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Questions I'm asking in technical interviews
Questions I'm asking in interviews
Two years after quitting my job: 2013 in review
If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years, you know the journey I’ve gone through: In October 2011 I left a startup job (making $60,000/year) to freelance and build and sell products. 2012 was an amazing year where I built this blog, wrote two books, and doubled my income. So what happened in […]
Girls Who Code
I feel badly for Paul Graham because he's being made out to be something I am sure he is not. But the brouhaha that he unleashed about women founders, women coders, and women hackers is a good thing because we ought to be having a broader conversation about these issues. Paul asks "God knows what […]
The 7 Habits of Highly Overrated People
I remember having a discussion with a more tenured coworker, with the subject being the impending departure of another coworker. I said, “man, it’s going to be rough when he leaves, considering how much he’s done for us over the last several years.” The person I was talking to replied in a way that perplexed...
How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)
I was talking with a friend the other day about that perennial subject of conversation in the Valley, Google. And finally she gave me the clue that made the whole place make sense. “It’s about infantilizing people,” she explained. “Give them free food, do their laundry, let them sit on bouncy brightly-colored balls…
Unprofessionalism
Being real brings the haters.
Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
At Buffer, we have the concept of "Open Salaries." We have a simple formula to calculate salaries and we share this with the whole team--and with you, too.
We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m (2012)
I think there’s something messed up about the startup culture in the USA. The belief is that you have to work 6-7 days a week and spend all your mental cycles on your company. Nothing but pledging your soul to your startup yields success, right?
Are Your Programmers Working Hard, Or Are They Lazy?
When people are doing a physical task, it’s easy to assess how hard they are working. You can see the physical movement, the sweat. You also...
Why we removed bosses at Treehouse
On June 20th 2013, we decided that our 4-day work week at Treehouse was’t insane enough so we went further: We removed all Managers.
An Engineer’s guide to Stock Options
There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to stock options, and I'd like to try and clear some of that up today. As an engineer, you may be more interested in getting on with your job than compensation. However, if you're working at
Employee Retention
When it comes to everything that's not building a great product and getting users, most founders think fundraising is going to be their biggest challenge. And it is, until they raise money, and...
After working +1200 hours in oDesk
No matter if you are applying for a job in the real life or through Internet, one point that everyone is going to agree is that cover letters matter as much as a good cv.
How Software Companies Die (1995)
Home Page for Charles Rosenberg
Non-Creepy Networking: Party Etiquette
Note: This is Part 1 in a series of articles about non-creepy networking. There’s just too much to say to get it all out in one article. <p...
Penny Arcade’s Insultingly Horrible Job
This is everything wrong with tech-startup culture, unreasonable expectations, and workaholism in one job posting, by a company with a massive audience that probably contains a very high percentage of young software developers.