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Career & Management
The most popular blog posts about career & management on Hacker News. 256 posts.
"Attrition is a group statistic. It doesn't apply to me."
10 years ago I sat down with my brother. He was about to attend a high attrition special forces course. The vast majority of candidates drop out. Aren't you concerned about the failure rate? ...
Why I left news
I get asked two questions several times a week, and I brush off both with a verbal swat. One — because I’m in my late 20s, I suppose – is when are you getting married? And the other, because …
If Only I Knew This Shit in College
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
Average Income per Programming Language
Update 8/21: I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about issues with these rankings from comments, and have tried to address some of them here. The data there has been updated to include confidence…
Two years after quitting my job: 2013 in review
If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years, you know the journey I’ve gone through: In October 2011 I left a startup job (making $60,000/year) to freelance and build and sell products. 2012 was an amazing year where I built this blog, wrote two books, and doubled my income. So what happened in […]
Don’t email me
Why I insist on people to keep issues on the mailing list(s) A recent twitter discussion I had with Andrei Neculau contributed to his blog post on this subject, basically arguing that I'm wrong but with many words and explanations. It triggered me to write up my primary reasons for why I strongly object to … Continue…
Public speaking for introverts
A few days before I have to talk in front a lot of people I get this queasy feeling in my stomach that won’t go away. I don’t want to eat. I just want to c
What is a Full Stack developer? (2012)
Is it reasonable to expect mere mortals to have mastery over every facet of the development stack? Probably not, but Facebook can ask for it. I was told at OSCON by a Facebook employee that they only hire 'Full Stack' developers. Well, what does that mean? To me, a Full Stack Developer is someone with
Letter to a young programmer
Dear (insert name here), I heard you enjoy a certain programming language named Python. Programming is a wonderful activity. I am a little...
Hire talent, not five years with Java
Too often we see job requirements for development positions with a long series of bullet points: General Tech X everyone has heard about, 5 years Specific Tech Y that came out last year, 3 years Sp…