This post will walk you through an exercise in diving into someone else's code. The goal will be to make an arbitrary change to the code of the Spyder Python IDE , a project I have never touched before in my life, and learn just enough about it to accomplish what I want without getting bogged down. You will learn how…
Two years ago I trained for my private pilot license over the course of nine months. Besides be...
Where are you in your company's layoff list? Every company has one, even if it's just a vague idea in the mind of the CEO. By looking a...
Spring has sprung, and the smell of fresh YC applications is in the air. It’s that special time that happens twice a year where thousands…
XOScript is a simple server-side scripting language.
I was first introduced to start-ups as a career choice during my post-uni “I’m not getting a city job” phase. Although that’s still going…
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
(Note: this is the second part of this story. You can read the first part here.) Despite the rejection from 23AndMe, I kept pushing. I applied to all the big hiring websites. Hired rejected me from...
Hi, I am Valerie Aurora, systems archictecture consultant, writer, and cat appreciator. At Bow Shock Systems , I solve difficult systems problems in networking, file systems, and operating systems. In 2023 I moved permanently to Amsterdam after 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Whenever I write about a topic that upsets me, I calm myself by illustrating it with royalty-free, reassuring stock photos. "People are...
Our headquarters in Chicago. I’m often asked about the benefits we offer at Basecamp. Potential employees are obviously curious, but most of the questions I get are from fellow business owners…
Photo by Daderot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons When I was first appointed as the director of the MIT Media...
We have a lot of new additions to the team to announce. Tim Brady is joining YC as a Partner. Previously, he was a Partner at ImagineK12. Tim was Yahoo’s first employee and spent 8 years as the company’s Chief Product Officer. Tim was also the CEO of QuestBridge, an educational startup that helps bright low-income…
Content note for discussion of abuse and sexual violence. In the last couple of weeks, three respected members of the computer security and privacy tech communities have come forward under their ow…
Seven weeks ago, I published a blog post saying that Jacob Appelbaum had left the Tor Project,...
When it comes to medium to large teams it is quite common the presence of a full-time tech lead responsible for important leadership activities such as:
It has been a while that I have been contacted by a recruiter, and the last few ones were fairly decent conversations, where they made an effort to research me first, and even if they did not get everything right, they still listened, and we had a productive talk. But four days ago, I had another recruiter reach out…
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers into signing offers.
The technology behind Canva. We're sharing how we solve complex engineering problems to empower everyone in the world to design.
It was seven years ago today when everybody was getting excited about Microsoft’s bombastic announcement of Hailstorm, promising that “Hailstorm makes the technology in your life work t…
You’ve just released your latest photo-organizing software. Through some mechanism which will be left as an exercise to the reader, you’ve managed to actually let people know about it. …
Business is noisy. Business is full of people worrying loudly about projects, processes, and other people. These people have opinions, and they share them all
