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The most important product decision is what you don't build
Ask a team what they shipped this year and you’ll get a list. Ask what they killed and the room goes quiet.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,747 posts.
32
Tell the speakers that you liked their talks
if you always wanted to but think it isn't worth telling a speaker you liked their talk, this is your encouragement post to do so.
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Doing Everyone Else's Job
I find it very useful to be able to do everyone else’s job — it helps you learn how they work and what they need, and it helps even more when you need their job done, but they won’t do it themselves.
34
How to write an effective software design document
Best practices for writing a design doc based on my experience working as a developer at Google and Microsoft.
35
Fuck it, make it anyway
Carrying on in the face of creative devaluation.
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On Really Trying (2009)
What are the true limits to motivation?
37
I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer
I'd rather argue with strangers on the Internet.
38
Bug Blindness
I used to wonder why I see so many more bugs than most people. I easily observe hundreds to thousands of bugs per week and nothing seems to work , but most people I talk to don't see anything like this . For a long time, I thought this had something to do with how I use computers but, over time, I've realized that…
39
Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
Starting at Engine brought back the urge to prove myself quickly, and the difficulty of knowing what to change before I understood the context.
40
Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI
AI definitely helps with productivity, but only when you have the right culture in place first!
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Software engineering is about managing complexity
There is a misunderstanding about software engineering that AI is making increasingly visible: we tend to confuse writing code with building software.
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Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance
The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation.
44
How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer
How listening broadly turns everyday problems into useful project ideas.
45
Three important steps in my maturation process
My father passed recently, and he was twice my age. I am approximately the same age that he was when I was born, and I am now “the old generation” - there’s no one left in the generation above me.
46
How to compromise your system with a job interview
The current situation on the IT job market is hard. So you are lucky when a recruiter on LinkedIn reaches out to you having a suitable match for a new position based on your prior experience. It might not be what it seems at a first glance.
47
Being ambitious and being a dad
When I was going through YC, I didn’t mention my seven month old daughter to anyone. Now a few years later I have two kids, a dog and a very packed schedule. My kids are the best thing in my life. For years, my work was my life. Now my life competes with my work.
48
Software Engineering fundamentals matter more
The manifestation of my imposter syndrome, for me and today, is what does it mean to be a software engineer. There’s a lot more noise than signal on the Internet about agentic engineering, wh…
49
Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (2023)
Solitary work, creativity and larval ideas
50
Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding
Working with AI is less predictable than traditional software. That makes leadership skills such as context, clarity, and feedback more valuable.
51
Blog about things you don't understand yet
Every post I publish represents at least two things I’ve learned: the thing that prompted me to write the post, and the thing I learned in the course of writing…
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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?
AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster.
53
A fortuitous decade as an indie software developer
Ten years and one day ago, on August 9, 2016, I abruptly quit my job. I mark this occasion as the beginning of my indie software developer career. Happy anniversary to me and to my customers!
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I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy
Why I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy.
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Helsinki Hacker News Meetup
A casual, roughly bimonthly Sunday coffee meetup for Hacker News posters in Helsinki. Open to anyone with 64+ HN karma.
57
LLMs reward expertise
In the 2010s, if you had technical gaps (say, you couldn’t write CSS), you had to either rely on a skilled colleague or just hope that the answer to your exact…
58
Don't be a meat proxy
Too often I ask a question in Slack or leave feedback under a merge/pull request or argue with friends in a WhatsApp group and get back:
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The Cold Email
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
60
That time when I failed the Microsoft interview
The year was 2015, halfway through my Computer Science bachelor’s degree. I had spent a few months contributing to open source and my confidence levels were high, so I thought: why not aim for a summer internship at Microsoft? Microsoft, of all places, might sound like a weird company to target in 2026. Back then…