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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,748 posts.
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Why "I'd Google it" is not an acceptable Interview Answer
Going out on a limb In my previous article, The Code Sample, I ruffled the feathers of a few readers who objected to my implication that “I’d just Google it” is not an acceptable…
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Dave Shen: What I've Learned in Angel Investing
Paul Graham of YCombinator ran a great afternoon conference called Angelconf where he brought together a great afternoon of Silicon Valley angels to talk about how to become an angel. He then wrote a great blog post about it . I managed to watch a lot of it, although I was in NYC at the time and it was tough to watch…
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Back to Basics (2001)
We spend a lot of time on this site talking about exciting Big Picture Stuff like .NET versus Java, XML strategy, Lock-In, competitive strategy, software design, architecture, and so forth. All thi…
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An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists
I first encountered venture capitalists (VCs) in 1987. Despite a bad start, I caught the start-up bug
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I'm Joining Craigslist in July (by Jeremy Zawodny)
I wasn't really looking for a new job a few months ago when I received an email from Eric Scheide (see Team Bios ), the CTO at craigslist . He mentioned that they were looking for someone with MySQL experience and asked if I knew anyone. This sort of thing happens all the time.
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The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More By Doing Less
Einstein’s Push Between the years 1912 to 1915, Albert Einstein was a focused man. His previous work on the special theory of relativity and the ... Read more
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Yahoo loses key mysql developer
It seems that word has started to leak out, so I might as well remove any speculation or ambiguity. In the next few weeks, I'll walk the halls at Yahoo! as an employee one last time and turn in my purple badge. After 8.5 years of service and a better experience than I could have possibly imaged back in 1999, the time…
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Jessica Livingston, Founders at Work author and YC partner, launches her new blog powered by Weebly
This is my talk from 2012 Startup School, pretty much exactly as delivered. It's been more than 7 years since we started YC. In that time, we've funded 467 startups so I've seen a lot of patterns....
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Your People
In your career as a geek, there's a list of essential career intangibles. These are the things you need to do in order to be successful, which are also maddenin
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Staff archetypes
Most career ladders define a single, uniform set of expectations for Staff engineers operating within the company. Everyone benefits from clear role expectations, but career ladders are a tool that applies better against populations than people. This is particularly true for Staff-plus engineers, whose career ladders…
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The Magpie Developer
I’ve often thought that software developers were akin to Magpies, birds notorious for stealing shiny items to decorate their complex nests. Like Magpies, software developers are unusually smart and curious creatures, almost by definition. But we are too easily distracted by shiny new toys and playthings. I no longer
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Architecture astronauts take over
It was seven years ago today when everybody was getting excited about Microsoft’s bombastic announcement of Hailstorm, promising that “Hailstorm makes the technology in your life work t…
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Quantity Always Trumps Quality
Nathan Bowers pointed me to this five year old Cool Tools entry on the book Art & Fear. Although I am not at all ready to call software development “art” – perhaps “craft” would be more appropriate, or “engineering” if you’re feeling generous – the parallels between some of the advice offered
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The FAA's Hiring Scandal: A Quick Overview
An Air Traffic Control nightmare
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The Perils of JavaSchools
Lazy kids. Whatever happened to hard work? A sure sign of my descent into senility is bitchin’ and moanin’ about “kids these days,” and how they won’t or can’t d…
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Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats
⚠ Please note, this paper was ultimately retracted by its author (pdf) in 2014: In 2006 I wrote an intemperate description of the results of an experiment carried out by Saeed Dehnadi. Many of the extravagant claims I made were insupportable, and I retract them. I continue to believe, however, that
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Evidence Based Scheduling
Software developers don’t really like to make schedules. Usually, they try to get away without one. “It’ll be done when it’s done!” they say, expecting that such a brave, funny zinger will reduce t…
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Fire And Motion
Sometimes I just can’t get anything done. Sure, I come into the office, putter around, check my email every ten seconds, read the web, even do a few brainless tasks like paying the American E…
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The Engineer/Manager Pendulum
Lately I’ve been doing some career counseling for people off Twitter (long story).
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Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!
When you’re trying to get people to switch from a competitor to your product, you need to understand barriers to entry, and you need to understand them a lot better than you think, or people …
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Finding Great Developers
Where are all those great developers? The first time you try to fill an open position, if you’re like most people, you place some ads, maybe browse around the large online boards, and get a ton of …
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Five Worlds
Something important is almost never mentioned in all the literature about programming and software development, and as a result we sometimes misunderstand each other. You’re a software develo…
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bliki: Frequency Reduces Difficulty
"If it hurts - do it more often". Good advice if the amount of pain raises exponentially with the time between actions, such as for integrating software.
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Women in Science
Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest…