1591
Coding with Character
Monospaced fonts are no longer just utilitarian tools—they can also be playful & fun
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,748 posts.
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Heuristics for Effective Software Development: A continuously evolving list
Without psychological safety, respect, and trust, none of the following is possible. The way we work, the work we do, and the organizations within which we work are all part of a connected system. You cannot change anything without changing everything. You cannot improve a system by tinkering with the parts. Process…
1594
The SaaS Org Chart
You've raised a new funding round. You need to staff up. Here's what that looks like.
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Open Decision-Making (2014)
In my experience as the founder and CEO of two startups I have had numerous opportunities to observe decisions being made: technical decisions about how to build products, personnel decisions about whom to hire, business decisions about how to market and sell our products, strategic decisions about company direction…
1596
If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)
Interviewer: Now comes the part of the interview where we ask a question to test your creative thinking ability. Don’t think too hard about it, just
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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate
I’ve spent nearly twenty years blogging, giving talks and releasing open source code. It’s been fantastic for my career, and a huge amount of work. But here’s a useful secret: …
1598
Planning and estimating large-scale software projects
This weekend I was talking with a friend about how I'd planned and estimated a huge software project in one of my previous jobs. By that I mean not something which can be done by a single team in a sprint or two, but something which requires several teams, across several quarters of effort, involving many other…
1599
Software engineering research is a train wreck
I'm a big advocate of Empirical Software Engineering. I wrote a talk on it. I wrote a 6000-word post covering one controversy. I spend a lot of time reading...
1600
How to Learn Stuff Quickly
As software developers, we're always learning new things; it's practically the whole gig! If we can learn to quickly pick up new languages/frameworks/tools, we'll become so much more effective at our job. It's sort of a superpower.
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I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)
Back in 2007, I was searching for a software developer job at various companies. At one of these companies, the best strategy to get the job was to give a wrong answer. If this seems weird to you, let me explain what happened.
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How to win a hackathon without coming in first place
To win first place at a hackathon, you need to combine multiple components... and that's not always possible. Here's how to make the most of your next hackathon without coming in 'first place'.
1604
If you want to transform IT, start with finance
When talking about IT transformation, we often we often talk about ‘culture’ being the problem in making change, but why stop there?
1605
Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014)
Interruptions are one of the biggest sources of inefficiency for programmers. Now, to be fair, they’re probably a big source of inefficiency for everyone, but relatively speaking, they’re worse for programmers. To understand what I mean, let’s take someone whose job is in sales. A lot of the day is probably spent on…
1606
NDA expired, let’s spill the beans on a weird startup
Many moons ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... London was in full bloom of tech-startups. I was running my own consultancy. Dashing from business to business, trying to pick up work as an expert in this new-fangled "Mobile Internet" thing. Some of the companies I worked with were great. Some of…
1607
My proposal for scaling open source: don’t
I've had a number of conversations about what "we" in the "free software community" "need" to do to combat the growth in proprietary, user-hostile and customer-hostile business models like cloud user-generated content hosts, social media platforms, hosted payment platforms, videoconferencing services etc. Questions…
1608
Leaving Google
The end of an era.
1609
On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others
Working hard is a great way to accelerate learning, but it can come at a cost. This post shares my experience and lessons taken from great role models I've found along the way.
1610
Lucky Lotto, chaos engineering but for teams
Building resilience teams with chaos engineering principles.
1611
Move fast, but understand the problem first
Software engineer, etc etc
1612
Software estimation is hard – do it anyway
It’s well established that estimating software projects is hard. This is true, but you should learn how anyway.
1613
Stepping Back from Speaking
a short post
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The 'Fuck You' Pattern
In the software industry, there is a term for intentional designs which coerce the user into doing something, be it consciously or subconsciously - a ‘dark pattern’. These patterns are employed by social media networks, e-commerce, video games, and many more places. I’m coining a new term called the ‘Fuck You’ pattern…
1616
The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)
Are you curious about breaking into software consulting? In this post, I’ve laid out 7 steps to living a fulfilling life as a consultant…
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We Can't Let People Work from Home, for Stupid Reasons
Stupid reasons to not allow remote work. Dumb reasons to reject remote work.
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The “API Mandate” memo at Amazon
The personal website of Christopher Laing.
1619
A day in the life of a professional software engineer
Just a normal day reversing linked lists on the whiteboard.
1620
There is no “us” in team
I’ve talked before about the non-team team dynamic that is “one person per task”. Where the management and engineers collude to push the organisation beyond a sustainable pace by making sure that at all times, each individual is kept busy and collaboration is minimised. I talked about the deleterious effect on…