Today, Firebase has a large team with hundreds of engineers. Before the Google acquisition, however, we had a small team of just 24 exceptional people that I firmly believe was among the strongest of its kind in the world. A big part of that success was the way we interviewed software engineers. I’m sharing our…
I have burned out twice – once at 26, once at 30. Each time it took months to come back and feel like myself again. Burnout affects everyone differently; it’s only in hindsight that I’ve been able to understand how it affected me, and learned to recognize the signs.
Inefficient does not mean ineffective, and it is certainly not the same as lazy. You get things done – just not in the most effective way possible. You’re a bit sloppy, and use more energy. But don’t feel bad about it. There is real value in not being the best.
I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one…
One time I had a “great” idea for a telephone company. Service would be free—all the calls you want! But you’d have to listen to advertisements before each one. I asked my friend what he thought the idea was worth. His answer: “I don’t know. Telephone companies make a lot of money. Maybe $1 billion?” […]
My hope is that this post will help you reach your own goals in 2020. I attained several long-term professional goals in 2019 and I’d like to share the key practices for how I did that to help you along your way. We’ll return to Cloud, Security, and DevOps topics in the New Year. I
Apprenticeships beat schooling. Here's why they're a superior method for learning, and how you can apply this to the things you want to master.
Jeff Wilcox is a principal engineer at Microsoft working on Microsoft's engineering system. Jeff lives in Seattle.
Tips I use to avoid burnout:
In 2017 the company I worked for in Toronto got acquired by Yelp. The software engineers in my company (including myself) were asked to move to San Francisco. At the end of 2017 we moved, and I spent most of 2018 there. With the year coming to an end, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on my time there.
A good example of a simple looking, but hard to use correctly, API is one which takes two or more parameters of the same type. Let’s compare two function signatures:
Dear new developer, One of the most shocking things I learned when I started working in a professional capacity is that there are no adults in the room. That is not to denigrate everyone at your co…
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” — Shel Silverstein Have you ever felt like your dreams are bigger than you are? Like wanting to travel to exotic…
Technology, startups, programming, technical management and software architecture
It's better to have a hole in your team than an asshole
Dear new developer, I suggest that the first job you take be the one with the highest learning potential, not the highest earning potential. (This post contrasts the two, in the context of entrepre…
Inspired by the strangler figs in Australia, a strangler fig application gradually draws behavior out of its host legacy application
At my last company, KISSmetrics, I made a mistake that I truly believe lost me a billion dollar opportunity. It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s one of the main reasons I’m now obsessed with building products the right way. I wrote the painful details of exactly what happened so you don’t have to make the same…
An extract from my book Just Fired. Still in progress...
Discussion on Hacker News This article and its topic were the subject of fairly detailed discussion on this thread here on Hacker News. Perusing through the comments should be well worth your time,…
Analyzing compensation packages from 2019 new-graduate technology job offers.
Does anyone else get too absorbed in side projects that you forget about life
