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The Unwritten Rules to Becoming a Senior Developer: 4 Steps to Level Up

Titles aren’t everything. But it’s silly to think they’re meaningless. There’s a bit of an unhealthy obsession among software developers (me included) with getting to Senior level, but there is a good reason: On one end of the developer career spectrum is junior. They are expendable,

How You Can Start a 5 Figure Side Business as Software Engineer

I’ve started too many failed businesses to count. * First there was the diary app that never got past 1 user. * Then the startup for real estate transactions that I worked on for 3 years only to get an investor offer of 10k. 😿 * Next was a real-time CSS tool which

Taro's Job Board for Software Engineers

We just released the Taro Job Board at joinTaro.com/jobs. We wanted to create a job board specifically for software engineers with the best possible signal-to-noise ratio. * By focusing only on SWE jobs, we can provide better filters and recommendations (tech stack, level filters, and remote/hybrid preference). * The

How to Have Remote 1:1s

As a Software Engineer for 7 years, I have joined new teams 5 different times. In that process, I learned the importance of talking to my new teammates in the critical 2 weeks of joining a team. As the new person, you can get away with asking many questions. I

How To Join a New Team and Learn the Codebase

During my seven-year software engineering career, I've onboarded into five new companies. That means I've frequently had to dive into a codebase and become productive. Here are my reflections on how I could learn a new codebase much faster. When I joined a new team, I

7 Levels Of Engineers Describe Software’s Most Important Skill

I asked 7 levels of engineers to share the most important skillset for success for their level. These engineers work at companies like Meta, Pinterest, Instacart, and Slack. Intuitively, we understand that the scope of our work should increase as we climb the career ladder. Here's the approximate

Standing Out in Staff Level System Design Interviews

There is a lot of mystery that surrounds the Staff level System Design interview at top tech companies. This makes sense. The majority of online resources target mid-level or senior talent. There are also far fewer staff-level interviewers, which means the pool of insiders sharing insider knowledge is noticeably smaller.

Strategic Job Hopping: How to Leave a Job Without Hurting Your Career

Too many engineers are completely unaware of career norms. A recent conversation I had about job tenure really brought this to light. In the tech industry, there's something of an art to timing your exits and entries in the job market. It's an art that can

The Ultimate Glossary Of Tech Career Jargon And Vocabulary

I've had a variation of this conversation many times in my career. I'll ping you offline via DM about the perf cycle in the next sprint cycle. Ack Ack is right! Whether you're brand new to tech or a grizzled veteran with decades of

The Fundamentals of Data Engineering - Preface + Chapter 1: Data Engineering Described

This post summarizes the beginning of the book “Fundamentals of Data Engineering” by Joe Reis and Matt Housley. I recently delivered a talk on this info via Taro. The talk for Chapter 2 is happening on February 18. Looking forward to seeing you there! Without further ado, let’s get

Getting Started With The Best Engineering Side Hustle: Teaching

Many people dream about earning money outside their day job. Lucky for you, as a software engineer, you have tons of opportunities to create a lucrative side hustle. The reason is simple: the demand for software (and software education) has never been higher. This leads to many opportunities, but you

Taro's 2023 Year In Review

We got started in 2022, but 2023 was Taro's first full year of existence. Our mission remains unchanged: accelerate career growth for software engineers. [1] Our data reveals insights about what software engineers were looking for: 1. Learning the traits of high performing software engineers. [video] 2. Developing

Meta Software Engineer Onsite Interview Question Breakdown: K-Closest Points

This article is the 2nd in my series breaking down Meta interview questions which I actually gave as an interviewer during my time there. There's a lot of misinformation around how Big Tech judges candidates, and this series' goal is to demystify all that and help you

Coders and No-Code: Why Software Engineers Should Learn No-Code Tools

The demand for custom software in the world is insatiable. Tech companies create value with their software products, but the demand is far broader than the tech industry: software is eating the world across law, real estate, and much more. Writing code is one way to build custom software (and

Meta Software Engineer Interview Question Breakdown: Finding Unique Integers

Back when I was at Meta, I interviewed ~100 engineers, specializing with data structures and algorithms (DSA) questions (internally known as the "Ninja Round"). Meta has a pretty rigorous and standardized process for training its interviewers, and I really came to appreciate that as I worked at the

How I Received $800,000 Compensation as a Meta Staff Engineer

In 2021, the last full year I worked at Meta, I made more than $800,000 dollars. In this post, I'll break down my compensation and how it changed each year. Here's the proof from one of my last paystubs in 2021: I joined Facebook, now

Git Commands Every Software Engineer Should Know

Version control is crucial in software development, but the vast majority of engineers learn it incorrectly when starting out.

