Mindset

Try to work for a brand

Brand helps your career in subtle ways.

The quickest way to fail a tech interview

No it's not a wrong answer or floundering with algorithms. Not even being nervous or shy or having a language barrier. Culture fit is the least of your worries if you make this mistake.

A mental framework that helps you code faster

What slows you down the most when you're coding or doing software engineering? I think it's how fast you make decisions

Small choices can wreck your codebase

wanna see the strangest looping construct I've found in production code?

What to expect in senior level interviews

Interviews are terrible. Stressful, time-intensive, loosely correlated with on the job performance. They're the least terrible way we have to hire.

Getting from junior to senior

The difference in salary between a junior and senior engineer can be orders of magnitude. Many multiples at least. But what's the difference in mindset that gets you there?

How defensive coding leads to bloat

Defensive coding is an important lesson and over time and engineers it leads to massive bloat, if you're not careful.

Your job as an engineer is to make yourself unnecessary

Meetings – a senior engineer's secret weapon

Boo meetings, yay code, right? There comes a time in your career when coding is no longer your highest impact contribution. Might even be holding you back. 🙊

How to rewrite your app while growing to a $100,000,000 series B

When you're in a company desperately trying to meet demand, *ship*. You'll have money, time, and professionals to fix code later. Even if you start with jQuery.

A great engineer knows their tools

Earlier in my career when I thought I was god's gift to engineering but wasn't, I failed one of those stupid interview questions that "have nothing to do with the work". It was a great question.

How to ask for help

what makes a senior engineer stand out in an interview? No it's not the amount of side projects or their leetcoding speed. It's knowing how and when to ask for help.

Reader question: "When do you fix tech debt?"

Long time reader Phil asks when do you fix the tech debt you used to ship faster. Heroic efforts don't work. The real answer is "always" – a mindset of gardening.

Pay yourself first

Profit is not what's left after expenses, expenses are what's left after profit.

Your career needs a vision

In his book, The Art of Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming says the key to a great career is vision. What does that really look like?

Why a coding AI like Github Copilot won't take your job

It might. What's your job? If you're in the *"write code to exact specifications"* business ... now's a good time to start leveling up. The AI's not ready yet.

How to own projects like a senior engineer

The best skill you can learn is ownership. The second best is to let go.

Do important work

Next time you finish a project, ask yourself: *"Might this work be important?"*. Add the polish.

Flow good for programming, not engineering

Friend, how good are you at your best? ... Nobody cares. How good are you at your average? What about your worst?

Your luck & opportunity surface area

Here's a comment that resonated yesterday and you might like. It's about how to maximize the opportunity in your work.

How do you know if serverless fits your project?

The hallmark of a true expert is understanding about the pros and cons of your technical decisions.

Can you code faster?

What slows you down most while coding? It's not lack of skill. It's not lack of ideas. It's uncertainty. Fear.

The Magic Function principle

Write functions, mostly magic.

"silicon valley is like hollywood"

and I don't mean Silicon Valley the place, I mean Silicon Valley the concept.

You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service

You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service. The true question behind every interview is "How can you help us?"

How I use delegation to get more done

Productivity porn shows you how to pack more into your day. Productivity porn is wrong my friend. You need to remove things to grow.

Should you take a pay cut for equity

Would you take some % of your salary in bitcoin? The joke is that compared to pre-IPO equity, bitcoin is predictable and has a known value.

Computer science is not software engineering

Wow, college was such a waste of time ... when did you ever invert a binary tree outside of an interview? Honestly I never inverted a binary tree in college either ☹️

Why Understanding beats Knowledge

Understanding beats knowledge every day. To have a strong career, learn to understand, not just to know.