- **Build the habit**: With consistent practice, goal-oriented thinking during meetings becomes second nature, enhancing both productivity and influence.

Asking Effective Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly

What are some things you can do to improve your question?

True or false: Ideally, your question takes less time to answer than it took for you to ask the question.

What is the core operating principle behind asking and answering questions?

True or false: In order to be polite, you should preface your question with a simple greeting like "Hello". After the potential answerer responds, then you can ask your question.

Why do you need to attach a lot of context and be as specific as possible asking questions in tech?

- **Core principle**: Questions are an exchange of time. You put some time to write your question and the answerers take some time to respond. Your goal is to make the amount of time necessary to answer your question smaller than the amount of time you spent asking it.
- Have empathy for the people answering the question. Thank them pre-emptively!
- Avoid leading "hi". Just ask them your question directly!
- Google your question and go through the initial results prior to asking your question. Inline that context in your question.
- Attach as much relevant context as possible. You want to prevent back-and-forth where answerers need to ask you questions to clarify your initial question.

Related resources:
- [Bad Question vs. Good Question Example](https://link.jointaro.com/fiY293kj2ewPwMqB8)
- ["How do you overcome the fear of asking stupid questions / bothering people when you need help?"](https://link.jointaro.com/37FJnTAX1BN2e5wt6)

How To Accomplish Something Every Single Day

How do you make every one of your days productive?

True or false: People overestimate what they can do in 1 day while underestimating what they can accomplish in 1 year.

Which of these attributes should your singular daily goal have?

True or false: You should try to keep your goals purely inside your head instead of writing them down. This saves you time and prevents you from overloading yourself with too many notes.

Understanding The Differences Between Engineering Levels

True or false: Very senior engineers are at their levels because they act and operate in a fundamentally different way from their more junior peers.

How can you properly tell the more senior engineers from the others?

Which one of these is a core example of what a very senior (i.e. Staff or above) engineer would do?

There Is No Such Thing As A Stupid Question

What is a good amount of time to be stuck before asking a question?

True or false: To prove that you are a good engineer when joining a new team, you should ask as few questions as possible.

What is the optimal amount of questions to ask per week as a junior engineer?

True or false: Asking a lot of questions can help other people in your company and increase your respect within your team.

What are the benefits of asking a lot of good questions?

- There is no such thing as a stupid question: Each question is a genuine request to become more informed about the world.
- If there's a metric to measure your onboarding, it's the amount of questions you ask.
- Don't worry about how you'll look when you ask a question. If you have taken the time [to choose a healthy team](https://link.jointaro.com/WtZRJ5GtEVvAskLh8), they will not think any less of you for asking.
- It's much better to ask questions than to be stuck for days, if not weeks. *If you're completely stuck after 15-30 minutes, just ask the question*.
- If you're asking questions in a public forum (which you should!), you are creating content with your Q&A pair. Not only are you benefiting by getting unblocked, you are having multiplicative impact by creating a useful resource that will help the team across the future.
- *If you are asking questions the right way, people will not get mad at you for asking questions*.

So how do you ask the questions the right way? You can find [our in-depth guide on how to do that here](https://link.jointaro.com/yhEYut43nosKyPYw9).

The #1 Thing To Remember With Meetings

Which is the core principle you have to remember with meetings?

True or false: It is safer to just keep attending a meeting series, even if you are not clear exactly what value you are getting from it.

You have a meeting series where there is always action, but there is usually an awkward portion at the end where people run out of topics. What should you do?

True or false: When in doubt of a meeting's value prop, just delete it. You can always bring it back later.

You have a 1 on 1 meeting series, and by the time of the meeting, you feel like there are a lot of issues that you two are getting to too late. What should you do?

Software engineering is a inherently collaborative exercise, so every tech company is going to have meetings. The tricky part as a engineer is figuring out how to use them effectively: Navigating meetings incorrectly leads to mountains of wasted time.

