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The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made
There was a time in my life when I played quite a bit of basketball. I was leading engineering at a start-up in Scottsdale, AZ, my wife was…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,748 posts.
3692
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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How to sell your software for $20,000
I guess you can either sell $20 software to 10,000 people a year, or $20,000 software to one business a year that buys 10 seats, and either ...
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The Tyranny of ‘The Plan' (2013)
A long, close reading of Poppendieck's talk on how plans quietly become the thing we manage instead of the outcome, from the Empire State Building up.
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The plumber programmer
I called someone a plumber programmer the other day. The person I was speaking to didn't realize that "plumber programmer" is a term of great respect. The plumber is often the most experienced programmer on a team. As with literal plumbing, software plumbing connects things together. It deals with things other people…
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Infosec Core Competencies
An incomplete list of (technical) things just about anybody working in Information Security would benefit from knowing.
3703
White hat social engineering: How to become an admin of a system
Warning: Half-satire, half-truth
3704
Systems Thinking and Quality
Wise words from Russell Ackoff regarding systems thinking and quality improvement – and what we can learn from them
3705
Five Things Old Programmers Should Remember
(even if you’re not that old)
3706
Startup Therapy: Questions to ask yourself every month
Therapists don't tell you what to do. Rather, they ask probing questions that get you to discover for yourself what is true for you, your situation, and what you want. Similarly, these ten questions will force you to make the important decisions about your business. Ask them of yourself every month instead of writing…
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Portrait of a N00b
Well, the typing issue is a thorny one. I think as a general rule, the reddit types are too eager to denounce it immediately and tell us all that Ruby is the answer, or whatever it is this week, and the Java purists and academics make the opposite argument. Coming from someone from a dynamic background, I didn't use a…
3709
Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent
Few investments can compete with the ROI of building a truly effective team, but finding the right people can be a challenging process.
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Bullshit Job Notes
Scott talks about a bit of medical theater, in which companies demand doctors notes to allow people to bring in their own chairs to work; he is often the person in best position to provide that not…
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The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management
The unspoken agreement that made Microsoft's lower pay tolerable has fundamentally broken.
3713
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
Few can measure the impact of a blog post they wrote, in the millions of dollars a year, but Patrick McKenzie has the receipts
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You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
Choose to do only the things that nobody else can do.
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The heaviness of maintaining systems
Our systems and ourselves
3718
Jerry Neumann: Resignation Letter
I am no longer investing in new companies.
3719
Psychological safety vs. high standards: A misunderstood dynamic
The term “psychological safety” is often misleading. When managers hear safety, many dismiss it as a soft style that implies complacency. Meanwhile, psychology implies too much mumbo jumbo. High-profile figures like Elon Musk advocating for a “hardcore” style perpetuate this misconception. But this is a fundamental…
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The other side of "academic freedom"
My various blog posts about moving from academia to industry have prompted a number of conversations with PhD students who are considerin...