I Sucked At This For 25 Years As An Engineer – 8 Tips For Communication

Communication is the skill that separates the best engineers from the mediocre ones. 

**Nothing great is built alone**, so even if you’re the best coder in the world, at some point in your career you will have to work with others. When you get to that point, communication is how you get things done. 

Here are 6 tactical communication tips for engineers (and there are two more in the video!)

**1. Learn how to say no. If your PM or manager comes to you with a request, don't just say no.**

Instead, say "not right now" and explain why you're choosing to do other high-priority work. This approach lets you acknowledge the request or the idea, but you’re able to firmly/politely say no by explaining why you want to stay the course. 

**2. Use tentative language**

Especially for critical feedback, leave room for discussion. One way this manifests is during code review: some of the best engineers at Meta actually ended their feedback with a question mark:

"Crash with negative input" ➡️ "Crash with negative input?" One character makes a big difference!

**3. Make people feel heard**

In 1:1s, I’ll literally say "Let me say that back to you" and repeat back what they said to me. This works magically well.

Even if you disagree, this strategy lets you start from a place of agreement -- the person was heard.

**4. Say thank you**

*Proper* thank yous are about more than sending a one-line message. A proper thank you involved thanking them in your launch post or sending them a thank you when you hit a milestone. That's how you build deep relationships.

**5. Advance the conversation**

This is a personal pet peeve for Rahul. If we're talking about where to get lunch, and I propose Indian food, don't just say "I don't like Indian." You need to propose some alternatives in that response. Also, google the ["no hello"](https://nohello.net/) philosophy.

**6. Know your audience**

Many engineers either provide too much or too little context. Communication is an exercise in empathy. You have to figure out what your audience cares about and deliver value to them.

Related links:
- [Taro's communication guide](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/hVdLQQzfslaYarLSCmmy/)
- ["When should you offer to help a colleague?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/u4GMlmLOuaU4Olhh2XAy/when-should-you-offer-to-help-a-colleague/)

Avoid This Common Bad Habit That Fails You Interviews

You should allocate enough time to prepare for your data structures and algorithms interview to avoid cramming at the last minute.

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 Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 3] - Finding The Best Things To Work On

If you have gone through this course in order, you now know that working on the right things is far more important than merely working on things faster. So how do yo figure out the best things to work on in your organization? This lesson teaches you:

- How to identify the optimal opportunities within your space
- A formula to classify tasks and projects by quality and stack rank them
- What you need to do with your prioritized tasks, particularly with your manager

To dive even deeper into this topic: ["How to figure out what the most important projects are?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/CgCPA60bDDHoOteN7Lmb/how-to-figure-out-what-the-most-important-projects-are/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 2] - Why Is The Senior Promotion So Hard?

For most engineers, going from junior to mid-level isn't too hard with many of them achieving it unintentionally. This leads to them being surprised when the next promotion of mid-level to senior is so painfully difficult. This lesson teaches you:

- The fundamental dynamic shift in skill development going from mid-level to senior
- Why team selection is very important for growing to senior
- The ambiguity of the senior promotion and the 2 broad paths you can take to get there
- The large lagging nature of the senior promotion

Dig deeper into the overall phenomena covered here with the overall promotion course: [\[Course\] Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/)

Ace Your Tech Interview As A Software Engineer [Part 2] - Organizing Your Job Search

A lot of software engineers struggle on the job search because they're just randomly flailing around, drifting from interview failure to interview failure without learning from the overall process. This lesson teaches you:

- The surprisingly basic master plan every successful job search must follow
- How to fix a job search where you are failing to get interviews to begin with
- Actions you can take when you are failing to pass interviews
- What a healthy time spent looks like depending on whether you are trying to *get* interviews vs. trying to *pass* interviews
- How you can organize your job search and turn it into a well-oiled machine where you are constantly overcoming obstacles and improving

Onboarding Gives You Special Powers: Make Sure To Use Them

Most people view onboarding as a position of weakness: They don't know anything while the team knows everything, and now they need to bridge that gap. While that's somewhat true, onboarding is *not* a position of weakness, and thinking this will only make your onboarding slower and less effective.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Nobody wants to be mean to the newbie** - This means that you have extra slack to ask questions and request help more aggressively than the average team member. However, this "aura" doesn't last forever - Make sure to really use it while you have it! The first month in particular is when the team will be extra accommodating of you.
- **You will never have fresh eyes again** - Being new gives you a perspective that tenured members of your team simply can't have. Use this to share new ideas and suggestions to the team: Tactically, you are very well equipped to improve the onboarding process. Don't only view onboarding as a state where you need to be dependent on others and consume help - Feel empowered to bring about positive change as well.

