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The most popular blog posts about career & management on Hacker News. 264 posts.
Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things. Not managing things. Not overseeing things. Building things. With our own hands, our own minds, our own code. But that identity is being challenged. AI coding assistants aren’t just changing how we write software - they’re…
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
I’m a big fan of “sharp tools”. These are tools that are powerful enough to be hugely helpful or harmful, depending on how they’re used. Most forms of direct…
Personal writing by Walid Dib, and a collection of games, apps, and companies I’ve built.
Porting a venerable library on vibes. What started as a quick WebPerl success spiraled into weeks of failed attempts, mangled ASCII diagrams, and a hard lesson about respecting the craft embedded in battle-tested code.
We can make our work exciting by chasing the every day tension.
My experience working across timezones for Americans
Computers are starting to have opinions on how our APIs should look like
Based on what I've learned from role models and mentors in Amazon
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
If you have arrived here, you should know this is an early draft containing mostly unedited stream-of-consciousness crap because I have found it difficult to structure this topic. My latest attempt is to split this information up into multiple separate articles.
Part 3 of my 12-year journey—what my first rocky job taught me about boundaries and value.
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective...
Don't Become a Scientist!
After 7 years at the same company, I'm moving on. But the practices that made my exit smooth aren't exit strategies—they're professional habits everyone should build, whether they're staying or leaving.
Here are some of the lessons I learned and how I grew as a leader and manager, as well as a bunch of behind-the-scenes photos.
<p>I have two important announcements:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully “for good”; if not, at least “for now”.</p> </li> <li> <p>As such, the content on this blog is going to shift, perhaps dramatically. I’m going to be writing about a broader range of…
Frustrated with AWS's complexity and cost risks, I switched to NearlyFreeSpeech for its prepaid model, ensuring financial control while keeping hosting simple and flexible.
The unspoken agreement that made Microsoft's lower pay tolerable has fundamentally broken.
There were many reasons why I left Oracle shortly after it acquired Sun, but first among them: I could not stomach the disdain that Oracle had for its own customers. Sun — for all of its (many!) other faults — loved its customers.
What signs to look for and how to increase productivity with all-round skillset
"So, is everyone losing their minds yet?" My ex-coworker asked me over yahoo messenger. He quit after getting enraged by new work policies that specifically targeted him. I looked up from my screen,
Let me get one thing out of the way immediately: LLMs are helpful. This isn't about whether LLMs can write code. They can. It's about why vibe coding might be the worst career investment you'll make.
Why and how you should write "without bugs"
In this day and age of cybersecurity professionals crying out for roles, we're still seeing companies complain that there is a skills shortage and a lack of talent. A quick scan through your LinkedIn feed will show this is absolute nonsense: there is a mass of experienced, capable talent out there l
I like to answer this frequent question by way of an example. An example of two companies. It goes something like this:
Simon reveals the subtle but powerful ways leaders set themselves apart from managers—and why those choices matter most in times of crisis.
My 12-year journey in software: how breaking computers taught me to build them.
