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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 399 posts.
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Design Docs at Google
One of the key elements of Google's software engineering culture is the use of design docs for defining software designs. These are...
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An ex-Googler’s guide to dev tools
After leaving Google, many engineers miss the developer tools. Here's one ex-Googler's guide to navigating the dev tools landscape outside of Google, finding the ones that fill the gaps you're feeling, and introducing these to your new team.
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To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab
To the occupant(s) of E15-351 Re: About the window. Hi. My name is Ethan Zuckerman. From 2011-2020, I enjoyed working in this office. I led a research group at the Media Lab called the Center for Civic Media, and I taught here and in Comparative Media Studies and Writing. I resigned in the summer of… Read More »To the…
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Why do so many people want us back in the office?
After the sudden and miraculous shift to remote work – the office fightback has well and truly begun.
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Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews
I recently did 60+ technical interviews in 30 days. Here are some red flags I observed among the companies I spoke to.
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Sell Yourself, Sell Your Work
I've dealt with any number of technically brilliant people who produce outstanding work. The majority of them never bothered to write down their work and communicate it to others - report writing is too boring, uninteresting, and hard. And irrelevant. Or so they thought.
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Finishing a side project
I've struggled with some side projects and had success with others. In this post, I'll focus on the actions and adjustments that have worked for me.
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Is TDD Dead? (2014)
A series of conversations between Kent Beck, David Heinemeier Hansson, and Martin Fowler. We discuss Test-Driven Development (TDD) and its impact upon software design.
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95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things.
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Your statement is correct but misses the point
Let's assume that there is a discussion going on on the Internet about programming languages. One of the design points that come up is a gar...
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Habits of High-Functioning Teams
I often struggle to explain what it means to be part of a high-functioning software team. Sure, there are mountains of literature, and an entire genre of LinkedIn thought leadership that professes all kinds of guidelines and heuristics about what makes teams work, but in my experience, it’s hard to internalize these…
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MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
Archived MIT Admissions blog post 'A special announcement about SAT Subject Tests,' published March 20, 2020. Preserved for historical context; not maintained as current admissions policy.
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Things I Believe About Software Engineering
Inspired by Jan Stette's "Things I Believe" post, I decided to write down some of the more contentious beliefs I have about software engineering. I've selected some of my more extreme opinions here, so I expect reasonable people to disagree with me. That's ok.
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To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)
This is a story of how a software company was able to start a conversation with 8x more of their users by cutting the length of their emails by 90%. You could set up a test of this method in less than an hour. The Problem One of the most
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Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake
Executive Mandates shutdown the value discovery efforts of software teams
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Shitlist Driven Development (2016)
Recently the team I work with completed a project to allow Shopify to run in multiple datacenters . This project was a refactoring project in disguise. When you undertake large refactoring of a code-base with 100s of developers and 100,000s of lines of code, you can’t align by sending an email. The merge-conflicts a…
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Laid Off, Now What?
As an immigrant on an H1B, you have exactly 60 days to find a new job when you are laid-off. This is a very short window of time to explore and land any job, let alone a job that matches your skills and interests. I found myself in this situation along with many others when Uber announced layoffs earlier this year…
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So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering
1. Statistics / numerical analysis / data science is a lot harder than you, the reader of this blog, might think.
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Fire your bad customers
Know when it's time to break up with your customers.
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Why I left my tenured academic job
The news is out : I left France, I'm no longer a professor at EURECOM, I joined the Malware Research Team at CISCO Talos, and I moved to beautiful Vienna. Big change :-)
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How I operated as a staff engineer at Heroku
I was incredibly lucky to spend 5 amazing years at Heroku. By the end of my time, I was operating in a Staff capacity, although I’m honestly completely uncle...