Here are the key points from the video:

- Meetings are *extremely* expensive as it's the most valuable resource people have: Time.
  - This is why you need to be very aware of how productive meetings are for you. Don't just go to them blindly because you are on the meeting invite - This is a common failure mode for earlier-in-career engineers.
- If a meeting has value but isn't fully efficient, consider lowering the frequency or length of the meeting.
- Reflect on the value of every meeting, especially team meetings since they suck up the most time.
- *Lean towards deleting meetings or not attending them* - If you're unsure what value you got from a meeting, there's a good chance the meeting isn't actually helping you.
  - You can always run an "experiment" here. Remove the meeting from your calendar for a week and see if anything breaks - If the lack of alignment gets bad, you can put the meeting back.

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)
- ["How can I be more active in meetings and earn the respect of senior engineers?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/RtISfsqipLWBhZxvyl69/how-can-i-be-more-active-in-meetings-and-earn-the-respect-of-senior-engineers/)
- ["I have anxiety when speaking up in meetings - how do I overcome this?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/T1eEbbVZo1fuvbhCDXST/i-have-anxiety-when-speaking-up-in-meetings-how-do-i-overcome-this/)

Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring

True or false: As long as you have basic proficiency with everything on a job posting, you will get an interview for that job.

How much time does a recruiter spend reading a resume, on average?

True or false: Your resume should be boring and straightforward, especially with its format.

What's the main reason you should avoid the paid flashy resume formats you find online?

True or false: In order to stand out from other applicants, you can use a very unique format to make your resume more memorable to the recruiter, thus increasing your chances.

Setting Up Your Engineering Mindset For Long-Term Success

What separates the top senior engineers from everyone else?

True or false: One of the reasons top tech companies are so strong is because they are so well organized. Every project is neatly defined, so when engineers take them on, they can just execute quickly and easily.

Which one of these is the enemy of productivity?

True or false: A lot of senior engineers write very little code, adding value in other ways.

Why is it important to break problems down?

- A core expectation of engineers at top tech companies like FAANG is that they're able to take large, ambiguous tasks and smoothly execute on them. This is effectively a requirement reaching senior levels at these places.
- The trick to these projects *is to break them down*. Breaking down large projects into smaller and smaller sub-tasks makes the overall body of work clearer and less scary. Clarity is one of the main ingredients that leads to action.
- This decomposition is also vital for your mentality. By defining these smaller and more reasonable milestones, you are setting up your brain to register a win more frequently and consistently. This does wonders for your confidence and self-worth, which allows you to do good work sustainably over a long period of time and eventually ship these large tasks and massive projects.
- The gained clarity also enables you to ask for help more easily and delegate work, the latter being a staple behavior of senior+ engineers at top companies.

Related resources:
- ["How can I get better at estimating long-term projects?"](https://link.jointaro.com/bcc3PgBTWCoaKqDD7)
- ["How do I make software less overwhelming?"](https://link.jointaro.com/j3itbssZN9XUdq998)

The #1 Thing You Need To Know About Promotion In Tech

True or false: To get to very senior engineering levels, you need to write thousands of lines of code per day.

Why is output not as important for promotion?

- *Promotion is about behavior, not output*
- Raw output doesn't scale. You only have so many hours in a day, and your hands can only physically type so many lines of code per minute.
- Senior engineers can have 10x to 100x the impact of a junior engineer. In order for them to do this, they need to add deeper types of value to the business.
- That deeper type of value comes from behaving in a fundamentally different way to more junior levels. In particular, engineers at these very senior levels add multiplicative value instead of additive value. An example of this is a senior engineer empowering many others to write code instead of just writing the code themselves.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Time Management And Productivity](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/5WA87nbbYJWLnQ60D826/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Get Promoted Faster In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/W730BOdrfAIXAEVd8HUf/masterclass-how-to-get-promoted-faster-in-tech/?playlistId=eZOEUatYEe7BBAZByuha) - The full video where this clip is from
- ["How to improve at multi tasking at work?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ION8KZHyA8fNWOpHDhZI/how-to-improve-at-multi-tasking-at-work/)

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.