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Consider working on genomics
Genomics needs more talented software engineers—here's why you should consider joining the field.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 467 posts.
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Don’t point out something wrong immediately
This is not a post on a technical topic, but rather on a common pitfall for engineers – we like to point out something wrong the moment we see it. Understandably, we are very good at it. We are basically trained for it. When it comes to code reviews, or design reviews for complicated distributed system protocols, we…
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The painfully shy developer's guide to networking for a better job (2017)
Sam Julien is the Director of Product at CopilotKit, building open-source infrastructure for AI agents and generative UI. He writes about product strategy, developer experience, and the practical microskills that help you grow as a builder and leader.
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Common tech jobs described as cabals of Mesoamerican wizards
AWM #91: I wanted to clarify the tech work landscape for myself and instead I wrote this (??) 🪞
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Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)
Most career ladders define a single, uniform set of expectations for Staff Engineers. These career ladders attempt to identify the commonalities across many folks performing similar roles in their organization, but in the end these ladders are a tool that apply better against populations than people. In the case of…
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We will never have enough software developers (2020)
Developers are dropping out of the profession in large numbers despite efforts to grow the number of computer science graduates and software engineers.
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Hard to work with
Managing teams has taught me a lot about my own behaviors and motivations. For example, I overworked for a long time. This left me continually teetering on the brink of burnout, and I had no energy left to absorb the typical sorts of organizational changes that happen at any company. Despite doing good work, I handled…
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Watching an acquirer ruin your company
What happens on the other side of the acquisition doesn't get much startup press
101
From Burned Out Tech CEO to Amazon Warehouse Associate
After a 23-year career at Microsoft, Facebook, and a Gates Foundation nonprofit, Philip Su burned out and found unexpected recovery working as an Amazon warehouse associate.
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Being swamped is normal and not impressive
Being swamped — overwhelmed by stuff to do — is the default state of being within a startup. There's always more to do than time to do it, and the list keeps growing. Everyone else working at every other startup feels this too. Even if it doesn't look that way
103
Why not hire part-time developers?
Very few companies even consider this option, and that's a mistake
104
At SpaceX, work was taken away from me in case I “might retire or die.”
I was a “hardcore” Principal Engineer at SpaceX, achieving performance goals and working longer hours than most of my colleagues—yet I saw my work roles gradually transferred to younger engineers who fit the company’s “frat bro” mold.By John Johnson, former Principal Engineer at SpaceXI have watched the recent news…
105
Wait vs. Interrupt Culture
At this past weekend's CFAR Workshop (about which, by the way, I plan to have another post soon with less whining and more serious discussion), someone mentioned that they were uncomfortable with pauses in conversation, and that got me thinking about different conversational styles.
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No one cared about my spreadsheets
The most painful part of writing The Case Against Education was calculating the return to education. I spent fifteen months working on the spreadsheets. I came up with the baseline case, did scores of “variations on a theme,” noticed a small mistake or blind alley, then started over. Several programmer friends advised…
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I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
Hello, everyone. I’m going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I’ve been writing here for more than 24 years, nearly half my life —
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I don’t believe in sprints
Sorry, I have opinions again.
109
Chief scientist of major corporation can’t handle criticism of the work he hypes
A correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous points us to this article in Technology Review , “Why Meta’s latest large language model survived only three days online. Galactica was supposed to help scientists. Instead, it mindlessly spat out biased and incorrect nonsense.” Here’s the story:
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I won an award from the FSF for my contributions to Emacs
In this video I thank the Free Software Foundation for the award and stress the importance of the community.
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Interview questions to ask your interviewer
An interview should be a two-way street. Here are some questions you can ask the company during a software engineering interview.
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I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)
We were magicians and the web was our magic
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How to advertise to developers: deep dive into paid developer marketing
Jun 02, 2024 - I dive into best practices, targeting, creatives, landing pages, channels, and examples from the best developer-focused companies.
115
Your competitor wrote the RFP you're bidding on
I think it was due to overwhelming boredom with the RFP process that I once partnered with my sales leader to say Yes to every single requirement on every RFP bid during the summer of 2020. We called it The Summer of Yes.
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Toxic Productivity
Create forms and surveys, take payments, automate workflows and send documents for signing, all from one easy, doc‑style form builder FOR FREE
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How to drive away your best engineers
Tenures are at an all-time low in the software industry.
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Senior engineers are living in the future
I magine for a moment that, by some quirk of the universe, you are sharing your workspace with a time traveller. Specifically, yourself from 1 year in the future. How will you react to your new co-worker? 1 [ 1 If you find this exercise difficult, try instead imagining how your past self of a year ago would react to…
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I have complicated feelings about TDD
They're not all good and not all bad
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The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)
This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.