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The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers
System administration is in a sad state. It in a mess.
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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You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?
It might seem a reasonable question, but it makes some terrible assumptions: lines of code = effort lines of code = value all lines of c...
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MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions
DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diver…
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Being ambitious and being a dad
When I was going through YC, I didn’t mention my seven month old daughter to anyone. Now a few years later I have two kids, a dog and a very packed schedule. My kids are the best thing in my life. For years, my work was my life. Now my life competes with my work.
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Things that helped me get out of the AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome
Curing Your AI 10x Engineer Imposter Syndrome
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From Node to Ruby on Rails
I learned to code in the Javascript stack [1] and am building a Javascript based product [2]. I never questioned this stack: many companies default to it, JS everywhere seems good, and the community is big. But for my new side project I decided to try Rails because despite some...
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How I make a living working on SerenityOS
This post describes in detail how I support myself while working on the SerenityOS project.
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Return to Office Is Bullshit and Everyone Knows It
I quit my job towards the end of last month. When I started this blog, I told myself, “Don’t talk about work.” Since my employment is in the rear view mirror, I’m going to b…
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How I got here
My name is Preston Thorpe, I'm 31 years old and I've spent just under 10 years of my life in Prison (all for non-violent drug crimes.) I am currently incarcerated at Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine. More importantly, far more importantly, I am a software developer, open source maintainer…
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Burning out and quitting
I'm burnt out. If you're reading this, there's a strong chance you're burnt out too. We're about to have, uh, a moment, so brace yourself.
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Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
2 weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
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I almost got hacked by a 'job interview'
I was 30 seconds away from running malware, Here's how a sophisticated scam operation almost got me, and why every developer needs to read this.
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Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
We reward complexity and ignore simplicity. In interviews, design reviews, and promotions. Here’s how to fix it.
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I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?
This is the story of how I found what I believe to be scientific misconduct and what happened when I reported it. Science is supposed to b...
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How to Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...
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The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
It’s been a while since I was on the receiving end of a software engineering interview. But I still remember my favorite interview question. It was at MemSQL circa 2013. (They haven’t even kept their name, so I assume they’re not still relying on this specific interview question. I don’t feel bad for revealing it…
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On Being a Principal Engineer
The manager’s pathI bought and read The Manager’s Path by the awesome Camille Fournier when it first came out. At the time, I was a senior Database Engineer aspiring to become a principal engineer ...
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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters
Thanks to a recruiting process that left a bad taste in my mouth, I refuse to accept any further interviews from large tech companies unless they are on my terms.
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Domain expertise has always been the real moat
The hard part of writing software has never been the writing. It was building a working model of the domain in your head first. Before you could ship a payroll…
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Changes at Basecamp
At Basecamp, we treat our company as a product. It's not a rigid thing that exists, it's a flexible, malleable idea that evolves. We aren't stuck with what we have, we can create what we want. Just as we improve products through iteration, we iterate on our company too. Recently, we've made some internal company…
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I'm not a Woman in Tech
My name is Maria. I happily identify as female. I work as an Agile Coach for a tech company in Cambridge, UK. I am not a woman in tech. I grew up in Pjedsted, a village in Denmark, with my mum and …
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How to be a -10x Engineer
To become a -10x engineer, simply waste 400 engineering hours per week. Combine the following strategies:
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Software development topics I've changed my mind on
Software development topics I've changed my mind on over the course of a decade
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Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code
I’ve always been pretty good at math. Not trigonometry, or arithmetic, or whatever people are usually thinking of when they’re like, “Oh, you must be smart! I hate math!” But, combinatorics and gra…
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Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
Westbrook spent 35 years in a codebase that allegedly powers some sort of medical software somewhere. During his tenure, he contributed hundreds of lines of code to his projects.