Related resources:
- ["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/)
- ["What does it mean to not require handholding anymore?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/5vEWajcZlSi7nlohTGtJ/what-does-it-mean-to-not-require-handholding-anymore/)
- ["I'm afraid of asking questions when I don't know how to start a new ticket - How to get over the fear?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ReLSgQGmVGlXkwrupN5T/im-afraid-of-asking-questions-when-i-dont-know-how-to-start-a-new-ticket-how-to-get-over-the-fear/)

[Case Study] Solving A Multi-Million $$ Instagram Bug

- A big part of moving from L4 (mid-level) to L5 (senior level) is being able to create your own scope. You can't just expect a perfect suite of projects to come from your manager.
- Like in this session's case study, bugs are a great source of finding your own scope!
- The bug was very slight: Instagram story ads started off on the wrong part when they were resurfaced to a user. As an Android engineer, Alex discovered this in IG Android initially. This bug had been in production *for over a year* at this point.
- How Alex expanded the scope after finding this bug:
  - Worked with iOS to see if the bug was there (it was)
  - Worked with PMMs to confirm that this violated the advertiser contract and merited a refund. This made the bug an immediate SEV.
  - Worked with a data scientist to figure out exactly how many times this bug occurred and calculate the exactly refund to advertisers ($2M+)
  - Put the fix behind an A/B test to measure impact and make sure it was working
- How you can incorporate the learnings from this case study:
  - Be detail-oriented. At Big Tech in particular, seemingly small issues can have massive impact.
  - Don't just silently fix bugs. Take the time to figure out its entire scope - It could be a SEV!
  - Understand the world outside of yours. Look for opportunities to bring in others (especially those of different roles) into what you're working on to expand scope for everyone!

Here's the [link to the slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vPtelhi5caMsZNC-XFGhy1FtRveIbNxg0k3LZctRPOs/edit?usp=sharing).

For more resources around creating scope:
- ["How do I come up with innovative, impactful ideas and bring them to my team?"](https://link.jointaro.com/uBcb5LjZiD5DasfB9)
- ["How can I come up with big initiatives, especially those at a Staff level?"](https://link.jointaro.com/6MWig3VSr3nVo81w9)

How To Figure Out If A Team Is Important To A Company

In this age of layoffs, it's important to choose a team and organization that is valued by the company overall. Even ignoring layoffs, it's better to join a team that's mission critical overall due to more career growth opportunities, especially as a software engineer.

Here's the core points from the video:
- **Profit center or cost center** - Does the company see your organization as core to its revenue generation or something it simply needs to have in a digital age? If its the former, that means the organization is probably better for your career:
  - **Profit center example:** The ads/search organization at Google
  - **Cost center example:** Website developers at a dental company
- **Growth trajectory** - In particular, is the organization scaling up its headcount quickly? If so, that shows that it's a company priority, and scope naturally appears when teams get bigger due to higher XFN and alignment costs.
- **Company visibility** - Do execs mention your organization in all-hands meetings? Better yet, is it referenced on earnings calls? The more an organization is mentioned in these more public communications, the better positioned it is within the company.

