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Find Your People
Thank you to Bucknell University for inviting me to be this year's commencement speaker. And congratulations to the Class of 2025! Watch the speech on YouTube. Thirty-two...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 6,086 posts.
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Getting a paper accepted
Page 1 Accepts, the Rest Avoids Rejection
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Things that have a bigger impact than coding assistants
Here are 5 factors that make a bigger difference to software development outcomes than “A.I.” coding assistants, but teams don’t address because they’re “old news, gra…
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What makes a good engineer also makes a good engineering organization (2024)
The people who create software generally refer to themselves as software engineers, and yet if they graduate from university, it is typically with a degree in computer science. That has always felt a little strange to me, because science and engineering are two pretty different disciplines – yet ...
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When a team is too big
What signs to look for and how to increase productivity with all-round skillset
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Experts have it easy (2024)
Something that’s painfully understudied is how experts are more efficient than novices while achieving better results.
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Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room
In 2011, Larry Page became CEO of Google and tried to fix meetings. But his new policies were no match for Google Calendar pedants.
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I failed a take-home assignment from Kagi Search
I sent my CV for a role at Kagi Search, the description of the role can be found here:
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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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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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The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia
The Research Pipeline is Stalling The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) froze all outgoing funding, including new awards and scheduled payments on active grants. Over 1,000 NSF research projec…
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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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Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?
Reflecting on how our compensation model is going
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We identified a North Korean hacker who tried to get a job
Cybersecurity isn’t just a priority for Kraken, it’s part of our origin story and embedded into our DNA.
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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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Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue
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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.