Break Into Tech And Become A Software Engineer [Part 1] - Intro

In this lesson, we explore how anyone can transition into a tech career, regardless of their background.

This lesson covers:

- Brian's journey from a troubled past to becoming an engineering manager and business owner
- How his late start in tech, at age 30, began with small interactions while driving for Uber
- The decision to attend a coding bootcamp, where his passion for coding took off
- The importance of support from friends and community in learning to code and landing a first job
- The idea that people from all kinds of backgrounds, including those with difficult pasts, can break into the tech industry

If you need extra help breaking into tech, join Brian's exclusive, cohort-based bootcamp (just 10 students per batch). Use this link for Taro users for $800 off: <https://www.parsity.io/taro>

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianjenney/>

[Masterclass] How To Have Impactful 1 on 1 Meetings

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Communicating Effectively As An Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/yJ6oybePeu93sDSZ1GiQ/)
- [How To Effectively Leverage Skip Level 1:1s](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/TToehFEc738PBhJcALwL/how-to-effectively-leverage-skip-level-11s/)
- ["Coffee Chat Questions With a Tech Lead - What to ask?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/jGNZthqhvzYPiMckPEl1/coffee-chat-questions-with-a-tech-lead-what-to-ask/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1O1bUrK1NgyfYoMkIqCFJ0SvXv-IQlPhP1gYzBp95abU/edit?usp=sharing)

How To NOT Learn A Codebase

The biggest mistake engineers make when going into a new codebase is to excessively read through the code and documentation. This is a horrible way to learn. 

The problem is exacerbated because the supporting documentation of the code is usually out-of-date: the docs can't keep up in a fast-moving tech company.

Instead, just dig in and start coding!

- Break things
- Add all the print statements ever
- Get the debugger working
- Run the code and see what happens

The key takeaway is that you should **get your hands on the keyboard** (even if it's uncomfortable).

[Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free

Start with a simple side project and keep iterating on it to separate your side project from the rest.

Related resources:
- [[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/)
- [How Alex Made An App That Got 80k+ Users In 1 Month](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/GlSjjLhuUdHt5drq3l5F/how-alex-made-an-app-that-got-80k-users-in-1-month/)
- ["Finding a mobile app idea - How to do it?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KJ4VXh6rUhKbWeiJoRDe/finding-a-mobile-app-idea-how-to-do-it/)
- ["What are some of the side income or passive income sources you can suggest?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/URhejS9m02tEFM9WLZsd/what-are-some-of-the-side-income-or-passive-income-sources-you-can-suggest/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ai8lxU1B-bH35iiSFf5hvk6NjAHpUyF2rshjyDipvaY/edit?usp=sharing)

Engineer Your Ideal Tech Career [Part 2] - How Do You Spend Your Time?

In this video, we explore key areas that software engineers spend their time throughout their day, and we talk through the differences between each.

Depending on which areas you want to optimize to spend your most time, your long-term career path can vary. Try to assign a different rating to each to give yourself a clearer picture!

We cover what it really means to:

- Be making product/business decisions
- Be architecting solutions
- Be hiring
- Be mentoring

Looking for mentorship from tech’s top engineers + personalized job hunt assistance and interview prep? [Formation.dev](http://Formation.dev) can provide you unlimited career coaching, technical mentorship, personalized practice, and mock interviews. Join us here: <https://formation.dev/partners/taro>

Worksheet: [Formation - Coding Your Career](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/tech-career-growth.appspot.com/o/courses%2Fslides%2FFormation%20Career%20Direction%20Worksheet.pdf?alt=media&token=f6344b78-529a-411e-a449-7a34a8d55fc8)

Why Most Companies Suck At Onboarding

You should not expect a good onboarding process at your company. Helping new employees ramp up is a good example of something that is *important but not urgent*. Tenured employees likely don't remember what it's like to be new.

While many companies will have insufficient or non-existent onboarding, the other end of the spectrum is also unfortunate: larger bureaucratic companies will have excessive onboarding, with months of training before you can do anything productive.

Even if the company has good intentions, building a solid onboarding plan is a hard problem: the tech industry's rate of change is very high, with people, tools, and technologies changing every year. Naturally, documentation and processes around onboarding become outdated.

Despite the difficulties, poor onboarding can be seen as an opportunity for new employees to have an immediate impact.