This clip was taken from our masterclass here: [[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/)

Related resources:
- ["How possible is it to spot red flags about toxic culture during the interview?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/1JwmhC3Nh9Ku0fkDL1bq/how-possible-is-it-to-spot-red-flags-about-toxic-culture-during-the-interview/)
- ["What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/bJuagPwOEEy5vkcXKkqh/what-does-it-mean-to-not-have-enough-scope-to-be-promoted/)
- ["What should I look for in a new team in terms of growth?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/i2bOMPrqaRc0NUZ7918F/what-should-i-look-for-in-a-new-team-in-terms-of-growth/) - Question from a Google L4 engineer
- ["Is it better to work in revenue-generating divisions within your company?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/BIv8teCgxktk5tak6tlI/is-it-better-to-work-in-revenue-generating-divisions-within-your-company/)

Effective Communication Guide [Part 4] - Resolving Disagreements

- **Your goal with a disagreement isn't to prove that your side is correct; it's actually the opposite - Try to tear down your own argument.**
- Don't view the situation as a "Us vs. Them" mentality. It's not a debate that you have to "win". If you come in with this mentality, the other side will respond in kind, and you will never get anything done.
- Acknowledge the operating principles and incentives of the other side, and try to weave them into your approach as well.
- Example: Your designer proposes beautiful but overly ambitious design that cannot be done on the current aggressive build timeline.
  - Bad: "We don't have enough time to build these designs, so let's toss them out."
  - Good: "These designs look amazing! However, the timeline is pretty tight, so we may not be able to get everything within them. Can we get the low-hanging fruit with this intermediate state design to hit the ship goal, and then we can get the remaining design extras as a fast-follow? I really want to bring all these aesthetics to life, but I want to make sure we hit the deadline as well."
- Be comfortable with compromise and reaching a middle-ground that imbues something from both sides. It's possible that the other perspective is completely incorrect, but this will be very rare as people in tech are generally pretty smart. *You should very rarely treat your approach as one where compromise cannot be made at all.*

DSA Interview Step #1: Clarify The Problem

- The first step for any data structures and algorithms (DSA) problem is to *clarify the problem*. This means understanding exactly what the input and expected output are.
  - A common failure mode for candidates is that they will jump straight into coding, not doing this step. This leads to them wasting a lot of time writing code that isn't actually relevant.
- Often times in an interview, you will get a purposefully ambiguous problem - This happens with Big Tech a lot. The goal is get signal on the candidate's communication abilities.
- Clarifying the problem can help you *a lot* as it's very possible that the problem's scope is much more limited than you initially thought.

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/)

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?

Master The Behavioral Interview [Part 3] - The 3 Keys To Behavioral Interviews

In a behavioral interview, you can say literally anything. So what should you say? This lesson teaches you:

- The 3 keys to any effective behavioral interview answer
- How to specifically show each of the 3 keys
- What a good behavioral interview answer looks like vs. a bad one (hint: the good ones integrates the 3 keys while the bad one doesn't)

To learn how Alex built 30 side projects with 5 million+ users combined: [\[Taro Top 10\] Building Impressive Side Projects](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/vKUWMgmmaEvzcYUXZs4B/)

How To REALLY Say Thank You To Coworkers

Most software engineers struggle with building relationships and professional networking overall. One of the ways to get better at this is improving an often-neglected skill: Giving thanks. This video covers one of the most powerful ways to give thanks in the workplace.

Here are the core points:
- **Reward good work through their manager** - As an authority figure, praise coming from your manager is especially meaningful and it's a great experience when it happens. Spend effort adding weight to your feedback when you tell their manager by writing a heartfelt paragraph or telling them in person (this is really easy when you share the same manager as the peer, which is often the case). Thanking the helper directly yourself first is the first step: This manager reinforcement step is what really makes them realize, *"Wow, this person **really** wants to make sure I get rewarded for my efforts."*
- **Boost your peers' performance reviews** - At a higher level, you really earn your way into coworkers' hearts when they attribute you to a boost in their own performance rating. This is especially true at top companies like FAANG which have such a high-bar for engineer performance and good ratings are connected to very meaningful raises and promotions. If someone is helping you on a recurring basis, you can even explicitly tell their manager that you really hope they get rewarded on their performance review for uplifting you and really multiplying your impact. *Fight for the credit you ardently believe they deserve.*

Related resources:
- [Effective Communication Guide - Building Relationships](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/488EjOLzU707WhdqMOK4/effective-communication-guide-part-3-building-relationships/)
- ["How do you network effectively within a company?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/DwT9GtdYK9nwFV3a7jrU/how-do-you-network-effectively-within-a-company/)

