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In a high-stress work environment, prioritize relationships
How high is the stress I am talking about? You are commuting all you think is that you might snap today, you might quit today. That is what I am calling a hi...
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Strengths Are Your Weaknesses
The qualities you value most in engineers are also creating your biggest problems. Here’s how to handle this paradox.
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The first time I was almost fired from Apple
I was hired on at Apple in October of 1995. This was what I refer to as Apple’s circling the drain period. Maybe you remember all the doomsaying — speculation that Apple was going to be shuttering soon. It’s a little odd perhaps then that they were hiring at all but apparently Apple reasoned that they nonetheless…
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What makes a good engineer also makes a good engineering organization (2024)
The people who create software generally refer to themselves as software engineers, and yet if they graduate from university, it is typically with a degree in computer science. That has always felt a little strange to me, because science and engineering are two pretty different disciplines – yet ...
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Knowing where your engineer salary comes from
How tech companies make money and why it's important
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I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself
After joining Mintlify (which acquired my previous company), I finally fixed a search bug that had bothered me for over a year as a user - the debounced search queries weren't being aborted, causing race conditions and poaor search quality. By adding an AbortController to ensure only the most recent search query…
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Boring is good
The initial, feverish enthusiasm for large language models (LLMs) is beginning to cool, and for good reason. It’s time to trade the out-of-control hype for a more pragmatic, even “boring,” approach. A recent MIT report shows that 95% of companies implementing this technology have yet to see a positive outcome. It’s…
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Getting things “done” in large tech companies
What does it mean to get things done? In the abstract, you can complete a mathematical proof or a problem set, but the real world is much fuzzier. Suppose I…
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The Junior Hiring Crisis
AI isn’t replacing everyone. It’s removing the apprenticeship ladder. Here’s what that means for students, early-career professionals, and the tech industry’s future.
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The benefits of learning in public
Learning in public helps me grow as an engineer and seems to benefit others too. Here's why I should do more.
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NIH is cheaper than the wrong dependency
Frivilous dependencies are the enemy of maintainability.
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Why I code as a CTO
Assembled CTO John Wang on why coding makes him a better leader—and how AI tools are redefining what it means to build at scale.
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All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen Let me tell you something that will happen after you become a manager: you’re going to mess u…
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Career Advice in 2025
Yesterday, the tj-actions repository, a popular tool used with Github Actions was compromised (for more background read one of these two articles). Watching the infrastructure and security engineering teams at Carta respond, it highlighted to me just how much LLMs can’t meaningfully replace many essential roles of…
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Working on complex systems: What I learned working at Google
This is why recognizing whether a system is complicated or complex is so important: it shapes how we should approach problem-solving.
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Software engineers should be a little bit cynical
A lot of my readers call me a cynic when I say things like “you should do things that make your manager happy” or “big tech companies get to decide what…
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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?
How can we do better interviews in the age of AI
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Becoming a compiler engineer
I got a job!
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The Evolution of SRE at Google
Billions of people around the world use Google’s products every day, and they count on those products to work reliably. Behind the scenes, Google’s services have increased dramatically in scale over the last 25 years — and failures have become rarer even as the scale has grown. Google’s SRE team has pioneered methods…
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Laid off for the first time in my career, and twice in one year
Laid Off for the First Time In My Career, and Twice In One Year - Dillon Shook
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On doing hard things
I've never been known for my coordination, balance, or cardiovascular enthusiasm. In team sports, I was invariably the last one picked – probably only becaus...
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I failed a take-home assignment from Kagi Search
I sent my CV for a role at Kagi Search, the description of the role can be found here:
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Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
A Bed Assembly Drama
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I just want to code (2023)
I have an angel and a devil sitting atop each shoulder. The angel says, "Just code for fun! What you make can be just for your enjoyment and that's --" the devil interjects, "not enough to get ahead, loser. If you're not coding your next startup then how're you gunna get rich? Coding for fun? Pfft, sounds like the…
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Developer Philosophy
Amazing as it may seem after all these years, there are still junior developers in the world. A few weeks ago at work we had a talk where senior developers (including me) were invited to spend around five minutes each talking about our personal software development philosophies....
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Code like a surgeon
A lot of people say AI will make us all “managers” or “editors”…but I think this is a dangerously incomplete view!
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We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed bugs
How quarterly fixit weeks help teams tackle small annoyances that never bubble up to the priority list.
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When is it better to think without words?
Non-verbal, blurry thinking is faster and can search in a broader way, but it is more error-prone than verbal thought.
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When the job search becomes impossible
I have the good fortune to have a job right now, but many of my friends are out of work. Most have been searching for a while. Some are encountering a problem that has my full sympathy, something I’ve experienced myself at various times. I’m not sure I can solve it, but maybe I can help put words to what some are…