Become A Debugging Master [Part 9] - Understand The End-To-End Flow

Most engineers waste time guessing at random fixes instead of methodically understanding the flow of what’s actually happening. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Before you fix a bug, deeply understand the end-to-end flow, the intended behavior, and where reality deviates
- Avoid “blind fixes”—randomly adding things like null checks without fully identifying the root cause leads to fragile software
- Break down the system into smaller steps, narrow down the problem area through a process of elimination, and ask better questions based on where things fail
- Understand which components are involved, how they communicate, and what data formats they expect to quickly spot mismatches or errors
- Strong debuggers act like detectives: they map out the flow precisely, isolate the problem, and only fix after gaining clarity on why things broke

Become A Debugging Master [Part 2] - Why You Should Love Bugs

Bugs are often seen as a nuisance, but in reality, they offer one of the highest-impact ways to grow and succeed as an engineer. Here are the core points from the lesson:

- Junior engineers often avoid bugs to chase “cool” feature work, but experienced engineers recognize bugs as critical for making meaningful product impact
- Owning and fixing bugs can accelerate your career growth, even to senior levels like Staff or Senior Staff Engineer, by demonstrating deep technical skill
- Debugging teaches you to dive across teams, codebases, and systems—skills that are rare, valuable, and highly rewarded
- Fixing bugs ensures real, lasting impact compared to feature work, where many experiments and launches often quietly fail
- Mature engineers view the endless supply of bugs as opportunities to create visible, undeniable value by removing problems that directly affect users

Related resources:

- Code quality course: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Girish Patangay: The billion versions of Facebook you’ve never seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXGgc79sGwY)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 14] - Easy Ways To Earn Trust

Gaining trust is always harder than losing trust, but that doesn't mean it needs to be slow. This lesson teaches you:

- How you can earn trust simply by doing your work
- A very natural and technical way to earn trust as an engineer specifically
- Powerful ways to earn trust while scaling up your influence
- The immense power of a $5 coffee ☕️

Related resources:

- Learn how to do good work with our code quality course: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- The Instagram oncall revamp case study: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/)

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 13] - Lead With Kindness

Many engineers get impatient when it comes to networking, frustrated that it takes so long to get someone to provide meaningful value to them. It doesn't need to be this way. This lesson teaches you:

- A very simple way to understand networking and how to convert it into something that provides concrete benefits
- Why leading with kindness is the most powerful mindset you can have to build trust *fast*
- How leading with kindness really isn't that difficult, especially if you're smart and on the lookout for disproportionate activities
- What it means to lead with kindness, explained with an in-depth example that is very relevant to Taro

Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech [Part 3] - The #1 Rule Of Networking

Many engineers struggle with networking as they don't fundamentally understand how it's supposed to work. This lesson teaches you:

- The #1 rule of networking and how not following it completely messes up your social circle
- A very tactical, mathematical framework from which to view networking
- How giving more than you take creates an infinite amount of value
- Why you're not a "loser" for being benevolent and kind
- The pain and toxicity of being in a fake network, which many engineers are a part of
- The powerful benefits of being in a true network

Come Up With 500k+ User Project Ideas [Part 7] - The Alex Formula

Repeated excellence is the key to any very successful tech career. Alex has accomplished this time and time again with around a dozen side projects that have 10,000+ users, and he's here now to spill the beans. This lesson teaches you:

- The exact playbook Alex uses to repeatedly build successful apps with several thousand users
- The "Honer vs. Innovator" philosophy when it comes to understanding engineer types
- Why you should (probably) stop trying to be Steve Jobs and go hard down the innovator route
- How honers are often incredibly underrated and can still achieve stellar career outcomes
- The ideal place to be on the honer &lt;-&gt; innovator spectrum when it comes to side projects

Come Up With 500k+ User Project Ideas [Part 2] - What Makes A Project Valuable

Most engineers optimize for the wrong thing when they build personal software projects, which is 99% of engineer portfolio projects don't matter at all. This lesson teaches you:

- The only metric that matters when it comes to the quality and impressiveness of your side project
- Why getting actual users supercharges the learning and growth you get from building a side project, far more than choosing the best "modern" tech stack ever could
- Common traps engineers fall into that make their side project meaningless, especially when it comes to recruiting

Master The DSA Interview [Part 18] - Fishing

Many engineers think that they got rejected due to the interviewer being bad or "out to get them". While low-quality interviewers do exist (and there are a lot of them), it is often the engineer's fault by being a weak candidate. This lesson teaches you:

- Why there is often a discrepancy between what engineers believe is the cause of their data structures and algorithms interview rejection and what reality actually is
- What fishing is and how it forces interviewers into a very awkward situation that makes them seem icy to the candidate
- How to not do fishing during an interview so you can have a real chance of passing (and make the interviewer more likely to help you)
- Why asking the interviewer for a raw hint is a recipe for failure

Master The DSA Interview [Part 17] - How To Pass FAANG DSA Rounds

Why is it so hard to break into FAANG? Well, it's because FAANG tends to push engineers far harder on data structures and interviews problems. This lesson teaches you:

- The score spectrum FAANG interviewers use to grade candidate
- What it means to get a "Yes" vote on a data structures and algorithms round
- What it means to get a "Strong Yes" vote on a data structures and algorithms round (very important when the market is bad)
- What a strong passing data structures and algorithms interview performance looks like, explained with an in-depth example

What Engineers Get Wrong About Open Source (From the OSS Lead at Meta)

Open source software is not just about the code! It's about understanding and working with project maintainers to solve a problem.

