More insights from David are in the Taro app: jointaro.com Sample topics: "How Managers Split Their Time Between High/Medium/Low Performers" and "What Makes A Truly Great Tech Lead". LMK who we should talk to next 👇🏽
Love the story around this rockstar engineer finding a non-engineering solution to the problem. It's a prime example of how senior engineers are often held responsible for raw impact vs. coding proficiency. Back on my old team at Instagram, this kind of behavior also would have been rewarded tremendously.
Now that’s a name I never expected to see on this video I grew up watching your videos and video games are a huge part of the reason I’m a software engineer today. I think without your early Halo 2 videos I’d never have gotten into halo as much as I did and eventually gone down the path of computer science. So thanks a lot man, amazing to see this is also your career path
Agreed. Same goes for finance. After senior. Higher level coding and management roles are 80% raw corporate impact on the company instead of just skill
Rahul you’re on the right track with these interviews! to hear success stories not on how to start from zero to get a job but about how the improvement stories sound like from a Junior to senior engineer. Also how that engineering intuition is trained and enhanced 😊. Thank you for your hard work
It will be great if you can find a similar story of an engineer in FAANG. Because in big tech companies it's not easy to get promoted so fast even with stellar work/impact. But if you can find someone who could manage that then it will be a very insightful session.
This was a phenomenal lesson, and one i stress a lot to the people in my newsletter. As a coder, you're not paid to code. You're paid to have an impact. Identify what areas you can use to have that impact, and use cod only if it is useful
6:12 --> This is actually a really good question. I wish you had the chance to interview the engineer and ask him. I think he would have a lot of valuable information he could provide to us.
This is so cool. I'd thought of being more senior as somebody solving large scale technically complex problems, where hacks and shortcuts don't help justify a promotion. That's the case in Google at least. This is a breath of fresh air.
This is what I've found isn't captured in the run-of-the-mill technical interviews. I was promoted 3 times in 3 years for the same reason, IMPACT and VALUE. From a technical skill standpoint, I'm fine, I'm not going to blow you away in a coding interview but I know my way around the tools and can perform very well on the job. My value has been finding simple ways to solve problems, making changes in code or processes to significantly reduce costs (100s of dev hours/year on a team), up-skilling team members, identify and solve customer problems utilizing software, increase revenue by coming up with features users may not have known they wanted, and have the foresight to know how my decisions (either in code or at a higher level) will have impact in the future. Unfortunately, this company doesn't compensate in-line with the promotions and impact I feel I deliver, have been told I'm delivering, and I've been looking for a change. I've had trouble landing offers because the typical interview process skews heavily toward coding and doesn't encapsulate where I feel the greater part of my skills lie. Managers generally are quite excited to move me forward in the process after speaking with them, then I get to the pass/fail coding interview and that's where there's a hang-up. I've been applying for mostly Senior level and team lead positions since my years of experience fall within the typical experience range of those positions. I've been leading projects since my second year professionally writing software. I don't just crank out code. Should I be targeting higher level positions?
Targeting the highest level possible makes sense. Don't be discouraged if not all companies will give you the desired seniority level: the nice think about interviewing is that you only need one company to align with you. e.g. if you interview at 10 top tech companies, there's a good chance that at least 1 of them should give you the senior title + compensation
key: - being in good company, - being in a good team or be able to decide what to work on, - having a good leadership valuing you and your impact, - going for low hangin fruits and having product mindset, It seems like technical skills are the LEAST important things to get promotion. Interesting, not that it is shocking, quite much what I have seen.
100% agree. Early on in your career, especially if you're in well-established teams, you don't have a lot of say on the projects you work on. So the team, manager and leadership matter a lot to align you to projects where you can have impact. Alternatively, you can have impact by picking up tasks which benefit the team ( better visibility into code, improve documentation, make a bot for commonly asked questions), not a user of your product. But this would again require your manager and leadership to value this effort in the first place. More often than not, this kind of work gets considered as grubwork and gets deprioritized for vanity projects.
Crossing from staff engineer to TLM is not a promotion. It is a lateral movement. The skills required for TLM are not a super set of SE. Their intersection is smaller than any of them. An effective TLM requires people skills than an IC SE does not. And it does not require the technical expertise of the SE.