Talk and Observe: A Framework For Engineering Onboarding

I've been "the new engineer" at 7 different companies in my career, at varying levels of seniority and company size. I've also directly worked with 100s of software engineers where the same topic comes up repeatedly: onboarding. The onboarding period, usually the first 2-3

Professional Software Engineer Vs School - A lot of "No's"

So you’ve finally gotten through discrete math, functional programming, and operating systems, grinded on Leetcode for months, and have a job offer to show for it!  You likely came into college knowing nothing about how to code, and after countless sleepless nights of struggling, find yourself in a position

How To Improve At Problem Solving As A Junior Engineer

In order to level up as a junior engineer, you need to learn how to solve hard problems independently.

How I Became A Tech Lead And What I Learned Along The Way

If I tell you how I became a tech lead you’re going to laugh. You see, I became a tech lead first in my head, and later in reality. There I was, a fresh Eng 2 who just came back from a leadership training for which my manager at

Stuck? Here's How To Unblock Yourself As A Software Engineer

There are 2 things even the most opinionated software engineers can agree on: 1. Naming is hard. 2. Being blocked sucks But you need to deal with both of those—Every. Single. Day. Today, we’ll talk about #2, how to overcome it, and how not to be like the

The Ultimate Software Engineer Internship Survival Guide

We're entering our favorite time of year – summer intern season! From excited new faces joining the team meeting to anxious faces trying to make sense of a massive codebase, internships are hugely important for students. Done correctly, interns earn valuable experience, accelerate their careers, and sample the life

An Inside Look into Our SEO Process

Introduction Taro is a community of 1000s of software engineers focused on career growth. With so many engineers creating masterclasses, contributing discussions, and running live events, search engine optimization (SEO) is a natural growth strategy. We started to invest more time into improving our SEO at the end of 2022

What You've Gotten Wrong about Negotiating a Job Offer

Recently, I tried to help an engineer with negotiating a job offer from a FAANG company. Even though the offer included the max base salary for his compensation band, it was abundantly clear that he was leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity on the table. He didn’t

🤖 I Built a Customizable Chat-GPT Bot. Here’s How to Build Your Own (with screenshots)

I’ve been working on a side project lately. It’s a Chat-GPT bot that you can train to answer questions by uploading PDF documents with custom context. Recent conversations I’ve had with clients inspired this project. In the last few weeks, three different people asked me about building

Tips for Computer Science Students to Start Their Career

It's hard breaking into the industry as a software engineer. Here's how to hit the ground running in school.

Welcoming Kenzie Alumni To Taro

Today, we're announcing a partnership with Kenzie Academy from Southern New Hampshire University to empower alumni from the coding program to dramatically accelerate their career growth with Taro. Kenzie is a leading bootcamp with tech certificate programs in software engineering, web development, and other areas. Kenzie is very

Level Up Your Learning And Collaboration As An Engineer With Loom

In this new era of remote work, it's more important than ever to collaborative effectively. Here's how Loom can help you achieve that.

Tips for Junior Software Engineers to Effectively Ask Questions

Learn how to get the support you need as a software engineer while also boosting your reputation.

Adopting A True Software Engineer Growth Mindset: Proactive vs. Reactive

I'm Jian, and I'm here to talk about a crucial mindset shift I made while working at Attentive (a fast-growing startup). In this article, I'll share how adopting a proactive mindset allowed me to make significant wins at my previous company -- both leveling

Level up your communication with these 5 Slack tips

Label your message A common problem in Slack messages is they are a lot to parse. Let's rewrite the above example without the labels to see the difference: While the above message works, it's a lot to take in all at once and it's

Why You're Not Getting Promoted (as an Engineer)

It's not technical skills you're missing Engineers often try to get promoted by focusing on their technical skills. Like writing more unit tests. Or learning a new programming language. After all, the best engineers get promoted. Right? Being good at your job is different than advancing

Why Every Engineer Needs a Work Journal & How to Maintain One

Have you ever found yourself feeling overwhelmed with tasks, struggling to remember what you did last week, or unable to effectively communicate your progress with your team? That's what the first few months of my Software Engineering career looked like, until I adopted the practice of a work

Avoid This Mistake When Proposing A New Idea

I asked 7 senior software engineering leaders a simple question: What's your worst mistake when proposing a new idea to stakeholders? One mistake came up repeatedly: not writing a 1 pager for your idea. In this article, I'll discuss the 3 phases of writing a quick

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome During My Time At Meta (Facebook)

I’ve been reflecting on the time I spent at Meta. In particular, how far I’ve come since my initial Imposter Syndrome when I first joined. I want to share what that experience was like for me and how I was able to overcome it (spoiler alert: it took

Mo’ Code, Mo’ Problems - Engineering Advice for Non-Technical Founders

I often hear the same startup stories play out among founders. It goes like this: 1. They quit their jobs 2. They spend 6 months building a product 3. They launch 4. They get 0 customers And then they run out of savings and wonder what went wrong. The issue

System Design Primer - What Is This Core Software Engineer Skill?

