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In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships
How high is the stress I am talking about? You are commuting all you think is that you might snap today, you might quit today. That is what I am calling a hi...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,747 posts.
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Working on complex systems: What I learned working at Google
This is why recognizing whether a system is complicated or complex is so important: it shapes how we should approach problem-solving.
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RIP Usenix ATC
USENIX made the decision this week to discontinue its flagship Annual Technical Conference . When USENIX was started in 1975 — before the Internet, really — conferences were the fastest vector for practitioners to formally share their ideas, and USENIX ATC flourished. Speaking for myself, I came up lionizing ATC: I…
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Getting things “done” in large tech companies
What does it mean to get things done? In the abstract, you can complete a mathematical proof or a problem set, but the real world is much fuzzier. Suppose I…
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You can't git clone a team
Mastering the full stack isn’t just a technical feat: it’s a human challenge, and no, you can’t git clone your way out of it.
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How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you...
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Joining Sun Microsystems – 40 years ago (2022)
40 years ago today: I joined a tiny startup called Sun Microsystems. What a ride! Here’s the never-before-told story of how I arrived at Sun as employee #8! 🧵 I started out in Silicon Valley …
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AI Coding assistants provide little value because a programmer's job is to think
I've long had a fraught relationship with ToDo lists, because they're very much a double edged sword, but I'm convinced that much of the problem is t ...
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My takeaways from DjangoCon EU 2025
Here are some of the most interesting things I learned at DjangoCon EU 2025 in Dublin, Ireland, partially written with the help of AI: link to talks
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I just want to code (2023)
I have an angel and a devil sitting atop each shoulder. The angel says, "Just code for fun! What you make can be just for your enjoyment and that's --" the devil interjects, "not enough to get ahead, loser. If you're not coding your next startup then how're you gunna get rich? Coding for fun? Pfft, sounds like the…
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Avoiding skill atrophy in the age of AI
How to use AI coding assistants without letting your hard-earned engineering skills wither away.
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You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown
Design greatness is defined not by fame or recognition, but by how invisibly and effectively it serves human needs.
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Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work
A field guide to responsible AI-assisted development
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I speak at Harvard as it faces its biggest crisis since 1636
Every week, I tell myself I won’t do yet another post about the asteroid striking American academia, and then every week events force my hand otherwise. No one on earth—certainly no one who reads t…
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Googler... ex-Googler
My role at Google was eliminated.
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Strengths Are Your Weaknesses
The qualities you value most in engineers are also creating your biggest problems. Here’s how to handle this paradox.
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No Pay, No Work; Early Career Lessons
Part 3 of my 12-year journey—what my first rocky job taught me about boundaries and value.
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The best programmers I know
I have met a lot of developers in my life. Late…
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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
How tech companies make money and why it's important
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The Insanity of Being a Software Engineer
Is something I think about often because I can’t help but wonder if most other jobs are like this.
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Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer (2016)
When the story of how I landed a job at Airbnb went viral, I was surprised at how infatuated people were with my negotiations. Media stories portrayed me as some kind of master negotiator—a wily ex...
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Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age
How time-tested software engineering practices amplify the effectiveness of AI coding assistants.
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Breaking computers taught me to build them
My 12-year journey in software: how breaking computers taught me to build them.
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The reality of working in tech: We're not hired to write code (2023)
"So, is everyone losing their minds yet?" My ex-coworker asked me over yahoo messenger. He quit after getting enraged by new work policies that specifically targeted him. I looked up from my screen,
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Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
A Bed Assembly Drama
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Take this on-call rotation and shove it
At some companies, it is expected that certain engineers will serve as part of a formal on-call rotation. On paper, this seems like a reasonable way to ensure the reliability of the product. In practice, it is a miserable burden and you probably won't even get paid for it.
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Sell yourself, sell your work
I've dealt with any number of technically brilliant people who produce outstanding work. The majority of them never bothered to write down their work and communicate it to others - report writing is too boring, uninteresting, and hard. And irrelevant. Or so they thought.
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How I Choose What to Work On (2023)
A reader, "Moo", asked me to write about my process for entrepreneurship and how I choose what to write on. Despite being a lifelong entrepreneur and being relatively successful at...