Its very simple. Any company is not going to pay you more than what you earn for them... The engineer in the example section did exactly that. He/she cut majority cost of having a major client, making the company money by reducing their cost to them, thus getting rewarded.
1. Customer oriented engineer is better than the one who is code obsessed. 2. Every engineering organization should have some level of exposure to customer facing. It is convenient to avoid it by considering customer as a distraction. 3. Impactful coding should/can be measurable in terms of %s or $s.
Did he get promotion only from impact? Is he qualified of skills those promotion need? Is he able to guide engineer with lower level to tackle technical challenges?
Often times i find the answer to that being a no. See, having a "nose for impact" also means knowing where your inputs will have the greatest visibility. Helping Jr engineers with technical roadblocks is very much in the weeds where visibility is concerned.
the criteria to meet for engineering promotions is not a rigid checklist. A special circumstance not in the list where you made impact above and beyond your level, can still be worthy of merit. Of course mentorship is still a great quality to have, just don’t lose sight of the big picture (impact)
Hi Rahul, First off, I just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of the channel, it has been very informative for me! I am a 21 year old incoming Google software engineer, and I recently started my own TH-cam channel focusing mainly on systems design concepts - I'd love to collaborate with your channel, so let me know if you have any time to chat! Best, Jordan
So, your skills or expertise in architecture doesn't matter. You just need to be a problem solver. I guess the person being talked about is having a wrong title. VP would have been a better role.
Wow! This is a simple case of incompetence. If you build a system, among your primary set of non-functional capabilities should be your ability to arrive at “cost-revenue” maps. That should be much easier with the current infrastructure and architecture patterns. It would have been a decent story if at least you were running an in-house data centre. My hypothesis is that some of the Startup core teams might not have a greater exposure to managing software+business at scale. I base that on the theory that most startups focus on solving a problem for the customer or address an opportunity. They don’t look at the bigger picture. When I am called for advising angel investments, I see that the founders don’t have a good correlation between their product and their cash flow statements. I am happy that the man got some money for screwing the bulb. He deserves that anyway.
Need a camera on David's face so it seems like he's talking to the audience rather than talking to you - which he is, but that's not the point of TH-cam
Primary reason for this career: luck and absence of standards on this employee's team. Promotion should be a result of _sustained_ performance at a certain level. You cannot own and successfully multiple major projects over a short period of time. Good for him, but stay away from his orgs. They are toxic.
It is impact though? The company would of course spend less to provide a software solution but it will change how the company will approach such issues in the future, that not all issues require a software related solution.
he was probably a crappy software developer and out of fear of digging into code, he took another safe route that ended up making him look like a 10x high impact engineer. once he cracked the (don't code) code, I am sure he left the coding monkey job role behind and kept advancing. 😂
More insights from David are in the Taro app: jointaro.com
Sample topics: "How Managers Split Their Time Between High/Medium/Low Performers" and "What Makes A Truly Great Tech Lead". LMK who we should talk to next 👇🏽
Love the story around this rockstar engineer finding a non-engineering solution to the problem. It's a prime example of how senior engineers are often held responsible for raw impact vs. coding proficiency. Back on my old team at Instagram, this kind of behavior also would have been rewarded tremendously.
Now that’s a name I never expected to see on this video
I grew up watching your videos and video games are a huge part of the reason I’m a software engineer today. I think without your early Halo 2 videos I’d never have gotten into halo as much as I did and eventually gone down the path of computer science. So thanks a lot man, amazing to see this is also your career path
Agreed. Same goes for finance. After senior. Higher level coding and management roles are 80% raw corporate impact on the company instead of just skill
Grew up playing halo and following MLG. Some of my fondest memories in life. Amazing to see you here!
Rahul you’re on the right track with these interviews! to hear success stories not on how to start from zero to get a job but about how the improvement stories sound like from a Junior to senior engineer. Also how that engineering intuition is trained and enhanced 😊. Thank you for your hard work
Exactly, that's our goal
Reminds me of the saying “the best code is no code at all”. Great story!
