Itamar Turner-Trauring

Cutting your salary by 40%

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I need to get paid far far less than I’m worth?” Me neither. And yet some companies not only pay less, they’re proud of it. Allow me to explain—

Less stress, more productivity: working fewer hours is good for you and your boss

There’s always too much work to be done on software projects, too many features to implement, too many bugs to fix. Some days you’re just not going through the backlog fast enough, you’re not producing enough code, and it’s taking too long to fix a seemingly-impossible bug. And to make things worse you’re wasting time…

How I stopped the RSI pain that almost destroyed my programming career

If it hurts to type you’ll have a much harder time working as a programmer. Yes, there’s voice recognition, but it’s just not the same. So when my wrist and arm pain returned soon after starting a new job I was starting to get a little scared. The last two times this happened I’d had to take months and then years off…

Work/Life Balance Will Make You a Better Software Engineer

It’s tempting to believe that taking your work home will make you a better software engineer, and that work/life balance will limit your learning. For some software developers programming isn’t just a job: it’s something to do for fun, sometimes even a reason for being. If you love coding and coding is your job, why…

How to become a part-time programmer

For some people, a 40-hour workweek is something to aspire to; for others, it’s still too much time taken up by a job. If you fall into that second category, if you want more time for hobbies, family and friends, or working on your own software projects, you too might dream of working less than full time. But how do…

The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

This post used to contain an early version of the introduction to my previous book, The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek. I’m now working on an updated iteration.

Why lack of confidence can make you a better programmer

What if you’re not a superstar programmer? What if other people work longer than you, or harder than you, or have built better projects than you? Can you succeed without self-confidence? I believe you can, and moreover I feel that lack of confidence can actually make you a better programmer.

How to prepare for losing your programming job

Another week has passed, and another 3 million people in the US have filed for unemployment. While the current situation hasn’t impacted programming jobs quite as much, it’s just a matter of time before the economic damage hits most everywhere. There will be layoffs, and plenty of them, and occasionally whole…

Why Pylint Is Both Useful and Unusable, and How You Can Actually Use It