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The anatomy of a 2AM mental breakdown
Zarar Siddiqi: engineering leader and consultant in Toronto. Building products with care, and helping teams do the same with AI in the loop.
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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To be great, be good repeatably
A thought piece on what it takes to truly be great and what that even means in the first place.
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Bug squash: An underrated interview question
I love bug squash interviews.
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Take a break
I need to hit the emergency break.
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What it was like working for Gitlab
I joined GitLab in October 2015, and left in December 2021 after working there for a little more than six years.
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Facebook senior software engineer interview
I have been working at Facebook as a software engineer for a while now. During this time, I have got different inquiries from friends and…
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Why brilliant people lose their touch
It hasn’t been a great couple of years for Neil Woodford — and it has been just as miserable for the people who have entrusted money to his investment funds. Mr Woodford was probably the most celeb…
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Takeaways from looking for a new senior role in tech
A few months ago, I left SeatGeek without much of a plan of what to do next. My green card was finally issued in 2021, which means that I didn’t have to scramble to find a new job in forty days. Fo...
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“What if it changes?”
How and why to use the second most powerful question known to software development
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I paid people to try and follow my README
Developers suck at writing documentation. We like to say RTFM but often there ain't no FM to R. At best we have a half-arsed collection of notes, some obsolete tips, and a link to a desolate forum full of people asking the same questions again and again. That's no way to treat our users. I naïvely believe there's a…
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How I got a medal from the Army for writing code
In 2005 my National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. My MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in the Army was 92A, which is basically a logistics and supplies...
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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours
NOTE: This post was originally written after JetBrains announced a controversial new licensing model. Many people spoke out about it. The ...
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Give away your code, but never your time
As software developers, I think we can agree that open-source 1 code has transformed the world . Its public nature tears down the walls that prevent some pieces of software from becoming the best they can be. The problem is that too many valuable projects stagnate, with burned-out leaders:
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Maximizing Developer Effectiveness
To be successful at digital transformation you need to optimize the key feedback loops in your software engineering organization
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Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
In Search of Silence Joel Spolsky is a well-respected figure in Silicon Valley. He created the popular Trello project manager software and is currently the ... Read more
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GitHub stars won't pay your rent (2020)
Going from OSS to SaaS. Mistakes made and lessons learned from launching Sizzy - The Browser For Developers.
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GitHub stars won’t pay your rent
Lessons learned and mistakes made while turning an open-source project into a profitable SaaS product.
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Some mistakes I made as a new manager
the trough of zero dopamine • managing the wrong amount • procrastinating on hard questions • indefinitely deferring maintenance • angsting instead of asking
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If you don’t finish then you’re just busy, not productive
One of the biggest realisations I’ve come to as part of my PhD, is how little people care about how I spend my time, they only care about what I am able to deliver. Yet in order to deliver, you need to finish. I was recently reading an article on this topic, and I think the advice can be best summed up as:
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One week of empathy training (2019)
I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one…
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Saving a Project and a Company
I often get the question what it is exactly that I do for a living and usually I can’t really talk about it due to non-disclosure agreements and possible fall-out but in this case I got permission to do a write-up of my most recent job.
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Developers mentoring other developers: practices I've seen work well
How does mentoring work? I asked this question ten years into my software engineering career when I joined Uber. Until then, I've never received or done mentoring, or at least never put this label on any activity I've done before. Uber, however, had an official mentoring program. Almost
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Why do so few people major in computer science?
The number of people who majored in computer science in the US isn't much higher in 2015 than in 2005. Why do so few students major in computer science?
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Exit interviews are a trap
It’s tempting to air your grievances at your exit interview. Don’t. There’s almost no upside to speaking up, and tremendous potential downside. Avoid exit interviews if you can. If you must go, be totally bland; say nothing negative.