Yes, one of the most impactful pieces from Joel Atwood! blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all/
It will be great if you can find a similar story of an engineer in FAANG. Because in big tech companies it's not easy to get promoted so fast even with stellar work/impact. But if you can find someone who could manage that then it will be a very insightful session.
This was a phenomenal lesson, and one i stress a lot to the people in my newsletter. As a coder, you're not paid to code. You're paid to have an impact. Identify what areas you can use to have that impact, and use cod only if it is useful
I think picking the right project is one criteria, but delivering quickly is the main impact
6:12 --> This is actually a really good question. I wish you had the chance to interview the engineer and ask him. I think he would have a lot of valuable information he could provide to us.
yep, that would have been really valuable. We're planning to do more promotion case studies soon.
This is so cool. I'd thought of being more senior as somebody solving large scale technically complex problems, where hacks and shortcuts don't help justify a promotion. That's the case in Google at least. This is a breath of fresh air.
This is what I've found isn't captured in the run-of-the-mill technical interviews. I was promoted 3 times in 3 years for the same reason, IMPACT and VALUE. From a technical skill standpoint, I'm fine, I'm not going to blow you away in a coding interview but I know my way around the tools and can perform very well on the job. My value has been finding simple ways to solve problems, making changes in code or processes to significantly reduce costs (100s of dev hours/year on a team), up-skilling team members, identify and solve customer problems utilizing software, increase revenue by coming up with features users may not have known they wanted, and have the foresight to know how my decisions (either in code or at a higher level) will have impact in the future.
Unfortunately, this company doesn't compensate in-line with the promotions and impact I feel I deliver, have been told I'm delivering, and I've been looking for a change. I've had trouble landing offers because the typical interview process skews heavily toward coding and doesn't encapsulate where I feel the greater part of my skills lie. Managers generally are quite excited to move me forward in the process after speaking with them, then I get to the pass/fail coding interview and that's where there's a hang-up.
I've been applying for mostly Senior level and team lead positions since my years of experience fall within the typical experience range of those positions. I've been leading projects since my second year professionally writing software. I don't just crank out code. Should I be targeting higher level positions?
Targeting the highest level possible makes sense. Don't be discouraged if not all companies will give you the desired seniority level: the nice think about interviewing is that you only need one company to align with you. e.g. if you interview at 10 top tech companies, there's a good chance that at least 1 of them should give you the senior title + compensation
key:
- being in good company,
- being in a good team or be able to decide what to work on,
- having a good leadership valuing you and your impact,
- going for low hangin fruits and having product mindset,
It seems like technical skills are the LEAST important things to get promotion. Interesting, not that it is shocking, quite much what I have seen.
100% agree. Early on in your career, especially if you're in well-established teams, you don't have a lot of say on the projects you work on. So the team, manager and leadership matter a lot to align you to projects where you can have impact.
Alternatively, you can have impact by picking up tasks which benefit the team ( better visibility into code, improve documentation, make a bot for commonly asked questions), not a user of your product. But this would again require your manager and leadership to value this effort in the first place. More often than not, this kind of work gets considered as grubwork and gets deprioritized for vanity projects.
Remember that titles are inflated in start-ups :)
Rahul, more of these please.
I have this video on repeat, however, my mind demands more confirmations!
I'm planning to do more interviews soon! And there are really smart people like David in the Taro app.
Crossing from staff engineer to TLM is not a promotion. It is a lateral movement. The skills required for TLM are not a super set of SE. Their intersection is smaller than any of them. An effective TLM requires people skills than an IC SE does not. And it does not require the technical expertise of the SE.
Another great video, thanks Rahul!
Thanks for sharing this. I guess it also depends on the team scope and manager
definitely, the criteria for growth will depend on what the company needs
Its very simple. Any company is not going to pay you more than what you earn for them... The engineer in the example section did exactly that. He/she cut majority cost of having a major client, making the company money by reducing their cost to them, thus getting rewarded.
the engineer he is referring to is Vijay Iyengar.
1. Customer oriented engineer is better than the one who is code obsessed.
2. Every engineering organization should have some level of exposure to customer facing. It is convenient to avoid it by considering customer as a distraction.
