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Get a personal teacher
Want to learn something new? Get a personal teacher as soon as possible. If you don't have enough money to pay someone, find a mentor among your friends o...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,747 posts.
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Leveling up in job interviews for software engineers (2022)
How to stand out in job interviews as an engineer.
903
Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake
I bought the iPad Pro M1 chip in hopes of a lightweight, fast, multi-purpose device that I could also code on.
904
Being “rockstars”: when software was a talents/creatives industry
I offer a high-level model for why software work feels like it sucks now: we don't treat software like creative output.
905
Demystifying burnout – A deep dive into its symptoms and remedies
Discover the roots of burnout, its distinct symptoms, and key causes. Learn to identify potential signs and explore strategies to overcome this chronic syndrome.
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Mistakes to avoid to build a better 1-person business
Choosing the right markets and the pitfalls to avoid
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Get It Done
Too often people do the best they can with what they have when they should instead get it done
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The WFH future is destroying bosses' brains (2021)
Yesterday, Silicon Valley Analyst Jeremiah Owyang vaguely reported that executives are scared of their employees “working part-time (but paid full salary)” and “even working on side hustle startups, while on a full-time salary,” a truly terrifying prospect that has chilled me to the bone.
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How I feel quitting my own startup
I left my own startup after almost 5 years of hard work. It was a tough decision, but a necessary one.
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The Risks of Staying Put
Friends! Pals! Treasured work associates! Last month Mandy Brown wrote about how she struggled to quit her job and this bit hit me like a sledgehammer: “I...
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It's companies' fault we don't want to return to the office
It wasn't appealing to begin with
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Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls (2013)
Productivity is one of my pet topics, because it's always dogged me a bit, especially early in my career. I'd pull long days and nights and then realize I only actually worked (as in, typing in code, debugging stuff, and thinking about problems and their solutions) maybe 20% of the time. Upon talking to coworkers…
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Limits of Programmer Productivity: A lesson from Fred Brooks
Fred Brooks published The Mythical Man-Month in 1974, describing the lessons he learned leading IBM’s OS/360 project during the 1960s. As technology goes, it’s ancient. Consider the workflow for a “debugging run”:
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Two years of teaching high school CS
(This post is also now also listed on the Pickcode Blog) Leaving Teaching I’m posting this on my last day teaching high school computer science. In the pas...
918
On the slow productivity of John Wick
I found myself recently, as one does, watching the mini-documentary featurettes included on the DVD for the popular 2014 Keanu Reeves movie, John Wick — ... Read more
919
Dumb and Gets Things Done (2010)
Someone once asked Napoleon how he decided where to assign soldiers. Napoleon's reply was that it's simple: soldiers are either smart or dumb, lazy or energetic. The smart and energetic I make field commanders. They know what to do and can rally the troops to do it. The smart and lazy I make generals. They
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Getting to know the right people (2022)
This page has moved to https://drmaciver.com/notebook/2022/06/getting-to-know-the-right-people/ .
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Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
Gamification works too well on me. I'll do anything for a high score, to complete a progress bar, or to unlock an achievement.
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Working quickly is more important than it seems (2015)
The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you'll finish more stuff per unit time. But there's more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you'll be inclined to do more.
923
Growing from engineer to manager
Your success is now determined more by the success of your team than by your individual contributions.
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Why you’re going about recovering from perfectionism all wrong (2021)
Stop murdering your village of weirdos.
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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.
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The work is never just “the work” (2022)
A deep dive on why projects always take longer and a framework to improve future estimation
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I gave commit rights to someone I didn't know (2016)
(Spoiler: trusting your contributors works) Some years ago, I polished up and released an abandoned project for storing financial data in Django. It let you declare “Money” fields on your models, dealing with proper storage and currencies for you. My use case for the library, django-money eventually faded, but it…
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When feedback is not a gift
Feedback is the lifeblood of getting better, but be careful who you accept feedback from.
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I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023
I will no longer be speaking at RustConf 2023 about A (Possible) Future for Compile-Time Programming.