Top System Design Interview Mistakes [Part 2] - Don't Jump Headfirst into the Problem

In system design interviews, it's vital to stay focused on the core problem. This video highlights the importance of correctly identifying and addressing the right technical issues:

- Avoid getting sidetracked by irrelevant problems, as shown in the car mechanic analogy
- Successful candidates focus on solving the key issues the interviewer cares about
- Asking clarifying questions helps align with the interviewer's expectations
- We give a demonstration of how a candidate can go wrong by focusing on less important aspects
- We go through an example of a successful candidate who navigates the prompt by staying focused and asking the right questions

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>

How To Quickly Understand Company Culture - Airbnb Example

Culture is more than what people say. It's about how things get done in the company. The best way to ramp up on a company's culture is to observe what people do and talk to as many people as possible when you first join.

Rachel also talks about the 2 unique aspects of Airbnb's culture: 
1. Mission-driven (as opposed to tech, sales, or founder driven)
2. Incorporating the best of different companies

If you want to learn more about how to understand an org/company and build up influence within it, here's some related resources:
- ["How do I sell the vision behind a large, org-level project?"](https://link.jointaro.com/ESa5WJyk682iwqJt9)
- ["How can I build up more influence in an org?"](https://link.jointaro.com/GVYFUhx46N2QWVeZ7)

Start Your Day By Eating The Frog

When it comes to productivity, what is eating the frog?

True or false: To ease into your day, the best thing to do when you wake up is something easy and fun like checking your Instagram.

One Of The Biggest Tech Career Killers: Not Being Truly Great With Feedback

Feedback is the primary fuel for you to improve. Despite this, most engineers (and most people in general) are far worse at taking feedback than they think they are.

Here are the core points from the video:
- **Be very appreciative of your manager's feedback** - Your manager is the main source of feedback for you (it's literally their job). Your goal is to create a virtuous cycle where your manager wants to keep giving you feedback as you make the experience smooth.
- **Be accepting of non-perfect feedback** - It is very rare for feedback to be 100% accurate. Search hard for a kernel of truth in the feedback, and if you can find it, you should cherish that overall feedback.
- **Be extremely careful being defensive** - This is a 1-way door. Sharing feedback is awkward. If your response to getting feedback is to make the situation weird and be the slightest bit defensive, that person will likely never give you feedback ever again.
- **Ingesting feedback has a high skill ceiling** - It's way, way, way higher than almost everybody thinks. The most talented engineer Alex ever worked with got promoted from E3 new-grad to E6 (Staff) at Meta in less than 3 years. One of the main reasons behind that stellar growth trajectory is that they were able to process feedback extremely efficiently, almost always implementing it the week after they got it.

Related resources:
- ["Can someone elaborate on "always treating feedback as a gift"?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/4DoEnMIq2ISadfAJuwp9/can-someone-elaborate-on-always-treating-feedback-as-a-gift/)
- [[Taro Top 10] Software Engineer To Engineering Manager (IC -> M Track)](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/oz0mnJvHHgM8NfVF7rgp/)
- [[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/)

The Most Important Thing To Do After You Get Laid Off

As a software engineer, you naturally have a lot of leverage as a highly sought after, highly-skilled worker. If you end up getting laid off, take the opportunity to use that leverage and seriously think about bettering your future.

Here are the core points:
- **Take the time to introspect about career direction** - When you're working, it's way too easy to get lost in the hustle and just trudge from project to project. After you're laid off, you now have the mental freedom to really think about where you want to go with your career. This will take at least several days, maybe even weeks. Try to envision what the perfect job looks like to you and make that your goal. Ask yourself where you want to be 5 or 10 years from now.
- **Think about what makes you happy** - This sounds cliched, but it's 100% true. There's no point min-maxing your compensation and level if you're fundamentally unhappy while doing it. The tech industry is such a broad space: There is a right opportunity for everybody where they can grow their career and be happy while doing it. But in order to get that opportunity, you need to discover what genuine passions you have.