3. Impactful coding should/can be measurable in terms of %s or $s.
finished watching
Did he get promotion only from impact? Is he qualified of skills those promotion need? Is he able to guide engineer with lower level to tackle technical challenges?
Often times i find the answer to that being a no. See, having a "nose for impact" also means knowing where your inputs will have the greatest visibility.
Helping Jr engineers with technical roadblocks is very much in the weeds where visibility is concerned.
the criteria to meet for engineering promotions is not a rigid checklist.
A special circumstance not in the list where you made impact above and beyond your level, can still be worthy of merit.
Of course mentorship is still a great quality to have, just don’t lose sight of the big picture (impact)
i want to know who this 10x engineer now lol. in all honestly, amazing interview. super interesting anecdote on how to have a high impact.
nvm, found him. what an amazing feat.
@@moonbeam254 mine sharing?
@@moonbeam254 who is it?
nvm found him too lol
@@peekos may I know who it is?
Hi Rahul,
First off, I just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of the channel, it has been very informative for me! I am a 21 year old incoming Google software engineer, and I recently started my own TH-cam channel focusing mainly on systems design concepts - I'd love to collaborate with your channel, so let me know if you have any time to chat!
Best,
Jordan
Hey Jordan, I'd love to learn more about what you're thinking. Can you shoot me a message on LinkedIn or Twitter?
Great content !
Excellent video; very useful!
SDE1 to CTO video next please?
I used to find the word "impact" extremely toxic, and almost saw it as an abstract buzzword that's been thrown around the business space.
That word is definitely used a lot at companies like Meta..
Have a question :
How to merge 2 or more videos on android studios .
Rahul sir please make video on how to learn to code self taught and how to stay motivated while learning it and best way to learn programming
Have you looked at Taro?
No sir what is it?
@@able58 joinTaro.com
Good
💯✨
So, your skills or expertise in architecture doesn't matter. You just need to be a problem solver. I guess the person being talked about is having a wrong title. VP would have been a better role.
Those go hand in hand - for engineers, problem solving is often done with technical acumen + architecture (not always but usually)
Wow! This is a simple case of incompetence.
If you build a system, among your primary set of non-functional capabilities should be your ability to arrive at “cost-revenue” maps. That should be much easier with the current infrastructure and architecture patterns.
It would have been a decent story if at least you were running an in-house data centre.
My hypothesis is that some of the Startup core teams might not have a greater exposure to managing software+business at scale. I base that on the theory that most startups focus on solving a problem for the customer or address an opportunity. They don’t look at the bigger picture.
When I am called for advising angel investments, I see that the founders don’t have a good correlation between their product and their cash flow statements.
I am happy that the man got some money for screwing the bulb. He deserves that anyway.
Are these titles really as meaningful outside FAANG companies (where there is significantly more structure and rigor in evaluation)?
It depends on the startup, generally you can get a good sense of how legit the titles are based on the background of the people who work there.
this guy's head is enormous
Need a camera on David's face so it seems like he's talking to the audience rather than talking to you - which he is, but that's not the point of TH-cam
Thanks for the feedback
Primary reason for this career: luck and absence of standards on this employee's team. Promotion should be a result of _sustained_ performance at a certain level. You cannot own and successfully multiple major projects over a short period of time. Good for him, but stay away from his orgs. They are toxic.
80-20 rule
The guy being interviewed is a bystander and not the rockstar.Stop with the clickbait.
aww he deleted my comments :'(
which comments?
Stop saying “impact”. Just be transparent and say “money”. Otherwise, nice video 👍
It is impact though? The company would of course spend less to provide a software solution but it will change how the company will approach such issues in the future, that not all issues require a software related solution.
agreed with Paolo
Now go back to Twitter. Max is sde 3 :)
I came here thinking it was about the game dev company Rockstar :facepalm:
Sorry to disappoint 😭
he was probably a crappy software developer and out of fear of digging into code, he took another safe route that ended up making him look like a 10x high impact engineer. once he cracked the (don't code) code, I am sure he left the coding monkey job role behind and kept advancing. 😂