Effective Communication Guide [Part 7] - Finale + How You Can Learn More

- Zooming out, good communication is about *building positive energy*. Sharing feedback to help someone improve, empathizing with people's struggles, giving heartfelt thanks - These all generate positive energy.
- If you're feeling angry or frustrated, take some time to calm down and collect your thoughts, especially if you want to share that in a more public setting. After you've done this, then you can share your problems in a constructive way.
- This series just barely scratches the surface when it comes to communication. If you have any follow-up questions or thoughts, please start a discussion in the Taro forum: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

What Rockstar Engineers Realize About Managers That Others Don't

- Don't view your manager as just a boss. It's true that they have authority over you, but they are *also a resource for you*.
- This means that there's also a burden on you to find out how your manager can best support and empower you.
  - What skills do you want to grow?
  - Which projects are on their top of mind and therefore have the great impact?
- This working model is best for everyone. You are essentially finding out how you can be the most effective and impactful report for your manager as possible. Your manager gets a more empowered and efficient team, and you get career growth.

[Masterclass] How To Work Better With Your Engineering Manager

Your engineering manager (EM) is easily the most important figure in your professional life, and how you manage your engineer &lt;-&gt; EM relationships across your various teams and companies will largely dictate how much career growth you have. The tricky part is that all of this is very hard, and if you don't do it properly, you can end up working against your manager instead of with them.

As always, the masterclass covers a *ton* of ground, so here's the Top 5 points:

- **Engineering management is a very hard job** - EMs are completely slammed with meetings and are constantly making hard decisions (e.g. *"Who do I hire and fire?"*). The first step towards fostering a healthy relationship here is having empathy for the natural difficulty behind their role.
- **It's up to YOU to leverage your manager** - Don't expect your manager to solo-carry you by proactively identifying all your issues and handing you the perfect growth plan on a silver platter. Nobody can read minds, and nobody cares about your personal growth more than you. Treat your manager as a resource, similar to how a front-end application treats an API. The API will never come to you - It's up to you to call it with the proper parameters to achieve the result you want.
- **Be extremely visible** - Be default, assume that your EM has 0 clue what you're doing, not out of malice but because they're swamped most of the time. cc your manager on important communications to keep them up-to-date with your biggest accomplishments and blockers. Add them as optional on meetings. Use your 1 on 1 to share crucial wins and status updates.
- **Maintain an ongoing dialog about performance** - Your performance review rating should never be a (negative) surprise. Ask every couple months for your manager to give you a hypothetical rating (make it clear that you will take it with a massive grain of salt). Don't let your fear of these awkward, transparent conversations lead to you getting put on an unexpected PIP.
- **Frame promotion as a mutual benefit** - It is not the manager's job to grow their engineers and get them all promoted; this is actually literally impossible in the current economy. It's the manager's job to make sure that their engineers are consistently shipping impact. This means that you must be extremely careful framing your promotion in a way where it's clear that your goal is to expand your impact and further empower the team, not to get more money and a higher title (it's totally fine to want these, they just have to be very far away from front and center).

Related resources:

- [Having The Proper Mentality For Manager 1 on 1s](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/sIm7s54ILdBQmpCtKFtb/having-the-proper-mentality-for-manager-1-on-1s/)
- [1 on 1s Are The Time To Be Awkward](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/xjeFRpp5YHxG9TTK8wjn/1-on-1s-are-the-time-to-be-awkward/)
- ["How do I create a growth plan with my manager/mentor and what should it include?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/BG4rWlnWQamBFI9ujCni/how-do-i-create-a-growth-plan-with-my-managermentor-and-what-should-it-include/)
- ["How do I give critical feedback to my manager?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/VeGFF3JbpstS3Av5jpHB/how-do-i-give-critical-feedback-to-my-manager/)
- [\[Masterclass\] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/oeY7ncZhzJ5NO6dij5e7/masterclass-what-software-engineers-should-look-for-in-their-engineering-manager/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zS7GJQmpZRS-fo-ZiiV5cHjdat9gHStPFVnA0awlFM0/edit?usp=sharing)

