Big news! We’re looking for a new CEO for Stack Overflow. I’m stepping out of the day-to-day and up to the role of Chairman of the Board. Stack Overflow has been around for more than a decade. As I look back, it’s really amazing how far it has come. Only six months after we had launched Stack Overflow, my co-founder…
Hiring a great engineering manager is not the same as hiring a great engineer. After hundreds of interviews and many great hires, here’s what we’ve learned.
When I was 16 I was visited by a man who said he had come from the future. He had traveled twenty years back to 1999 to sit down with me and have a chat. We talked for an hour...
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.
When you’re already drained and depleted, it’s tough to figure out how to tackle burnout. Here are six science-backed strategies to bounce back.
When I was first named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, back in the early 2000’s, I was very proud. Really, I was. There was a cohort of smart, generous, and engaged engineers who were…
Today's major defense systems rely heavily on software-enabled capabilities. However, many defense programs acquiring new systems first determine the physical items to develop....
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:
(UPDATE: Mommy Saver Plus has been reinstated! This after I posted this on HN, tweeted at them, and sent a slightly-too-passive-aggressive ...
Learn about ownership of legacy software code.
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…
Discover how to create solutions using Lob’s framework for problem solving. Learn how to understand the problem, design an approach, and build a solution.
An extract from my book Just Fired. Still in progress...