If you're a software engineer, you have probably heard of the term "System Design" before, particularly when it comes to interviews. As the interviews suggest, system design is an important skill, especially for senior software engineers. The problem is that system design for interviews and actual

The Basics Of Interpersonal Communication For Engineers

Communication is one of the most important skills in the workplace, but it's extremely underrated, especially in the tech industry. Communication is often regarded as a "soft skill", which makes its gravity less appealing. However, because building software is such a collaborative exercise, having excellent communication

I Just Received a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) -- What Should I Do?

A PIP is a formal document to let an employee know about recurring performance issues. The performance improvement plan (PIP) indicates that the employee is not meeting expectations for their job, and without an improvement, they'll be let go. There's no denying that receiving a PIP

The AI Battle Between Microsoft and Google - How ChatGPT and Bard AI Will Shape Society

The rate of innovation in AI has never been faster. In the past week: * Google released their highly anticipated chatbot, Bard AI * Microsoft and OpenAI held a joint live event announcing the integration of their chatbot, ChatGPT, into Bing and the Edge browser The increasing power of Artificial Intelligence has

How to Quit Your Engineering Job (the right way)

3 things to consider before leaving your job I gave a virtual talk yesterday. It was for a career mentorship app called Taro. Rahul Pandey, one of Taro’s co-founders, hosted the event. He often invites engineering leaders at well-known tech companies to give guest talks for Taro. So when

Every Junior Engineer Must Learn This - Software Project Decomposition

Back in November of 2021, I shared my repo of organic, feasible, and at least somewhat original/unsolved side project ideas. I have seen that a lot of engineers, junior ones in particular, have trouble exercising the product ideation muscle, which makes sense as they’re still learning how to

Weak is Strong: Asking Questions Well is a Superpower

In my ten years of engineering as an IC and manager, one of the most common mistakes I see junior engineers make is not asking enough questions 🤐 Driven usually by intense impostor syndrome, you toil away quietly on a cryptic error log, frantically Googling and asking ChatGPT for help, but

Introducing Taro Referrals

Starting today, when a user joins Taro Premium through a referral, both the new member and referring member can receive hundreds of dollars in rewards. Find your unique link here: https://www.jointaro.com/rewards/ Taro is our corner of the internet where software engineers get credible advice to advance

Software Engineers and Startups - Finding Your Perfect Fit

Startups are fundamental to any thriving tech ecosystem. One of the beauties of the tech industry is that most of the FAANG companies started off as a startup in someone's college dorm room or garage! Working at a startup can be an exciting experience for an engineer at

Capitalizing On Opportunities As An Engineer

Last Friday, at an office social, I noticed one of the engineers standing off on her own, completely disengaged from the others. I asked how she was doing, and she immediately revealed that she was unhappy with her role. She was simply not excited by the work she was doing.

I Made $9K from my YouTube Channel in 2022 and it's Powering my Company

In the spirit of transparency, I'm sharing some stats around my medium sized YouTube channel and how it helped me start a semi-successful business. In my opinion, this pattern of YouTubers using their distribution to build companies will become increasingly common, so I hope this is a helpful

Inside The Layoff Era of Big Tech (Meta, Google, Amazon Layoffs)

In the past 5 days: * Google laid off 12,000 * Microsoft laid off 10,000 * Amazon laid off 18,000 When I joined Meta back in 2017, I never expected to see large-scale layoffs at the biggest, most profitable tech companies in the world (Meta laid off 11,000 employees

Improving Software Engineer Discussions on Taro

Taro is dedicated to helping software engineers achieve career success. Everyday, Taro members engage in healthy, positive discussion with other members at top companies. Today, we launched two new features on Taro to increase community engagement: 1. true identity answers and 2. public profiles. True Identity Answers True identity answers

The biggest mistakes to avoid while receiving feedback

I was an L4 engineer at Youtube, working on a multi quarter, multi-PA project. I put in tons of hard work designing and executing. A week away from the planned launch date, we learned that the other Product Area (PA) was nowhere close to being ready. A few months later,

Why I Quit a $450,000 Engineering Job at Netflix

I thought I was going to stay at Netflix forever. Top of market pay. Freedom and responsibility. Unlimited PTO. What more could you ask for? So when I quit Netflix in May 2021, everyone thought I was crazy. My parents objected first. Coming from cultural revolution China where they barely