Related resources:
- [[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/)
- [Figuring Out The Best Company To Join As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/Nqs0U6rt2qFyXKSZurTh/figuring-out-the-best-company-to-join-as-a-software-engineer/)
- ["How do I know what I'm great at?](https://www.jointaro.com/question/hksE5OSxktWdbnQQFdaT/how-do-i-know-what-im-great-at/)

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/)

Effective Communication Guide [Part 5] - Giving Feedback

- If you're giving constructive feedback, try to pair it with something positive. In general, positives are good at offsetting negatives.
- Tentative language is also crucial, especially with constructive feedback.
- Example feedback around running meetings:
  - **Bad:** "You need to stop cutting people off in meetings."
  - **Good:** "You do a great job running meetings and making sure that they're on track, but I feel like in pursuit of that, you sometimes cut people off too soon and aggressively instead of letting their voice fully be heard. I think letting everyone get their complete thoughts out is important for our team, and we can always extend the meeting length if there's no way we can time-box properly while doing this."
- Your overall mentality should be, *"How can we all become better?"*, as opposed to, *"I need to tell this person why they suck."*.
- If you don't feel too close to the person you're giving feedback to, you can go through your manager to share the feedback with them or with their manager. At a high-level, you can see your manager as a "people API" to abstract away issues like these.

Effective Communication Guide [Part 3.2] - Deep Listening

- *Communication isn't just how you share information, it's also about how you take in information.*
- It is crucial to listen intently, especially during 1 on 1s. A lot of people don't realize that there's a large skill range when it comes to listening.
- How to show that you're engaged:
  - Lean in
  - Nod to acknowledge core points
  - For something heavier, you can say "Mmhmm".
- A very powerful way to gain trust is to listen to people's problems and acknowledge them. A lot of people when they're faced with a problem, their initial goal isn't to actually solve the problem: It's just to find someone who will listen to their pain and feel less alone.
  - Just saying something along the lines of "Dang, that sucks" can go a long way.
  - Letting someone know that you have also faced this problem is also very effective. It builds solidarity and can help combat imposter syndrome as a lot of people are afraid that they are the only one facing the problem they have due to their own lack of ability.
- Revel in people's wins with them! Respond to people's excitement and positive energy with your own.

Engineering Manager Feedback Example: Good vs. Bad

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 6] - The Goggles

Here's the harsh truth: The *vast* majority of mid-level engineers who are stuck at that level and unable to reach senior are holding themselves back (at least to some extent). This lesson teaches you:

- The classic unhealthy mindset that mid-level engineers have that keeps them from ever reaching senior
- How to correct the novice mid-level engineer mindset and evolve towards a senior engineer one by putting on **The Goggles**
- How to think about The Goggles after you are aware of them (which you will be after going through this lesson)
- The general way high-performing senior engineers (and beyond) view the world

Learn how to create scope with our playlist: [\[Taro Top 10\] How To Create Scope As An Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/EWIo3USNcsgXbCs5PS0h/)

Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer [Part 1] - How This Course Works

Switching jobs is great, but it can only get you so far. *The true foundation of any ultra-successful tech career is promotion.* However, promotion gets a bad reputation as it's sorely misunderstood, both by individual engineers and entire tech companies. This course is here to demystify promotion and teach you how to go through it as efficiently as possible. Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) walks you through his extensive 10+ year Silicon Valley background with rapid career advancement, ending up as a high-performing tech lead making $750k at Robinhood. More importantly, he goes through how he was able to grow his mentees to lightning fast promotions, particularly at Meta where he grew new-grads (E3) to high-performing senior engineers (E5) with \~$500k TC by their mid-20s (far faster than Alex himself!).
- You'll understand why promotion is underrated and critically important to a successful tech career with serious longevity. You'll also understand why constantly going on the interview grind is way worse than pursuing organic promotions when possible.
- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will understand:
  - 💡 How promotion **actually works**, particularly at top companies
  - 🧠 The framework to understand the **senior engineering career ladder**
  - 📃 How to define a **clear plan** to get to the next level
  - ✅ What it takes to get **maximum credit** for every project
  - 🚀 What it means to master your performance review and produce the **best promo packet**

If you want to learn how Alex was able to grow his mentee engineers ⚡ fast (more than 2x quicker than industry average), check out his deep-dive here: [\[Case Study\] Mentoring Junior SWEs \[E3\] to Senior \[E5\] In Just 2.5 Years At Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/EX9563YnxcJb62cCmetg/case-study-mentoring-junior-swes-e3-to-senior-e5-in-just-25-years-at-meta/)

How This Onboarding Course Works

Onboarding into a new job is (hopefully) the start of a rewarding and impactful career change. "*Welcome to the rest of your life*" is apt when you're the new employee: you are setting the stage for the rest of your job. Make it count!