Master The DSA Interview [Part 15] - Edge Cases

Too many engineers only care about the happy flow, but it is the easy thing to do. This lesson teaches you:

- Why handling edge cases is so important as an engineer, especially at FAANG
- The mindset you need to have to tease out edge cases systematically
- Common edge case scenarios for data structures and algorithms problems
- What a great edge case analysis looks like, explained with an in-depth example

Take the code quality course here: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)

Master The DSA Interview [Part 3] - Struggling? That's Completely Normal

You are smarter than you think. Yes, this is even true if you're struggling with LeetCode easy problems. This lesson teaches you:

- Why engineers often underestimate their ability when it comes to data structures and algorithms
- How the learning progression curve for data structures and algorithms works for 90%+ of engineers
- How to set up your mentality and goals when it comes to studying data structures and algorithms

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer [Part 18] - Done Is Better Than Perfect

We all make mistakes. In fact, we'll all make a lot of mistakes as software engineers, especially when we're junior. This lesson teaches you:

- The many types of dumb things you will inevitably do as a junior engineer (and continue doing as a mid-level/senior/staff/principal engineer)
- The simple growth mentality and formula you should follow to speed run the junior to mid-level engineer
- Why it's awesome to be the dumbest person in the room
- A simple mathematical way to understand the difference between a fast-growing junior engineer and a slow-growing junior engineer

Learn how to learn from your mistakes here: ["How to turn a string of silly mistakes into a mature positive outcome?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/JybGyc935lsYbM8dAo7Y/how-to-turn-a-string-of-silly-mistakes-into-a-mature-positive-outcome/)

Grow From Junior To Mid-Level Engineer [Part 6] - Code Quality

In order to survive as a junior engineer, you need to learn how to code fast. The next step is to learn how to code *well*. This lesson teaches you:

- The 2 core components behind code quality
- The differences between junior and mid-level engineers when it comes to their pull request quality
- The many ingredients behind a clean pull request and which ones matter the most
- What a clean pull request looks like, one showing strong mid-level engineer behavior
- The differences between junior and mid-level engineers when it comes to their technical decision making
- Why communication is so important when it comes to technical decisions and how mid-level engineers do it better than junior engineers
- How to understand seniority from fresh junior to strong mid-level through the lens of technical decision making
- A simple metric to measure your code quality and see if you're making good progress to mid-level

Take the code quality course here: [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 8] - Create Scope

The best engineers don't need to be told what to do. Creating scope is a behavior that usually develops as an engineer hit senior, and it's sharply refined as they grow to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- Why staff engineers often write less code than their senior engineer counterparts
- The difference between senior and staff engineers when it comes to creating scope
- A trap senior engineers often fall into when trying to creating scope
- The more graceful way competent staff engineers create scope within their organizations

Watch Rahul's internal tool case study here: [\[Case Study\] Building A Meta Internal Tool To Empower An Entire Org: Staff Promotion Story](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/qvp2quodqAEWSkN7sayt/case-study-building-a-meta-internal-tool-to-empower-an-entire-org-staff-promotion-story/?playlistId=EWIo3USNcsgXbCs5PS0h)

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

Countless senior engineers hit a wall as they push for staff. This lesson teaches you:

- How the Staff Engineer role in and of itself is special by being a relatively new career invention
- The easiest way to tell if a Senior Engineer isn't ready to become a Staff Engineer
- Why the Staff Engineer promotion is fundamentally different from prior promotions
- Why many teams can't support an additional Staff Engineer promotion
- How you can be performing as a Staff Engineer and still not get the promotion

Asking Great Questions [Part 14] - What Have You Tried?

If you don't do it right, asking questions can seriously damage your reputation among the team and mark you as a low-performer. This lesson teaches you:

- Why engineers in particular are extremely allergic to low-quality questions
- How low-quality questions can put you in the target of a PIP (performance improvement plan)
- A simple way to identify if a question is low-quality or high-quality based on its overall vibe
- 3 core tactics you should try if possible before asking a question
- What it means to masterfully incorporate what you've tried into a question, explained with an incredibly in-depth example

Asking Great Questions [Part 6] - Be Clueless In Public

The best software engineers are those who embrace their lack of knowledge. This lesson teaches you:

- Why it's better to ask your question in a broader audience
- The difference levels of visibility when asking a question with higher being better
- A huge, often unknown benefit that comes with asking questions in public which allows even junior engineers to become leaders
- Why you should always try to create a record of your question and its answer(s)

Asking Great Questions [Part 3] - The Key Behind Questions That Don't Suck

There are good questions, and there are bad questions. One of the main ways to thrive as a software engineer is quite simple: *Ask **good** questions*. So how do we do that? This lesson teaches you:

- The key concept behind asking a truly good question
- Why empathy is an engineering superpower in general
- The concrete way to identify a bad question
- The concrete way to identify a good question

Maximize Your Productivity As A Software Engineer [Part 7] - Get Good Sleep

Sleep is one of the first things to go when software engineers are faced with daunting workloads. Unfortunately, this is a tradeoff with disastrous consequences which doesn't even solve the problem. This lesson teaches you:

- Why most software engineers get sleep completely wrong in every possible way
- The correct perspective to have with sleep
- The many benefits of getting 8+ hours of consistent sleep every day
- How sacrificing sleep actually makes you less productive, not more

Tech Career Growth Videos

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