Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,748 posts.
Since starting out as an independent contractor, I’ve always felt a tension between being a generalist software engineer, yet having to market myself as a specialist. I’ve been wanting to write about it for years and even have kept some notes for that purpose. Recently I came across an article by Ben Collins-Sussman…
Inspired by a two minute video about how the Navy Seals does it
There are lots of lists around these days So in the interests of balance I think it is time for some anti-lists Here is my 7 things I am glad I did
There are plenty of jobs, but finding a place where you're happy is as hard as ever.
Revise and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Exactly 15 years ago on November 9th, 2009, I got my first MacBook and started learning how to build apps. I was fascinated with the idea that you can build something that other people will find useful and enjoy using. I also heard about those "indie developers" on Twitter who
Are our most valuable qualities being exploited at work? How our strengths get twisted into forming bad habits that just might kill us.
Sometimes an insignificant interaction, or an excerpt from a book, is capable of provoking a life-changing insight. It might be an obvious lesson, but it feels epiphanic because it fits differently into my understanding of things. For instance…
Giving good career advice is hard. Maybe it’s because careers can look more alike than they really are. Two people can have the same title but what helps one...
My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse. EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging…
Who will take over for us if we don't train the next generation to replace us? A critique of craft, AI, and the legacy of human expertise.
I shared this internally at Meta in response to a deluge of clout-chasing posts celebrating PMs landing prod diffs. The response was positive and the message generalizes, so here we are on the open www. PMs shouldn’t waste time landing … Continue reading →
In early 2025, I started seeing people turn off their brain as they use LLMs 1 . They would have an LLM take an action (summarize text, write some code, etc.), and just assume that it worked 2 . This generally didn't work in early 2025 and the result was often quite silly.
Something that’s painfully understudied is how experts are more efficient than novices while achieving better results.
And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry’s art to notice that tiny note…
Background: I have worked with lots of companies as security consultant through bug bounties either I asked them if they need my service or they approached. I’m a big fan of Paul’s essa…
Twitter is changing CEOs once again; what if the company changed its business model from ads to subscriptions?
To be an effective senior engineer, you need to convince others to help you execute.