This course will guide you through the onboarding process as a software engineer. Rahul will share his experiences and knowledge to help you establish relationships, navigate change, and prevent common failure modes. By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of how to build respect, measure progress, and succeed in your new role

Why Rahul is qualified to teach this course: 

- Across full-time and internships, Rahul has worked at 7 different companies with wildly different onboarding processes
- Rahul has directly coached and mentored hundreds of engineers as they started in new roles
- Rahul has seen what works (and what doesn't) when engineers apply the advice on the job

When engineers fail to productively ramp up in a company, it's often because they are one extreme of the spectrum of panicked to complacent: 

- **Panicked engineers** lack focus, try to do/read everything, and are very stressed out. 
- **Complacent engineers** are too reactive, lack curiosity, and are not stressed enough.

If you're looking for a job, start with this 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/)

[Case Study] How To Land 18 FAANG+ Offers With Steven Zhang (Airtable, USDR, Tableau)

While on the job hunt in 2019, Steven Zhang received 18 offers (out of 22 onsites), including from companies such as Airbnb, Apple, Facebook, Palantir Technologies, Pinterest, Stripe, Uber.

In the process, he became an expert in software engineering interviews and job searching. Steven shared his thought process and methodology:

- When you have many interviews, **operationalize it, and treat it like a multi-week/month project**. Some days will feel like a slog, but that's ok and part of the process. (Steven used Airtable to coordinate all his conversations.)
- **Doing an interview prep course is completely worth it for DSA**. It may cost a few thousand dollars, but being able to land the ideal job is definitely worth it (and likely worth tens of thousands of $$). Steven used InterviewKickstart (his referral: https://bit.ly/swe-tips-ik).
- **For behavioral interviews**, Steven recommends:
  - Writing all questions you received in a Google doc
  - Recording yourself doing mock interviews with a friend and then listening to it.
- **Steven received offers at various levels through the bands**, from L3 (junior) to L5 (senior). Your level has huge implications for your compensation.
- Negotiation tips:
  - Negotiation should not be adversarial- think of it as doing price discovery
  - If you ask nicely, no one will rescind your offer for asking for more money.
  - Negotiation/post team matching is a way to get signal on the company itself

Relevant resources:

- [\[Masterclass\] 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/)
- [\[Masterclass\] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - System Design](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/J3I9fTW9ulr6T9KjxpqY/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-system-design/)
- [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior LeetCode Experience](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ZYiTbN21FsqFxFdpwt5a/how-alex-got-into-meta-with-0-prior-leetcode-experience/)
- Steven's [viral Medium article about this experience](https://medium.com/@stevenzhang/how-i-landed-18-faang-software-engineer-offers-after-not-interviewing-for-5-years-fc0dfc957a5d).
- Connect with [Steven on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenqzhang/)

Don't Be Naive When Networking - Understand That You'll Get Burned

One of the main ways to grow your tech career is by building relationships. However, a lot of software engineers struggle immensely with this, dismissing the entire craft as "playing politics". This video explains why that mentality is toxic and how you should set up your mindset instead.

Here are the core points:
- **Every company will have politics** - What separates the good companies from the bad ones is that the good ones have a moderate amount of politics while the bad ones have an overwhelming amount of politics. If you're going to any decently sized company, you will have to do understand how to interact with people and get them to like you. It is near impossible to get to senior levels without being able to do this.
- **Professional networking is just like "real life"** - There isn't a huge difference between building work relationships and making personal friends and dating. The core principles behind establishing relationships and earning trust are the same both inside and outside of work.
- **Not every relationship will work out** - Similar to personal relationships, you will often times invest into people who won't return the favor. *Don't let that turn you off from the idea of networking as a whole.* Growing as a software engineer is a marathon filled with ups and downs. Don't let a few toxic coworkers or poor synergy partnerships tear you down.