Struggling With DSA? Don't Worry, That's Healthy!

True or false: Interviewing is all about how much you know. As long as you study a lot and understand enough material, you will pass the interview.

For almost everyone, what does the learning curve look like for data structures and algorithms?

True or false: It's completely normal and even a good sign when you feel dumb while studying data structures and algorithms.

What's the most important piece when you're learning data structures and algorithms material?

True or false: If you aren't making progress on data structures and algorithms after 2 months, your mind probably just isn't geared to understand them. At that point, you should be practical and just look for interviews that don't have these kinds of problems.

Mastering data structures and algorithms (colloquially known as "DSA") is a frustrating experience: It requires such a different type of thinking and is rarely required on the actual software engineering job. This is why if you want to get good at DSA, you need the right mentality first.

Here are the core points from the video:
- DSA learning is an exponential process. You are going to be terrible initially, and eventually things will start to "click" once you hit the inflection point.
- When you feel dumb, understand that this is completely natural: This is almost a good thing as it's entirely expected.
- DSA is very much an input-driven exercise. Build a good process around studying it regularly and commit to it. With constant persistence, you will eventually get to where you want to be!

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/)

Amazon Behavioral Interview [Part 1] - Intro

This video introduces a mini-course designed to help viewers master behavioral-based interview questions, commonly used by top companies like Google and Amazon.

- **Focus:** The course emphasizes a framework and process to effectively answer these questions, drawing on the instructors' extensive experience (one was a Google interviewer, the other an Amazon Barraiser).
- **Benefits:** By learning this approach, viewers can confidently handle any interview, reduce stress, and significantly increase their chances of landing their desired job.
- **Content:** The course includes downloadable worksheets and other resources to guide viewers through the process of mastering the "STAR" method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for answering behavioral questions.
- **Instructors:** The instructors have a combined wealth of experience in interviewing and being interviewed at top companies, ensuring the course provides valuable and practical insights.
- **Goal:** The ultimate goal is not just to teach the STAR method, but to boost viewer confidence and significantly improve their chances of success in job interviews.

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

The Talk & Observe Framework

This framework ([Talk & Observe](https://www.jointaro.com/blog/talk-and-observe-a-framework-for-engineering-onboarding/)) captures the two most important ways you’ll learn as a new engineer.

1. **Talk** with various people on the team to learn what they do and what you need to know.

   1. To add more structure to this conversation, follow the advice from Boz (CTO at Meta): [Career Cold Start Algorithm](https://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start)

   2. Ask people’s priorities and what concerns they have.

2. **Observe** how others operate at the company by studying the artifacts of their work. As engineers, we naturally have tons of markers to our progress.

   1. Look at code commits, comments on code reviews, design docs, calendar blocks, team meeting notes, etc.
   2. Spending 10-15 minutes to observe ("*stalk*") every person on your team will reveal tons of insight. For example, someone may say that project A is the top priority, but all their time is spent on project B -- this mismatch is an opportunity for you as the new person.

Negotiation Course: Rahul's History And Success With Negotiation

Rahul's compensation went from $110K at the beginning of his career to $830K in his peak earning year, 2021, as a Tech Lead and Manager at Meta (Facebook). That's more than 7x! A lot of his Total Compensation (TC) growth can be attributed to his ability to negotiate. There were 2 main segments of negotiation in Rahul's career: 

- 2013: 5 offers at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and Square
- 2017: 6 offers at Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Stripe, Uber, and Airbnb

This gave Rahul the leverage he needed to see dramatic increases in compensation. Some examples: 

- The Snapchat stock grant went from $600K --&gt; $1.0MM and the signing bonus went from $10K --&gt; $100K
- The Facebook stock grant went from $325K --&gt; $600K and the signing bonus went from $30K --&gt; $45K

The numbers here are due primarily to timing, information, and options, all things you can learn. The results can be life-changing, and you don't need to be a genius programmer to discover your own version of this.

These data points show how negotiation is extremely high leverage. A few hours of extra work can lead to a change of 6 figures or more in compensation.

