Personal

swizec.com is now on TimberJS, a new React framework

swizec.com is 20 years old and has gone through many rewrites. Here's the latest

2025 Year in Review

I called it a year in review but it's so much more.

Are you playing games you want to win?

As we enter the funny week-without-time between Christmas and New Year, it's a great time to reflect. Here's a framework I like to use.

Most history is fake myth building

Regimes come and go but the people stay. Observations from living through a socialism->capitalism transition

Quick update on Scaling Fast, my next book

Your goal is not to write a book, it's to change how your reader thinks

10 years in America

10 years ago yesterday I moved to America with 1.5 suitcases, ~2k in the bank, a place to crash, and a freelancing client lined up. A few thoughts.

What's your next mountain?

Life is a hill-climbing algorithm

Don't judge tech just because you're old

Your favorite way of doing things may just be an expression of tech limitations at the time

It made me $500k but I think content is a bad business

Why I didn't become a full-time creator/educator

Some personal news

When you see a unicorn, you gotta hop on

I'm a different engineer than I was 3 years ago

A reflection on engineering through The Hockeystick

Hard work doesn’t scale

Overtraining won't always get you to the finish line faster. Growth comes in cycles - rest, push hard, recover. Less can be more when it comes to achieving your goals

Halfway there

Realizing I'm statistically halfway through life at 36. Time is the one thing you can't get more of

2274 miles in 9 days on a cafe racer

These pics are epic and you should see them

I went to "AI Woodstock" and wow

"AI Woodstock" was a HuggingFace meetup showcasing groundbreaking AI projects and innovations. Here are some of my favs.

2022 year in review

The days are long, but the weeks are short. In the wash of our daily grind, you lose sight of what a year can bring. Or a decade! I like to take a moment around the new year to reflect and make plans

Getting off twitter, an experiment

ole Musky bought Twitter and the tech community threw a collective shitfit. The atmosphere of ragequitting, hand wringing, and aloof defiance gave me time to reflect: Why am *I* here?

On becoming tech lead

A few weeks ago I made tech lead, a type of staff engineer. Here are my thoughts on what that means, how it happened, and why you'd want such a thing.

I stopped using Google Analytics after 15 years

swizec.com has been around since 2005. For 15 of those years, it's been running Google Analytics to give me a sense of "Is anyone out there?". No more.

You do have time to build it twice

My talk from React Summit is now online, if you're curious. It's about code rewrites in the context of hyper growth startups. The ultimate sin. Or is it 🤔

The audience loved my talk but I didn't

A critical look at a conference talk that went great but felt a little off.

How I used indie hacking to sponsor my own greencard

The longest project of my life

How I stopped chasing mice in 2021

How a focus on long-term games changed my approach to everything and calmed down my life

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.

Pay yourself first

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

Reflecting on 2020

The year that felt like a drag and ended in the blink of an eye.

Deep work December

do you ever feel like you're working working working and nothing is happening? Like a game character running against an invisible obstacle? That's how I've been feeling lately. Stuck.

Lessons from migrating a 14 year old blog with 1500 posts to Gatsby

After 4 years of putting it off, 1 year of tinkering, a month of work, and $1500 of hired help, my new blog is finally here 🎉 Here's what I learned.

Tech in 2021 according to a VC

What if engineers were paid like athletes