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.

The #1 Thing To Remember With Meetings

Your Tech Resume Should Look Boring

Setting Up Your Engineering Mindset For Long-Term Success

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