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The most popular blog posts about career & management on Hacker News. 217 posts.
[2026-03-16 Mon 03:09] Since this might be prone to misinterpretation as an excuse to treat people rudely, a clarification is warranted. Being direct is not rude, and this style of communication assumes an established …
Discover insightful advice for young people, emphasizing choices, confidence, and personal growth through lived experiences.
Every post I publish represents at least two things I’ve learned: the thing that prompted me to write the post, and the thing I learned in the course of writing…
An opinionated perspective on how to do important research that makes a difference (and sometimes win awards).
Ten years and one day ago, on August 9, 2016, I abruptly quit my job. I mark this occasion as the beginning of my indie software developer career. Happy anniversary to me and to my customers!
I got let go from my job - elimination of role, they're claiming - so I'm understandably a bit raw. So was my boss from what it looked like, though he still has a paycheck and benefits whereas I do not. Still, rawness is an excellent time to reflect on
For over 20 years, the meditative focus of programming has been one of the best parts of my job. Every week I’d spend countless hours in a flow state, which quiets the default mode network. The DMN is responsible for daydreaming/reflection but also rumination/worrying, so quieting it settles your mind. If I didn’t…
Yesterday I was looking at YC jobs to see if there were any interesting small startups hiring in my area (while I otherwise love my current fully-remote job,...
Ask a team what they shipped this year and you’ll get a list. Ask what they killed and the room goes quiet.
There is a popular idea that substantial wealth belongs mainly to entrepreneurs. We celebrate founders, investors and business owners so loudly that a career person can begin to believe that employ…
The engineer who says no all the time is a real archetype among senior and staff engineers. Their role is to slow things down, to block the development of…
Criticism can prevent mistakes. It can never create value. Only ideas can do that. The two are not equal contributions, and most meetings get this backwards.
I wrote a piece a long time ago about The Wolf. It's my personal take on the mythical 10x engineer, except that they aren't a myth. They exist. I've seen them.
I have been a director of engineering for a bit over three years now, and I still hear and read what I call the "old rules" repeated over and over: a director should not spend time coding, good work takes time, protect the team from the business, get consensus before
This is a memo I published internally to my team at Monarch. I’m sharing it more publicly in case it helps other software engineering teams that are managing the crazy times we’re exper…
I submitted Inkwell for iOS to Apple for review on April 21st. It has gone through numerous rejections, code changes, resubmissions, clarifications, one phone call, and one appeal to the review board, which I’m still waiting to hear back on.
I can hardly remember first experiencing ChatGPT. Its become so infused into my professional life, that going back to that first moment, or moments, is difficult. Instead a blur of a few moments. At some point, I realized it was a better Google. It was very similar to when Stackoverflow took off, and how Google search…
The year was 2015, halfway through my Computer Science bachelor’s degree. I had spent a few months contributing to open source and my confidence levels were high, so I thought: why not aim for a summer internship at Microsoft? Microsoft, of all places, might sound like a weird company to target in 2026. Back then…
Coffee in hand, I sit down in the Cave. Any Tuesday during the work week, a sip, and I parse the calendar. 1:1 — he's fine. Status meeting — listen. Staff me
One thing I've learned about paradoxes: often the answer to the riddle of "how can this one thing have such a contradictory set of features and effects?" is "it's not one thing, it's two things*."
Why AI won't augment human capabilities much.
I just attended my thirtieth college reunion, and there were some clear trends among my mid-life peers. First among them: grave concern for what AI means for our future and for the future of our (broadly young adult) kids.
There are a lot of challenges in the way QA and engineering work together. Many eng leaders think you shouldn't have QA. I dig in.
This week has been… eventful. And when I say eventful, I can say this has been the funniest pentest I have ever been on in my life. Let me tell you about it!
Why I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy.
A simple personal website and blog
Back in 2005, when I first joined the SUNY Buffalo CSE department, the department secretary was a wonderful lady named Joann, who was over 6...
The coding interview is dead, at least for my team at Anthropic. I've seen enough to know that it no longer provides signal. I have a spicily optimistic take: I think there's a huge opportunity for junior engineers.
focus • maintain a detailed plan for victory • run a fast OODA loop • overcommunicate • break off subprojects • have fun • bonus content: my project management starter kit
On how I progressively removed myself using Claude Code out of the development cycle - or did I?..