- Rahul's YouTube video about 5 offers he received as a new grad: <https://youtu.be/rceUVaiXQgU> 
- Rahul's YouTube video about how compensation in tech works: <https://youtu.be/wqdpzu4Oa2I>

How To Be An Effective Tech Lead [Part 1] - How This Course Works

As a software engineer, you need to eventually grow into a tech lead to pursue more senior levels. However, it's much easier being a bad tech lead instead of a good tech lead - This course is here to help you be the latter. Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [Jocelin Ho](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelinho/) walks you through her extensive 10+ year tech background as a Meta tech lead and the CTO/Cofounder of Cooby (Sequoia-backed startup), where she built engineering teams from scratch and mentored other tech leads

- You'll understand if this course is a good fit for you

- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will know:

  - 💡 The full definition of an effective tech lead

  - 💻 What technological skills tech leads must possess

  - 🙌 How tech leads demonstrate true leadership

  - ✅ Practical tips to start acting as a tech lead

[Masterclass] How To Become A Debugging Master And Fix Issues Faster

There will always be bugs, and this only becomes more and more true as your product gets bigger. In this video, we go deep into the often underrated software engineer skill of debugging.

Here are the core points:
- **Bugs are a source of growth** - So many engineers see having to fix issues as merely frustration, an obstacle getting in the way of their feature work. This is a toxic mentality to have that holds back your growth. Feature work isn't the only way to move a product forward, and at the end of the day, your team has to come together to uphold the integrity of its systems. Being a champion in that process is a powerful way to get to senior+ levels.
- **Do your research** - When you get a bug, don't just dive in and start mucking around in the code. Figure out the exact repro steps and go through the flow multiple times to really get it. Detail the blast radius by understanding attributes like when the issue popped up, how many users it affected, and what versions of your software experience the problem. Spend at least 15-30 minutes expanding the context behind the bug.
- **Understand the end-to-end flow** - Every outcome in software is a series of steps: When there's a legitimate bug, it simply means that one (maybe several) of those steps are now broken. Before you start seriously debugging, build up this mental model of the overall ecosystem behind the bug - Ask your teammates if you need help with this. This mental model will serve as the foundation of your debug process.
- **Maintain a debug diary** - Document every step of your journey as you're debugging. This will prevent you from trying the same hypothesis twice and makes it much easier for you to hand off the bug if necessary. This context will allow the new person to easily "download" everything you did and pick up where you left off. This writing will also help you a lot come performance review time when you want to claim credit for the fix.
- **Retrospect** - An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. After every bug resolution, do some amount of thinking around how you can prevent similar issues from cropping up in the future. This is especially important with massive bugs that inflicted a lot of damage. In those scenarios, write-up a post-mortem and discuss it with your team.

Related resources:
- [[Case Study] Solving A Multi-Million $$ Instagram Bug](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/WYk4J05iBqOuPtD0CYKX/case-study-solving-a-multi-million-dollardollar-instagram-bug/)
- ["How can I root cause bugs faster?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/PSv7aYI70VwaDsoRgMyW/how-can-i-root-cause-bugs-faster/)
- ["I'm trying to fix a P1 bug, but some relevant code is owned by another team. Unsure about ownership and how to proceed."](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ZRneLgwmrM2JLCrGn5Rz/im-trying-to-fix-a-p1-bug-but-some-relevant-code-is-owned-by-another-team-unsure-about-ownership-and-how-to-proceed/)

If you want to become a better coder in general, check out our masterclass here: [[Masterclass] How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/iYpRj8XfyzCSaTYnce3y/masterclass-how-to-write-better-code-faster-as-a-software-engineer/)

Top System Design Interview Mistakes [Part 6] - Freezing on the Spot

In system design interviews, clear communication is crucial. Many candidates struggle not because they lack knowledge, but because they fail to express their ideas effectively. This video highlights a common issue: Freezing under pressure.

- Instead of freezing when faced with a complex problem, keep the conversation going by asking clarifying questions. This not only helps you gather necessary information but also engages the interviewer.
- If unsure what to ask, focus on understanding the system’s functionality. Questions about the product’s purpose and user journey can guide your design process.
- Involving the interviewer through questions shows your experience and keeps the interview on track.

In short, don’t let nerves stop you—ask questions to maintain momentum and communicate effectively.

