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Why do incompetent managers get promoted?
Two books — 45 years apart — explain it. If you want to get ahead, it’s time to face the facts.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 399 posts.
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Problems, not solutions (2018)
The most valuable thing a product manager can do is frame the right problem for the right user before anyone writes a line of code.
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How Big Technical Changes Happen at Slack
Most new things in technology turn out to be fads: patterns of talking and doing that come and go without leaving a permanent mark. Microkernels; EPIC architectures like IA-64; object request brokers; and 1990s’-style neural nets are gone, and will not return. Sorry for the deep throwbacks; only time proves which…
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Why are we so bad at software engineering?
From XKCD, released under the Creative Commons 2.5 License An app contributed to chaos at last week's 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus. Hours after the caucus opened, it became obvious that something had gone wrong. No results had been reported yet. Reports surfaced that described technical problems and inconsistencies…
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What does happiness at work mean?
An unscientifical and personal approach.
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Become a Better Developer by Reading Source Code
In this post, I share why I think that reading source code is an important technique which can be applied to become a better software developer.
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95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things.
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How to Escape from Immoral Mazes
Previously in sequence and most on point: What is Success in an Immoral Maze?, How to Identify an Immoral Maze This post deals with the goal of avoiding or escaping being trapped in an immoral maze…
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Don’t pin the butterfly: not all hobbies need to become hustles
A couple of years ago, I got really interested in pu’er tea—a kind of fermented tea produced in China—which can sell for thousands of dollars. I tried some, liked it, read about its history, and then… My mind started racing: why is it so hard to buy pu’er tea in Europe? Maybe I could import ... Read More
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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
One of the things that sucks most about technical interviews is that they’re a black box. How can we tackle that?
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Improving my productivity as a working programmer (2017)
For the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessed with improving my productivity. During this time, I’ve continuously been monitoring the amount of work I’ve been getting done and have been experimenting with changes to make myself more productive. After only two months, I can now get significantly more work done than I did…
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Tech salaries are risk premiums
This blog post was supposed to come out two years ago in response to, I think, this article. Better late than never? After literally years of people
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Taking back Mondays and Tuesdays (2019)
The creative studio of NYC-based designer and creative director, Able Parris
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Things I Believe About Software Engineering
Inspired by Jan Stette's "Things I Believe" post, I decided to write down some of the more contentious beliefs I have about software engineering. I've selected some of my more extreme opinions here, so I expect reasonable people to disagree with me. That's ok.
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How to give a great presentation: advice from a legendary adman (2012)
“No speech was ever too short.”
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Simplicity
Donald Norman concludes that simplicity is overrated: “But when it came time for the journalists to review the simple products they had gathered together, they complained that they lacke…
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Pioneers vs. Process People
A farewell post on leaving Merantix Healthcare, contrasting early-stage pioneers who build fast with process people who optimize as startups mature.
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When to Overcommunicate
Meet Glowforge, the 3D laser printer that makes magical things at the push of a button.
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Developing GHC for a Living
What is it like to work on GHC, the state-of-the-art open source Haskell compiler? Read this post to learn what features Vladislav implemented in 2019.
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