Alex Chiou's LinkedIn Strategy, Co-Founder @ Taro…

The newest generation of software engineers is the weakest I have ever seen due to the learned behavior of just getting the perfect answer immediately. It's true that StackOverflow exists, but the co…

LinkedIn post image: The newest generation of software engineers is the weakest I have ever seen due to the learned behavior of just getting

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Career Advice10 months ago

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At Big Tech, there's something called "promotion-driven development" where engineers purposefully work on useless projects. The problem at massive companies like FAANG is that it's incredibly hard to…

LinkedIn post image: At Big Tech, there's something called "promotion-driven development" where engineers purposefully work on useless projec

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Career Advice10 months ago

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One of the biggest scams in the tech industry is "unlimited" or "flexible" PTO. Try starting at one of these companies and asking for 1 year off. What this really means is that the company wants to s…

LinkedIn post image: One of the biggest scams in the tech industry is "unlimited" or "flexible" PTO. Try starting at one of these companies a

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Career Advice10 months ago

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I'm going to be 100% honest: Engineers who only do git pull and merges aren't very good. However, it's less so due to skill and more so with mindset. Merging is simple. You have your changes and the…

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Version Control Practices10 months ago

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The average Meta Staff Engineer [E6] now makes ~$750,000 per year. One of the best engineers I worked with who got to E6 had a simple strategy for it: Do the opposite of this when it comes to bugs.…

LinkedIn post image: The average Meta Staff Engineer [E6] now makes ~$750,000 per year. One of the best engineers I worked with who got to E6

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Engineering Career Growth10 months ago

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This is how you know the job market is bad 😅 All jokes aside, you can learn how to get a job in a rough economy (without resorting to crime) with our free 1-hour masterclass here: https://lnkd.in/gt…

LinkedIn post image: This is how you know the job market is bad 😅

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Job Search10 months ago

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Topics & Content Focus

Primary Topics

FAANG-style engineering career advancement (promotion narratives, staff-level behaviors, career leverage)Engineering craft and team-scale workflow excellence (git hygiene, deployment practices, production readiness)Work-life leverage and corporate incentive literacy (benefits skepticism, interview red flags, sustainable performance)AI-era engineer positioning and opportunity access (AI fluency, frontier-adjacent roles, talent networks)

Secondary Themes

Compensation as a status signal and attention hook (staff pay benchmarks, role prestige)Incident response as a career accelerant (SEVs/outages as visibility and learning engines)Ruthless efficiency and productivity systems for high output without burnoutFounder-led ecosystem building (community to jobs pipeline)Interview prep and “insider playbooks” as a recurring productized asset

Industry Focus

Software engineering career education and upskilling productsBig Tech / FAANG operating norms (Meta-like leveling, infra culture, CD practices)AI training and frontier-model enablement labor markets (part-time projects, talent networks)Remote-friendly technical recruiting marketplaces

Content Categories

Contrarian career myth-busting (calling out norms/benefits as misaligned incentives)Insider case studies from elite companies (specific titles/levels, real behaviors, real outcomes)Tactical engineering practice teardown (tools/processes framed as professionalism)Founder/company narrative updates with mission framingDirect-response resource promotion (guides, talks, applications)

Performance Insights

540.8%

Avg Engagement Rate

STABLE

Performance Trend

Best Performing Topics

Workplace incentive разобfuscation / benefit myth-busting (e.g., unlimited PTO as a red flag)Opinionated engineering craft debates (merge vs rebase as a professionalism litmus test)Promotion and elite-level behavior case studies (running toward SEVs, staff-level visibility)Sustainable high performance (efficiency over grind culture)

Virality Signals

Hot-take framing that forces agreement/disagreement (comment-magnet)Use of elite institutions/levels as credibility shortcuts (Meta E6, OpenAI, Stanford)“Scam/red flag/laziness” moral language that activates identity defenseActionable payoff (clear rule-of-thumb) after the provocation

Structure & Quality

230

Avg Length (Words)

HIGH

Depth Level

ADVANCED

Expertise Level

0.79/10

Uniqueness Score

Common Hooks

Contrarian/attack hook that challenges identity or common practice (e.g., calling a norm a scam or laziness)Status + number hook (elite title/level paired with compensation benchmark)Confessional authority hook (“I’m going to be 100% honest”) to justify blunt critiqueCuriosity-driven anecdote hook (“I once talked to…”) that sets up a surprising reveal

Common Endings

Resource handoff to a deeper guide with a single linkClear next step CTA (apply/watch/learn) with urgency or benefit framingHashtag bundle targeting tech career discovery feeds

Value Delivery Methods

Translates elite-company norms into behaviors a mid-level engineer can copyProvides concrete heuristics (what to prioritize, what to avoid, what signals matter)Balances technical rigor (workflow/process) with career strategy (visibility, incentives, negotiation)Anchors advice in stories/examples rather than abstract motivation

Formatting Style

Short, skimmable paragraphs with heavy line breaksPrinciple-driven narration: story → takeaway → prescriptionStrategic emphasis via italics/keywords and occasional emoji for announcementsEnds with hashtags aligned to career growth and engineering keywords

Audience & Tone

Question Usage

0.25%

Response Rate

Detected Tone

Blunt insider-mentorSmart-casual authorityContrarian myth-busterOperator-minded (process, incentives, systems)High-standards, low-sentiment critiquesemi-formalfirst-person

Interaction Style

Debate-driven engagement (provocative claims invite rebuttals and war stories)Mentor-to-engineer coaching stance (directive prescriptions, clear do/don’t)Community-to-opportunity funnel (education content → guide → jobs/network)

Community Building Signals

Builds a shared identity around ‘elite engineering’ standards and behaviorsReinforces insider language (levels, SEVs, continuous deployment) to create in-group cohesionConverts audience into members/applicants via recurring guides and talent network CTAs

Writing Style Patterns

Content Strategy

Hook: Contrarian/attack hook that challenges identity or common prTone: semi-formalCTA: Productized expertise CTA (promote an in-depth gui

Writing style breakdown

The most dangerous trap for a Senior Engineer is the "complexity bias" where they believe that more code equals more impact.

I saw this constantly during my time at Meta. An engineer would spend 3 months building a custom distributed system when a simple cron job and a Python script would have solved the problem in 2 days.

They do this because simple solutions don't look "Senior" on a promotion packet. They want to show they can handle scale, even when the problem doesn't require it.

The harsh truth is that the best engineers are actually the laziest. They find the path of least resistance to deliver value, because they know that every line of code is a liability.

This is the "Senior Mindset" that separates those who get stuck at E5 from those who cruise to Staff and beyond.

I've documented the 5 most common architectural mistakes that keep engineers from reaching the next level. You can read the full breakdown and see the correct patterns here: https://lnkd.in/gXyZ9abc

#softwareengineering #techcareer #systemdesign #staffengineer #growthtips

Alex Chiou

Warm Analysis

Performance Overview

Top Posts by Engagement

Posting Patterns & Frequency

Best Performing Days

Best Performing Times To Post