If you need extra help with your system design interview, [Formation.dev](https://formation.dev/partners/taro) can provide you hands-on, personalized support. Join us here: <https://formation.dev/partners/taro>

Use Code Review Feedback For Hypergrowth - Meta Prodigy Engineer Story

As a junior software engineer, one of the main ways you're going to grow is through feedback on your code review. Because of this, it's vital that you get the maximum value from code review feedback.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Respond quickly and with appreciation** - Be thankful of good code review feedback, and try to respond to code review comments within 1 to 4 hours. Don't be defensive when it comes to code review feedback.
- **Don't make the same mistake twice** - Take the time to really understand and absorb the feedback: Don't just make the suggested change. If you don't understand the principles behind some feedback on your code, just ask! [Here's our in-depth advice on how to really not forget code review feedback](https://link.jointaro.com/7wjo6DcDcJmxDVYB9).
- **Alex's mentee prodigy story** - Alex had a Meta mentee who was able to grow from junior [E3] to senior [E5] in just 2 years. A big part of this was their incredible code velocity:
  - This mentee really nailed learning from code review feedback. Their initial commits were a bit messy, but they quickly got to a point where they stopped making mistakes.
  - They were also very meticulous about their pull request quality. They always had very thorough summaries alongside very complete test plans. For more complicated commits, they would have up to 5 videos walking through every case.
  - After 1 half, this engineer was writing almost 500 commits a half, making them the #1 code committer in the entire organization. This was largely because their stellar code quality and code review learning allowed them to land their pull requests on the very first try 90%+ of the time.

This highlight is from our masterclass on "How To Write Better Code Faster As A Software Engineer". [Click here to watch it.](https://link.jointaro.com/v6zEgUfQTxoSj33Z7)

Related resources:
- [Quick Tips To Get Higher Quality Code Reviews Faster](https://link.jointaro.com/dE4U41RAVtZKLhxJ7)
- [Avoid These Junior Engineer Mistakes With Code Review](https://link.jointaro.com/agkYrLH8uuCv4UcPA)
- [Code Review MUST Be Fast, Otherwise The Team Is Unhealthy](https://link.jointaro.com/oxK55E1bkX8nMeNGA)

Master The Behavioral Interview [Part 2] - You're (Probably) Sleeping On Behavioral

Grinding LeetCode endlessly makes no sense and will not get you a great software engineer job, especially in a bad market. So why does it makes no sense? Because data structures and algorithms (DSA) rounds are far from the most important. This lesson teaches you: 

- The reason why companies weigh behavioral interviews so heavily (usually more than candidates realize)
- Why behavioral interviews are actually the most important interview type
- How engineers waste the precious time they have in behavioral interviews

How To Build Work Relationships Faster - Giving Deeper Thanks

If you want to build work relationships efficiently and effectively network in general, it's vital to master the art of giving thanks and showing gratitude.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Giving thanks is a skill** - Don't just send a cookie-cutter 1 sentence thanks over DM after someone helps you: It's very soulless and takes you almost 0 time to write. Helping someone out with their work performance is one of the most high-impact ways you can add value to their lives; you should respond in kind when you receive this help. Some basic tactics to "level up" your thanks is to send a heartfelt paragraph and to thank them in person, either through a video call or actually in-person if you're physically coworking.
- **Thank teammates via their manager** - This is especially true at a high-performance tech company like FAANG where so much of the engineering culture revolves around performance review. If someone goes above and beyond helping you, make sure to let their manager know. If they're a recurring helper, you can even tell their manager that you deeply believe that this altruistic behavior should be rewarded in their performance review: When the helper hears this from their manager, they will *really* value you as a teammate and know that their efforts have truly been rewarded.
- **Thank publicly** - This adds more weight to your gratitude and also acts as an artifact to help out the other person during performance review.
- **Recurring thanks** - There's no reason why you can't thank someone multiple times for the same thing. Alex had a mentee who was really good at doing this: They would be very thankful on the initial unblock, and after the full project finished, they would thank the helper again (i.e. *"I just shipped this project, and it wouldn't have been possible if you didn't help me on X"*).