The Most Dangerous Thing People Don't Realize About FAANG

So many engineers focus on just the interview when it comes to breaking into Big Tech. However, cracking the FAANG interview isn't the main thing you should worry about: *Surviving at Big Tech is what's truly hard.*

Here are the core point from the video:
- **Big Tech expectations are very high** - In exchange for world-class pay, you are expected to have world-class productivity. For most engineers coming from non-Big Tech backgrounds, they're going to have to put out more work that's also higher quality compared to what they've normally done.
- **It can be hard to adjust** - This is especially relevant if you spent a very long time (10+ years) working at companies that weren't as cutting edge as Big Tech prior to going there. It is very difficult to do things in a completely different way to what you're very used to.
- **Performance review is stressful** - Since these companies are so big and have so much process, performance reviews are incredibly thorough and take a long time. It often takes months to write and collect all the feedback necessary to compute the final rating. Couple this with fear of PIP and stack ranking and you have an environment that really puts engineers on edge.

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Navigate Your Performance Review In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/b0B8uqIAUnBLE10jJHJG/masterclass-how-to-navigate-your-performance-review-in-tech/)
- ["What's the difference between a low performer software engineer and a high performer?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nMxx2EMVIlJbl1oK4SGu/whats-the-difference-between-a-low-performer-software-engineer-and-a-high-performer/)

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 Real Pros And Cons Of Working At FAANG And Big Tech

Working at FAANG and Big Tech is general is put on a pedestal by the vast majority of the industry, but it's not all sunshine and roses. Here's the complete pictures:
- Pros:
  - **Prestige** - If you don't already have one of these names on your resume, adding one makes it 10x better automatically.
  - **Compensation** - This one is the most obvious: These companies pay extremely well.
  - **Consistent foundation** - The biggest one is the learning, especially for earlier-in-career software engineers. It is hard to go into these companies, do well there for a couple years, and not come out as a significantly better engineer. You will get more consistency by setting a baseline for your compensation and level.
- Cons:
  - **Hard to find scope** - In particular, growing to senior can be difficult. So many of the hard technical problems at these companies are already solved, and there are thousands of super talented software engineers looking for scope as well.
  - **You're just a cog in the machine** - At FAANG, you are one talented engineer out of literally 10,000+. The majority of engineers will be doing very incremental work that doesn't feel very fulfilling - There are literally engineers whose job it is to optimize a single button. This is all very connected to the aforementioned con of not being able to find scope.
  - **Work-life balance is dicey** - These companies pay you well for a reason: The bar is high. It can be stressful and tiring to meet expectations, especially if you're transitioning from a non-FAANG company.
- It's also important to remember that you need a much more holistic set of skills on top of coding most of the time to succeed at these companies. For many, this is a pro as it leads to more well-rounded growth, but for others who want to focus more on being builders, it can be incredibly draining.

For a deeper look into what life at FAANG is actually like, join us for our upcoming event: [Should You Work At FAANG? - What Big Tech Is Like For Software Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/event/should-you-work-at-faang-what-big-tech-is-like-for-software-engineers/)

This clip was taken from our [1.5 hour masterclass on finding the best company/team for you, which you can click here to watch](https://link.jointaro.com/F4DDyKfuo3hMhj868).

Related resources:
- [Why You Should Start Your Career At A Big Tech Company](https://link.jointaro.com/9k3HkgfJsTp1Nd2w5)
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9)

Building Software For Optimal Learning Example - Login Flow

A lot of junior engineers wonder why they have working software projects on their resume but aren't able to get a job. 99% of the time, it's because the projects they have built aren't anywhere near production quality.

This video covers an in-depth, concrete example of how you can level up a feature to be truly impressive in a portfolio:
- Bad login flow (bare minimum only):
  - Email input
  - Password input
  - Submit button which probably stores inputs on the server
- Good login flow (additional components on top of the above)
  - Ability to view the password in plaintext
  - Confirm password
  - Validate email
  - Password strength protections
  - "Forgot your password?" flow
  - Password hashing
  - Login attempt throttling

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 this clip was taken from
- [How The Best Software Engineers Learn - The Lego Model](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/9cVK5zsAQstbTCc1wrWx/how-the-best-software-engineers-learn-the-lego-model/)

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.