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Great Hacker != Great Hire (2004)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paul Graham's recent essay Great Hackers . His sermon is well-written, and I assume it played very well when he preached it to the choir at OSCON .
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Interview like an asset, not a beggar
You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service. The true question behind every interview is "How can you help us?"
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How to prepare for losing your programming job
Another week has passed, and another 3 million people in the US have filed for unemployment. While the current situation hasn’t impacted programming jobs quite as much, it’s just a matter of time before the economic damage hits most everywhere. There will be layoffs, and plenty of them, and occasionally whole…
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Contributing Without Code
In the mid-90s I was an avid user of online conferencing system called CIX (Compulink Information eXchange). CIX was built using the CoSy Conferencing system from the University of Guelph, which has since been open sourced. Think of it like a dial-up or telnet-accessed forum or message board with a nerd-heavy…
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The Art of Debating for Software Developers
The keys to debate effectively as a software developer and therefore bringing value to yourself and your company.
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Consider getting a “DIY” degree online instead of a traditional CS major
As universities are switching to 100% remote teaching in the coming semester, many undergraduate students should strongly consider getting a “DIY” CS degree: take the same courses you would at your own school, but on any one of the online Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms, like Coursera or edX. Advantages…
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On Interviewing Programmers
I'll be looking for a new job soon, readers! And this has been cause for some reflection. In Emeryville, CA, there is an "international...
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The Strength of Being Misunderstood
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question. Almost everyone cares what...
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The lazy way to being outstanding: go after hard things
Doing the hard things is both the best thing for the company, for you and counterintuitively – your lifestyle.
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Things the most successful people I know struggle with to be happy
“You wouldn’t want to be me.” is the line Elon Musk tells Joe Rogan about his life. Many of us see the successes and the outward experiences people produce and think up. Yet, few of us get to see what it’s like on the inside of that person’s body or day to day life. It […]
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What is a Product Roadmap?
and how do you use it?
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Should you Work Hard? (2019)
Software engineer, etc etc
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A Developer Culture Test
See a shorter, and updated version of this test here: The Pragmatic Engineer Test: 12 Questions on Engineering Culture [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pragmatic-engineer-test/]. I've talked with dozens of software developers about what they like and dislike about their workplace - team, and company …
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Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage
My heart was racing. My palms sweating. I was going to be fired.\nPerformance reviews had just ended, and it was time to meet my manager and be told my results. Except I knew what it would say. How else do you rate a programmer who doesn’t code?
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The Un-American Rule on VC's Legal Fees
Legal Fees: Not a Hill to Die On, But Some Parity Would be Nice
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A Vacancy Has Been Detected (2019)
College was a superlative time in my life. I made lifelong friends, had many opportunities, and even started a little business.
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The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers
The US is probably going into recession - here's why I'm talking about it now, what it could look like, what Devs can do to prepare, and why it's not the End of the World.
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Remote Work: Hiring, recruiting, and essential tools
This is the first part of a two part masterclass on remote work, now live here: 01:46 Meet Shogun, the e-commerce page builder 02:58 They started fully remote as a side project that became...
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It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
There is often pressure inside Software development for Software developers to code outside of work hours. Whether you are a Python, Ruby, Java, or any other developer... There is absolutely no need to code outside of work if you don't want too. Coding is considered a passion for some, but others they don't think this…
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What happened to all the non-programmers? (2015)
As I looked around and realized for the hundredth time that I was surrounded by people exactly like me, something inside me snapped. I downloaded the latest American Community Survey microdata, fired up R and started calculating feverishly.
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Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for your needs.
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Managing Technical Quality in a Codebase
If there’s one thing that engineers, engineering managers, and technology executives are likely to agree on, it’s that there’s a crisis of technical quality. One diagnosis and cure is easy to identify: our engineers aren’t prioritizing quality, and we need to hire better engineers or retrain the ones we have. Of…
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Several grumpy opinions about remote work at Tailscale
As a "fully remote work" company, we had to make some choices about the technologies we use to work together and stay in touch. We decided...
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