271
Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 648 posts.
272
273
Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
Today, I step into the role of CEO of Mozilla Corporation. It is a privilege to lead an organization with a long history of standing up for people and buil
274
Work Hard (2007)
Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced … the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously… this feeling may last for hours at a tim…
275
Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
If you want to be amongst the best paid people in software, you have to move to San Francisco. Or do you?The roots of Basecamp are in Chicago. It’s where the business started, it’s where our only o…
276
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
There's a common narrative that Microsoft was moribund under Steve Ballmer and then later saved by the miraculous leadership of Satya Nadella. This is the dominant narrative in every online discussion about the topic I've seen and it's a commonly expressed belief "in real life" as well. While I don't have anything…
277
Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
I'm currently on a cruise ship somewhere in the Mediterranean sea, en route from Barcelona to Casablanca. Most people here are either retirees enjoying the easy life or younger fol...
278
Why We Still Believe in Working Remotely
It’s 2013, almost three years after we first raised money and started growing beyond the first four employees . At the time, Jeff wrote a great blog post about working remotely, basically laying out our plan for how we were going to make it work. Now we’re a few years in and it’s time to update it with, well, what…
279
Firing People
Firing People: a talk about firing people, by Zach Holman.
280
10-Year Exercise Periods Make Sense
Scott Kupor at Andreessen Horowitz has a post today on some potential downsides of 10-year exercise periods for startup employees’ stock options. I’d recommend reading the whole thing for context here, but to summarize: * He argues that allowing employees who leave a company to keep their optio...
281
282
A Taxonomy of Tech Debt (2018)
Hi there. I’m Bill “LtRandolph” Clark, and I’m the engineering manager for the Champions team on LoL . I’ve worked on several different teams on League over the past years, but one focus has been consistent: I’m obsessed with tech debt. I…
283
Retiring Python as a Teaching Language
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
284
The 100:10:1 method: my approach to open source
For many years I was whole hog into the open-source movement and at the time I rarely wrote a stitch of code in my free time that didn’t find itself in a public Sourceforge/GCode/Github repo. 1 However, over time I came to learn that the burden that came with publicly offering code to the universe, to put it mildly…
285
The Tools of a Blind Programmer
The Life of a Completely Blind Programmer in the Netherlands
286
Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
Digg was having a rough year. Our CEO left the day before I joined. Senior engineers ghosted out the door, dampening productivity and pulling their remaining friends. We had only one remaining shot at revival, launching our two-years in the making rewrite: Digg v4. It did not go as planned.
287
Unifying the Technical Interview
Aisha’s hands rattle you. They float gently in front of her shoulders, wrists cocked back. One sways cheerfully as she banters with the hiring manager—her lacquered nails a cyan mosaic over ochre palms. They flit, then hover momentarily as the two women arrange lunch. When the door closes, Aisha slaps her fingertips…
288
Making Your Writing Work Harder For You
Using teaching -- via writing, speaking, and the like -- to sell more software.
289
We still believe in private offices (2015)
There was a time where it seemed like we barely even needed to talk about this: Joel had won the argument , the Internet agreed that private offices were the future, and only incompetent management (or a tight budget) was still putting developers in cubicle farms. A glorious future lay before us.
290
291
Do call yourself a programmer, and other career advice
This is a (very late) reply to Patrick McKenzie's " Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice ". I find much of his advice very sensible, and it might be very helpful to someone in the beginning of their career – assuming they can act upon it (and I really don't know whether my 20-year-old self could…
292
The State of Agile Software in 2018
Agile Software Development may be mainstream, but much of what's done is faux-agile, and we need to push back.
293
How to Minimize Politics in Your Company (2010)
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The
294
Ship / Show / Ask: A modern branching strategy
Ship/Show/Ask is a branching strategy that helps teams wait less and ship more, without losing out on feedback.
295
Questions I'm asking in technical interviews
Questions I'm asking in interviews
296
Does Your Code Pass the Turkey Test? (2008)
Over the past 6 years or so, I’ve failed each item on “The Turkey Test.” It’s very simple: will your code work properly on a person’s machine in or around th...
297
Workplace Experiments at 37signals
At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy. Here’s are a few of the things we…
298
299
The Tyranny of ‘The Plan' (2013)
A long, close reading of Poppendieck's talk on how plans quietly become the thing we manage instead of the outcome, from the Empire State Building up.
300
Business Requirements are Bullshit
How do you go about gathering business requirements, so you know what to deliver to the customer?