Related resources:
- [[Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tyaPFMXPoz2pmzB7OVzt/how-to-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech-12172022/) - The full video where this clip was taken from
- [Effective Communication Guide - Building Relationships](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/488EjOLzU707WhdqMOK4/effective-communication-guide-part-3-building-relationships/)
- ["How do I achieve my goals for this half when XFN is not communicating effectively?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/Z1MwZ4GOA4XxxZd9ff5n/how-do-i-achieve-my-goals-for-this-half-when-xfn-is-not-communicating-effectively/)

The Best Managers Acquire Power To Give It Away

- Even though the manager is an authority figure, the best engineering managers *acquire power to give it away*.
- What this means is they will establish ownership over a space and then give control of it to an engineer on their team to help them grow. This is especially important growing engineers to senior levels and beyond.
- By making the engineers on the team share authority, the team becomes more resilient, so that it doesn't collapse when the manager is out.
- Alex's Instagram example:
  - The oncall in his org was very weak and unhealthy.
  - His manager got the ball rolling and collected a working group of senior+ engineers and managers to align on the problem and agree to solving it.
  - After his manager established a sphere of influence here, they handed it over to Alex to lead the entire effort and successfully revamp the oncall system for ~25 mobile engineers.
  - Manager easily could have led this effort themselves but chose to delegate to Alex, so that he could build authority in this area.

Related resources:
- ["Why would a senior make themselves replaceable?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/b5eUTVq4m9ANQ5QCUc3q/why-would-a-senior-make-themselves-replaceable/)
- [Why Great Engineering Managers Are Like Captain America](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/a9s0fUXIWxm8sPigvXnL/why-great-engineering-managers-are-like-captain-america/)
- [What Makes A Truly Great Tech Lead - A VP of Engineering's Perspective](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/uHqZZ15SK19MatEvLSO6/what-makes-a-truly-great-tech-lead-a-vp-of-engineerings-perspective/)

How Software Engineers Are Measured For Promotion

What does additive value look like for a software engineer?

What's the main metric used to evaluate engineers for promotion and their overall seniority?

What kind of value is the following: Creating a team-wide initiative to write more unit tests, organizing regular hackathons to write hundreds of tests at once alongside creating a dashboard to measure which tests catch the most bugs

What kind of value is the following: Helping the company's ambitious hiring goal for web engineers by interviewing dozens of React developers in just a few weeks

What kind of value is the following: Taking an incredibly vague product idea and refining it into a well-defined product spec by bringing together dozens of engineers, product managers, data scientists, and designers and getting alignment on what the value proposition is and how that manifests as a product experience

What kind of value is the following: Building out the iOS portion of adding Twitter login to onboarding flow for your company's core app after getting high-quality mocks and requirements for it

The Importance of Reflection With Time Management

Why is reflection important when it comes to productivity?

True or false: If you aren't getting as much done as you want, you should just work harder.

Which one of these is a concrete tactic you can use to shore up your reflection?

Establish what you want to get done in a given day or week. But if you don't get it done, then you NEED to reflect on **"why"**? Some possible reasons you might come up with it: 
- Procrastination
- Lack of clarity
- Missing information 
- Ad-hoc meeting

Now use this as learning going forward to make better estimates. Reflection is important enough that you should block time your calendar for it.

[Case Study] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project

Oncall is a critical process for any good engineering team, especially larger ones. However, a lot of software engineers aren't truly exposed to oncall until several years into their career. This detailed case study covers what a healthy oncall looks like and how ex-Instagram tech lead Alex led his organization towards that.

This session covered a *lot* of ground, so we'll focus more on the learnings instead of the historical story:
- **Good oncall ingredients**
  - Very strong sense of ownership expected from the current oncall - The buck should stop with them
  - A detailed runbook and thorough documentation in general around SLAs, SEV criteria, and ownership
  - 7 to 12 engineers on the rotation so you're only oncall <15% of the time
  - A retrospective process that brings together the team to share knowledge and figure out how to improve their systems as a whole
- **Pain = Opportunity** - Never say *"That's just the way it is"*: Every problem is solvable. If you want to level up fast, strive to alleviate pain at scale for your team instead of running away from it. Here's a great discussion covering this concept in more detail: ["Ways to add value when asked “What do you think would be biggest challenges for next quarter?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/zYbkS5Bn00H9RGKiiL4F/ways-to-add-value-when-asked-what-do-you-think-would-be-biggest-challenges-for-next-quarter/)
- **It's All About Relationships** - This is especially important at senior and staff engineering levels. In order to change process and push big projects, you need to get many people to agree with you. Understand that these relationships take time to grow and you need to start as early as possible. Check out this masterclass to deep-dive into this: [[Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tyaPFMXPoz2pmzB7OVzt/masterclass-how-to-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech/)
- **Understand Everyone's Incentives** - They will be very different for people who aren't on your team or aren't engineers. As a tech lead, you are expected to work across XFN boundaries regularly, and succeeding at this requires understanding what drives everyone and finding mutual interests.
- **Lead By Example** - Put yourself on the line and practice what you preach. A disconnect between what you're recommending and your own actions is one of the easiest ways to sabotage your own influence.
- **Stand On The Shoulders Of Giants** - At Big Tech companies in particular, there will always be hundreds of other engineers in the company who have already solved the problem you are currently working on. There is no need to reinvent the wheel - Seek out those people and learn from them.

