Opinion

What's your next mountain?

Life is a hill-climbing algorithm

Software engineers, exercise, health, and productivity

Don't worry about the hype, just get some sun, some rest, and remember to hydrate.

The programming tutorial SEO industry is dead

20 years ago greybeards laughed at us for Googling. Now they laugh when we ask ChatGPT. But the leverage is 🚀

Reader question: Should you learn the latest hotness?

Great question. Common concern. *What if I get stuck in a technology that isn't hot??* Or worse, burn out re-learning every new thing 😱

Why other people's code looks weird

Are you an organizer or a searcher? What about your team?

Try to work for a brand

Brand helps your career in subtle ways.

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

Balancing serious sidehustles and full-time work

Erik, the author of Developer Hegemony and founder of Hit Subscribe, invited me to chat about balancing sidehustles and full-time work

Stop SHOUTING = 'shouting'

A hill I will die on 👉 global CONSTANT = 'constant' are bad

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.

Tech debt is a tool

If your house was on fire, would you mow the lawn first?

Complex vs. complicated

Would you rather work with a complex system or a complicated system? 🤔

Tips for a fulfilling tech career

When I dropped out of college to focus on freelancing back in 2012, I set 3 ground rules:

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?

Preventing RSI for programmers

I've been computering daily for 24 years, since I was 9, and managing RSI since high school. People often ask how it never gets bad. This is the article I always wish I had written.

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.

What matters in a senior engineer job interview

Degree matters if you have nothing better to show, consulting and BigTech backgrounds are negative, too many seniors can't code.

the trashcan metaphor

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?

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.

"silicon valley is like hollywood"

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

What's your code for?

Perfect code that doesn't solve the problem is useless. Perfect metrics that don't serve the user are a distraction.

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 senior engineers get nothing done

You start a new job and it's amazing. Code all day, clear objectives, easy guidelines, ship a bunch of features be a hero. Then something happens and suddenly you get nothing done. 🤔