Ex-Google | Stanford LEAD | Ex-Founder | Sr. Engineering Manager. Career systems for engineers who want FAANG offers, faster promotions, and leadership roles. 650+ interviews conducted, 1,100+ engineers mentored. Read by 178,000+ engineers across platforms.
I don't look for a free hour
|
Hey Reader, I study every single day. You might assume I have a free hour somewhere. I don't. My workday is full, and my evenings have calls. So I don't look for a free hour. A book I am reading right now says it in one line. You don't need more time. You need better systems. The book is How to Be Good at Life, by my friend Ben Meer. I am part way through it, and it has 40+ systems like the one I am about to show you. Here is my system. It has 3 slots.
What about a bad day? Some days the plan breaks. A meeting runs over, or I am travelling. On those days I do a small version. A few minutes still counts, and I am back to the full slot the next day. Here is what it means for you. You don't need a free hour to level up. You need one gap that already exists in your day. Find it today. Maybe it is your commute, or the few minutes before standup. Give that gap one job, and use it every day this week. See you next Thursday, TheGuidedGrowth. |
The Guided Growth
Ex-Google | Stanford LEAD | Ex-Founder | Sr. Engineering Manager. Career systems for engineers who want FAANG offers, faster promotions, and leadership roles. 650+ interviews conducted, 1,100+ engineers mentored. Read by 178,000+ engineers across platforms.
Hey Reader, Two weeks ago I posted: build your exit on day one. This is the day it paid off for me. I had joined Flipkart a few months earlier. I was not looking. I was still learning where things were. A Google recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn. Then called. Would I interview? They offered me two months to prepare Most people take it. I had a reason not to. I had a medical procedure booked about three and a half weeks out. Recovery would take time, and I was not going to cut it short for...
Hey Reader, Over the last two weeks I posted how WhatsApp works, in four blocks. This is what I see when I ask someone to build it in an interview. I sit on the other side of that table often. What follows is a composite. Not one person. A pattern. It does not matter what I ask Design WhatsApp. Design a parking lot. Design a URL shortener. The question changes. The failure does not. The candidate nods. Then, inside the first two minutes: load balancer. Database. Cache. Queue. Each word is...
Hey Reader, Tuesday's post had a template. Four columns. This is the 1:1 where I first used it for real. Early 2024. A tech lead on my team wanted the next level. Let's call him Harry Potter. Not his name, obviously. But Harry was strong. The kind of engineer you hand the hard thing to and stop worrying about it. Harry believed he was ready. I did not. The worst place a manager and a report can be Not a bad rating. A gap between what each of us thought was true. Every 1:1 after that would...