Related resources:
- [Effective Communication Guide [Part 3.1] - The Power Of Thanks](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/noWZaoGWlrYQxX2Vhigd/effective-communication-guide-part-31-the-power-of-thanks/)
- [Don't Waste Your 1 on 1s. Build The Relationship](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/wcFrGc53iHzbWh0Ssw1j/dont-waste-your-1-on-1s-build-the-relationship/)

Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer [Part 9] - Focus, Focus, Focus

A lot of software engineers falsely believe that having every tech stack ever on your resume means that you are the perfect interview candidate as you qualify for the most jobs. The reverse is actually true, and championing that strategy leads to massive gains in both your code quality and job prospects. This lesson will teach you:

- The real recipe for being highly paid and easily hired as a software engineer
- Signs that you have become a true technical master in your domain and are now ready to move on to other tech stacks
- How to structure your journey as an earlier-in-career software engineer (5 years of experience or less)
- How to navigate the junior engineer career trap that is "full-stack" engineer
- What hiring managers look for in engineering candidates, especially at Big Tech
- The overall technical mastery trajectory for software engineers and how you can reach the top
- Why focus is so important for your longer-term learning as a software engineer

Negotiation Course: How This Course Works

Your ability to negotiate is undeniably one of the highest-leverage skills you can learn. But tech workers are notoriously bad at negotiation. Based on discussions with 100s of tech workers, there are 2 common reasons for this: 

1. They choose not to negotiate. They somehow view negotiation as a perverse 'badge of honor' that they simply accept the first offer they receive and they don't want/need to ask for any adjustment. 
2. They try to negotiate but are ineffective. They don't have leverage or cannot defend why they're asking for certain things. 

This course is designed for tech employees who are exploring job opportunities and will receive a job offer in tech (and ideally multiple!). My goal is for you to feel confident and strong in discussions you have with recruiters and hiring managers.

This course is broken down into 3 major parts: 

1. **Principles** - How does negotiation work and why is it worthwhile?
2. **Planning** - What should you do (and not do) before and offer you receive an offer?
3. **Tactics** - What is the best course of action for various scenarios?

If you get more than a $10K increase in your compensation by following the tactics outlined in this course, send me an email at [rahul@jointaro.com](mailto:rahul@jointaro.com) -- we will celebrate together!

DSA Crash Course [Part 10] - Most Frequent Char Approach

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

> Write a function, *most_frequent_char*, that takes in a string as an argument. The function should return the most frequent character of the string. If there are ties, return the character that appears earlier in the string.
>
> You can assume that the input string is non-empty.

```
most_frequent_char('bookeeper') # -> 'e'
```

```
most_frequent_char('david') # -> 'd'
```

```
most_frequent_char('abby') # -> 'b'
```

```
most_frequent_char('mississippi') # -> 'i'
```

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/>

Stop Getting Ghosted With Your Reachouts - How To Write A Great Cold Message

If you're a software engineer, you are likely going to do a cold reach out at some point in your career. This is almost always true when you're a junior engineer and don't have too deep a network yet. However, most software engineers go about this aspect of professional networking in the wrong way, especially when it comes to job searching and interviewing.

Here's how to write a cold message that actually has a chance of getting a response:

- **Mention your own background** - If you have any credibility, use it. What accomplishments do you have? What makes you special compared to everyone else and deserving of a response from this person?
- **Have a specific request** - The more pinpointed your ask is, the less effort it takes for the other person to figure out how to help you. Don't just ask for help with things like "career guidance" or "helping you find a job" - These categories are far too broad. Ask for tips on clearer areas like how to resolve disagreements in cross-team meetings or how you can pass behavioral interviews with &lt;50 person startups. For more advice here, check this out: [Asking Effective Questions That Get Great Answers Quickly](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/HV8sq75WxM9VhK0dhUun/asking-effective-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/)
- **Find commonality** - Having common ground is one of the most important factors with a successful relationship. Whether it's working on the same tech stack, coming from the same school, or playing the same video game, share that commonality to make yourself feel more familiar.
- **Build them up** - At the end of the day, everyone enjoys being praised. Put them on a pedestal and explain why *their* input in particular is valuable to you. Show that you didn't send the exact same message to 100+ different people.
- **Make up follow-up items clear** - Don't just ask for "guidance" or "mentorship": Make it clear what's the exact form of help you want? Is it a link to a useful blog post or video? Is it a 30 minute 1-on-1 meeting?

Related resources:

- [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)
- ["How to get referrals?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/FQIi8us9uoTDIYdzMhvg/how-to-get-referrals/)

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.