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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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Wasting time in tech interviews
TL;DR This is me ranting about crappy tech interview experiences
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Why I feel like a fraud
Most high-performing people experience Impostor Syndrome. I did too. When you understand the cause, you can defeat it.
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How to present to executives (2021)
Have you presented to company executives about a key engineering initiative, walking into the room excited and leaving defeated? Maybe you only made it to your second slide before unrelated questions derailed the discussion. Maybe you worked through your entire presentation only to have folks say, “Great job,” and…
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Meeting everyone on a new team
Strategic technology leader
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People suck at technical interviews (2014)
Most technical interviews test the wrong things: memorized syntax, whiteboard coding, brand-name employers. Instead, hire for learning ability, intellectual honesty, clear communication, and basic decency. "Team fit" is bias in disguise. Homogeneity means you're hiring wrong. Good hiring is hard and slow, but worth it.
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The Machine Learning Job Market
I was on the job market recently, open to suggestions on what I should do next. I'm deeply thankful to all those who reached out and pitched their companies, and also to people who shared their wisdom of how they wanted to navigate their own careers.
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Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
I've had this blog post in one form or another of draft for several years now. I hesitated to complete it, in part because at the best of times cultural observations can easily be misinterpreted and also in part because of the role I had in working with many
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Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice
When I ask people at trendy big tech companies why algorithms quizzes are mandatory, the most common answer I get is something like "we have so much scale, we can't afford to have someone accidentally write an O(n^2) algorithm and bring the site down" 1 . One thing I find funny about this is, even though a decent…
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“Laws” of software estimation for complex work (2021)
Wrong estimates aren’t your fault, but they are definitely your problem
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The future of software engineering is SRE
When code gets cheap operational excellence wins. Anyone can build a greenfield demo, but it takes engineering to run a service.
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Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs
Since July 2005, when Django was open-sourced , Jacob Kaplan-Moss and I have been the two Benevolent Dictators For Life (BDFLs) of the project. Today we’re both retiring from our formal BDFL roles, given that (1) we don’t have the time for it that we once had and (2) Django is in great shape with a vibrant community…
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The war on gifted education
Why the landslide loss for San Francisco's school board is a victory for American meritocracy
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Steve Ballmer's incorrect binary search interview question
In this short video Steve Ballmer talks about a puzzle question he would ask candidates interviewing at Microsoft. Solving it is based on b...
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I Worked for a Criminal Organization
That time I was employed by a criminal organization I was employed by Micfo for several months, I quickly determined that they were shady and invovled in illegal practices. I did not quit because of that, I quit because I felt unwanted, by HR and Management. Later they would ask me to come back. This is the full…
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Things I've learned at Google so far
Well I've been an employee at Google for about a month. So this seems like as good a place to reflect for a moment. The first thing that I'...
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How to Become a Data Engineer in 2021
The demand for data engineers is growing rapidly. According to hired.com, the demand has increased by 45% in 2019. The median salary for Data Engineers in SF Bay Area is around $160k. So the question…
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I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode
This is what happens when you ban yourself from coding
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Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015)
The world is full of gatekeepers who think they have veto rights. Don’t believe them. Pitbull got it right when he said "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice."
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Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects
Programs are more complicated than projects which are more complicated than milestones. Instead of projects, focus on milestonesMost engineering organizations focus on delivering projects. You can get better results by focusing on milestones instead.
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Why Indie Developers Go Insane
We all have our little mantras we use to get through the day. After I started writing games in 1994 and went full-time in 1995, I soon c...
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Goodbye Google
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
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Why you should have a side project
I often advocate people surrounding me to build their own side projects. I believe they can fulfill you in so many ways: for your career, your relationships, or your independence. Buffer, the company I currently work for, was itself a side project. I’ve built myself multiple side projects. The major ones being…