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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,747 posts.
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No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
I started Gumroad in 2011. In 2015, we reached a peak of 23 full-time employees. In 2016, after failing to raise more money, I ended up back where I began: a one-person company.
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NDA expired, let’s spill the beans on a weird startup
Many moons ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... London was in full bloom of tech-startups. I was running my own consultancy. Dashing from business to business, trying to pick up work as an expert in this new-fangled "Mobile Internet" thing. Some of the companies I worked with were great. Some of…
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Apple’s Mistake
While it’s possible to understand Apple’s motivations behind its decision to enable on-device scanning, the company had a better way to satisfy its societal obligations while preserving…
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Productivity
I think I am at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place. Compound growth gets...
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Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit
A corporate tale of greed, desperation, and the power of expectations. And a little bit about Capacitors.
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We at $Famous_company switched to $Hyped_technology
Saagar Jha's website.
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The 'Fuck You' Pattern
In the software industry, there is a term for intentional designs which coerce the user into doing something, be it consciously or subconsciously - a ‘dark pattern’. These patterns are employed by social media networks, e-commerce, video games, and many more places. I’m coining a new term called the ‘Fuck You’ pattern…
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Mourning loss as a remote team
This is a hard one to write about. Last year our team lost Pete, a long time engineer. Pete took his own life. He had battled mental health issues for some time.
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From where I left
Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez)20241,190 points455 commentscited by 4Life, Learning & Writing details
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Almost every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret
Assortment of technology startup infrastructure recommendations
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On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation
On this week's Under the Radar, Marco and Dave eloquenty discussed Apple's piss-poor documentation.
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Embrace the Grind
Sometimes, programming feels like magic: you chant some arcane incantation and a fleet of robots do your bidding. But sometimes, magic is mundane. If you’re willing to embrace the grind, you can pull off the impossible.
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Software engineering topics I changed my mind on
At some point, I realized I would've argued the exact opposite position on a lot of topics just a few years ago.
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LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
I'm a software engineer, completing 10 years of professional experience this year. I started my career as a web frontend engineer (it was easier for me to de...
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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
May 2026 update This post was written at a time of significant turmoil in my life, when multiple correlated events happened in quick succession. What I wrote in the post below is true, but a lot was left unsaid, as some things were still being investigated. At the time when I wrote the post, despite resigning from my…
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Googler... ex-Googler
My role at Google was eliminated.
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Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
I have been coaching several experienced software engineers to further grow professionally, since transitioning [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/things-ive-learned-transitioning-from-engineer-to-engineering-manager/] to being an engineering manager. I have noticed a few skills that people often underestimate the…
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Questions
Some questions that I find interesting. I've omitted some that are related to Stripe. ( Pointers to interesting readings on these topics are always welcome, as are pointers to responses.)
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Use a work journal
You’re working on the most complex problem in computer science: fixing permissions on a deployment pipeline. It’s been 4 days you started on that simple task...