Related resources:
- ["How to form a healthy on-call rotation?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/8OuTidxuVaeuQCV28IhD/how-to-form-a-healthy-on-call-rotation/)
- ["How can I improve the unstructured, chaotic oncall rotation I'm on?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ScxFpybXXC90qmnLEU7A/how-can-i-improve-the-unstructured-chaotic-oncall-rotation-im-on/)
- ["How can I maintain work-life balance with a hectic oncall?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/WLqDVZQa8rAEmFEl15oA/how-can-i-maintain-work-life-balance-with-a-hectic-oncall/)
- [Presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19PpKY5VoRAP8OMhu2shwhLthKiodw5cUruk6Lycelho/edit?usp=sharing)

Every Senior+ Engineer Must Decide: IC vs Management Track

There is one good motivation to become an engineering people manager: to help people. If that's not the priority, you should not become an EM (and you should avoid working with those types of managers).

Daniel toggled between individual contributor (IC) and manager several times in his career. His most fruitful experience was as a very senior IC engineer at Meta -- he had the influence + context of a manager, but none of the headache associated with the job. 

Connect with Daniel on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltomko/)

Related content: 
- [Questions You Can Ask To Evaluate An Engineering Manager](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/VOQc7vIzQ4STtw7UrB29/questions-you-can-ask-to-evaluate-an-engineering-manager/)
- [How Do Effective Engineering Leaders Help Their Teams Achieve More?](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/xGJDCG7VL4hcZaq5XL92/how-do-effective-engineering-leaders-help-their-teams-achieve-more/)

[Case Study] Hypercharging Your Growth At Early Startups (w/ Staff Engineer Seed Zeng)

[Click here for the presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZocNUZJL-feWAKoucVLUcaVxix2Xa1udEL4KpgQRBTo/edit?usp=sharing).

There are a *ton* of great points covered in this session, so we'll only share our Top 5:
- **Startups have massive scope** - In an early-stage startup, there is always an infinite supply of hard, technically deep problems. This allows you to have a lot of freedom choosing an opportunity that works well for you and build up a wide breadth of important skills. This is almost always *not* the case in Big Tech - [Check out this expert career advice on the difference between Big Tech and startups when it comes to learning](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9).
- **Don't say "I'm not qualified to work on this"** - The best software engineers are able to adapt to any situation their team faces and add value regardless of what framework or tech stack is needed. In order to do that, you must first flip this fearful mentality. [Here's our masterclass on how to learn quickly in tech](https://link.jointaro.com/S2h95sJvRU8Utjj6A).
- **Don't be afraid to make mistakes** - Recovering from a mistake is one of the most powerful ways to learn, and startups will generally have more tolerance for mistakes as stakes are lower compared to a more mature, massive public company where product issues can make the news. [Here's our advice on how to maximize your growth from mistakes](https://link.jointaro.com/THof1u97Z5t1ovCr9).
- **80% of the journey is just showing up** - Seek out important, complex situations and run towards them instead of away from them, especially with production issues. If you're earlier-in-career, you can learn a lot simply by being a participant in fixing these fires; from there, you can make yourself a core driver more and more. [Here's our advice on how you can be more independent debugging tricky technical problems](https://link.jointaro.com/xE8oMpCaDYjuMhCg7).
- **It's all about the people** - Your career growth is largely a product of the people you surround yourself with, and this is especially true in a startup where the team is small, bonds are deep, and everybody knows each other. [Here's our advice on how to network effectively within a company](https://link.jointaro.com/Hr1nr53D7sfQAEv3A).

To see (and hear) more from Seed:
- [Connect with him on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/seedzeng/)
- [Check out his podcast "Superposition"](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3N1cGVycG9zaXRpb25zaG93L2ZlZWQueG1s?sa=X&ved=0CAMQ4aUDahcKEwjot6up4Zf7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en)

Related resources:
- [Session #6 - Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups](https://link.jointaro.com/2ZevbN54MPZPTocH8)
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/n57gbTWERveGTQuM9)

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.