You will gain your team’s trust and respect fast when …

Whether you’re starting a new job or transitioning to a new team, here are a few tips to gain your team’s trust and respect quickly. 1. You're transparent and friendly Your attitude is key. In software engineering, it’s important to be willing to offer help

12 things I learned in my first year as a software engineer

“Fail. Learn. Grow.” — Anonymous I started my first full time software engineer role at Mistplay a little over 3 years ago, and am now a Team Lead. Since then our engineering group has grown from 4 to 25+, our company from 20 to 150, we’ve been named the 16th

A comparison of European tech hubs: Amsterdam, Barcelona and London

There are several tech hubs in Europe and I have had the privilege to have lived in three of them. Whilst London is far and away the main destination, there is a lot of subjectivity and lack of knowledge surrounding others. There is a high quality talent pool of engineers

The Patterns of the Most Efficient Software Engineers

In a competitive job market, efficiency is more important now than ever. This is especially true in the field of software engineering. With new technologies and approaches emerging every day, it can be difficult to keep up. That's why it's so important to learn from the

How to Be a 10x Software Engineer

3 common mistakes junior engineers make. Are you making them? The best engineers are 10x better than an average engineer. Like a one man army, they deliver more value, faster, by themselves, than a team of junior engineers combined. But how could that be? Isn’t more always better? In

A Framework for Learning New Tech Fast

As time passes in your engineering career you’ll quickly learn that part of being a Software Engineer is learning new technologies and effectively applying them (as quickly as you can). Therefore a prerequisite to this guide is at least a strong fundamental understanding of a single stack (this can

4 Things You Can Do to Stand Out as a Junior Developer (That Have Nothing to do with Coding)

Technical proficiency doesn’t always parallel career trajectory in software. As it shouldn’t. Luckily, there are 4 ways to stand out on your team even if you aren’t a code wizard...

Taro's 2022 Year In Review

Taro was born in 2022, so of course it's been a special year for us 🐣 Some stats: * 350,000+ views on Taro's video and Q&A content * 17,000+ registered active users * 650+ Taro Premium members from 20+ countries, with dozens of engineers at companies

Software Engineer Interview Guide - System Design

Congratulations, you are now proficient with both algorithms and behavioral questions and are at the final step: System design questions. System design questions are scary and tricky, because they have no right answer, similar to behavioral questions. This is why these questions are crucial for passing your software engineering interview:

Taro is now on Learnerbly!

Our goal with Taro is to accelerate the careers for ambitious software engineers. We do this by focusing on the non-coding parts of the job, bringing together the content, community, and stories that are critical to maximize productivity and impact. Our top priority is to help as many engineers as

Software Engineer Interview Guide - Behavioral Questions

You now know how to ace data structures and algorithms questions, but you’re not sure how to tackle the second most common kind of software engineering interview questions: Behavioral questions (otherwise known as “cultural questions”). Well, you’re in luck, because this article will teach you how to do

3 Ways to Create Luck in Your Career (as an Engineer)

It’s more important to get lucky than to work hard. I got into Netflix by going to the gym. When I worked at Amazon in Seattle, I noticed a guy at the YMCA on the same workout schedule as me. Over time we started talking, and eventually I invited

Software Engineer Interview Guide - Data Structures and Algorithms

You made an awesome resume, applied to a bunch of jobs, and landed a couple interviews. You diligently prepared for them, and the time has come for the real thing. So what should you do once you step foot into that interview room? Well, that's what we'

ByteByteGo is now part of Taro Perks!

Taro Perks is a collection of high-value discounts from trusted partners, available exclusively for Taro Premium members. Taro is designed for engineers to accelerate their career. We do this by focusing on the non-coding parts of the job, bringing together the content, community, and stories that are critical to maximize

Announcing Taro Perks and our First Partner: Formation.dev

Today we're announcing Taro Perks, a collection of high-value discounts from trusted partners, available exclusively for Taro Premium members. The goal with Taro is to accelerate the careers for ambitious software engineers. We do this by focusing on the non-coding parts of the job, bringing together the content,

The Unseen Plague Among Software Engineers: Imposter Syndrome

Too many engineers let imposter syndrome screw up their confidence and career. This is such an important topic because, for software engineers, it's not a question of if you'll encounter imposter syndrome, it's a question of when. Here's how to deal with

How To Get Stuff Done In Tech (Time Management 101)

I spend a lot of time thinking about time. Time is the most important resource we have, but so many people squander it day by day, week by week, and eventually, across years. In this article, I want to share 3 tactics to maximize how much you get done on

5 Junior Software Engineer Learning Traps

Something I deeply believe in and have shared several times with Taro's community of 15,000+ software engineers is that time is the only resource that truly matters. In today’s extremely chaotic landscape, the world is filled to the brim with distractions and ineffective time sinks. Unfortunately,