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When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
On August 31, 2015, I started a Ph.D. in cryptography at TU Eindhoven, working with Tanja Lange and Dan Bernstein. On December 2, 2016, I…
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Leaving Apple Inc
I have made the personal decision to leave my job at Apple to further my personal growth and technical skills.
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Assume positive intent
Chris could have become my worst nightmare.
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Mathematicians becoming data scientists
I was talking the other day with a former student at UW, Sarah Rich, who’s done degrees in both math and CS and then went off to Twitter. I asked her: so what would you say to a math Ph.D. …
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My Interview at Uber
A little less than a year ago I had the “pleasure” to interview at Uber. I didn’t know much about the company at the time, other than that they were big. I was looking for work already and Uber’s…
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Things I've learned transitioning from engineer to engineering manager
A couple of months ago I moved from a senior engineer position to being an engineering manager on a medium sized team. I've found this role change come with a steep learning curve: many things that mattered when I was an individual contributor - like writing good code and teaching
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Stock options are complicated
Most employees at startups get some of their pay in stock options. This is often framed to the employee as “you get x percentage of equity in the company.” Unfortunately, stock options are a lot more complex than true equity.
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Questions to ask in interviews
As my RC batch draws to a close, I’m interviewing once again. In the vein of Julia Evans’ great blog post, “Questions I’m asking in interviews” , here’s a set of questions to ask your recruiter, interviewers, and/or prospective manager.
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Don’t Quit When It Gets Hard
Read this if you're thinking about quitting. I personally think about quitting three or four times a month. I've found a way to NOT quit.
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The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer
Being involved in open source software is rewarding, yeah? You start off contributing to your favorite project, and it feels so heartwarming when that project’s maintainers recognize your effort. Then a few years later you somehow end up responsible for that project, and maybe some satellite projects, and people are…
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Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week
Last week, a debate flared up on twitter on working hours in academia and there was the claim that it is irrational to work over 40 hours as output actually goes down. I do not believe this claim. …
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My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies
‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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What I Learned Managing Site Reliability for Some of the Busiest Gambling Sites
tl;dr For several years I managed the 3rd line site reliability operation for many of the world’s busiest gambling sites, working for a little-known company that built and ran the core backen…
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How Do You Know a Developer Is Doing a Good Job?
There are many ways to evaluate a developer. Should we use quantitative metrics or stick to qualitative ones?
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Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer
You should hire an old programmer. It’s true! Sure.. older programmers are not going to work as many hours as someone fresh out of college. They have kids and spouses and mortgages and softball games to attend. They won't hang out at the office playing Xbox and ping-pong all night. They will not work 80 hour weeks and…
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If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers
(The inspiration for this post came from here: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/welcome-to-the-software-interview-ee673bc5ef6)
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Google: My interview experience
Gil Vegliach's blog
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Programmer Competency Matrix (2016)
A matrix for rating programmers on computer science, software engineering, programming, security, infrastructure, data, AI-assisted development, experience and knowledge, from 2ⁿ to log(n).
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Confession of a so-called AI expert
[Twitter thread, Hacker News discussion, Le Monde]