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

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

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 😱

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

Brand helps your career in subtle ways.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 ☹️

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. 🤔

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

Engineers don't do the day to day work, they build assets the business can exploit for years to come. That's the magic

Say your boss gives you $1000 to grow your career. What do you do?

I used to think a senior engineer was someone who gets a project, understands the context, puts their head down, and gets it done. But no. A senior engineer does so much more than just write code and design systems.

All that once was new is old again