Swizec's articles in the "personal" category
I aim to write mindblowing emails with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them.
Below are 202 articles filed under personal. Enjoy ❤️
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
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
January 3rd, 2023
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?
December 3rd, 2022
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.
August 10th, 2022
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 🤔
July 26th, 2022
How I used indie hacking to sponsor my own greencard
The longest project of my life
February 1st, 2022
How I stopped chasing mice in 2021
How a focus on long-term games changed my approach to everything and calmed down my life
December 31st, 2021
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.
December 2nd, 2020
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.
August 24th, 2020
What if engineers were paid like athletes
July 31st, 2020
Why engineers are worth so much
Engineers don't do the day to day work, they build assets the business can exploit for years to come. That's the magic
July 24th, 2020
How to grow as a senior engineer or why I got a new job
June 26th, 2020
Hackers
June 22nd, 2020
Looking for the perfect light work device
May 15th, 2020
What you do while waiting
May 4th, 2020
Don't just wait around
April 24th, 2020
Your dumb ideas often work best
April 23rd, 2020
You don't *have* ideas, you develop them
April 21st, 2020
"I just need an idea"
April 20th, 2020
My favorite lessons from Pragmatic Programmer
March 28th, 2020
Stuck at home? Advance your career
March 19th, 2020
HOW great engineers hack The Process
March 6th, 2020
Why you should talk about engineering salaries
February 21st, 2020
Imagine you could chat with the core of your industry for 5min
February 6th, 2020
Ready to build your future?
January 31st, 2020
How can you make an extra $1,000 🤔
January 15th, 2020
What could you do with an extra $1,000/month?
January 14th, 2020
How my bank account went from $909 to $50,000 in 2019
January 3rd, 2020
A holiday CompSci reading list for you 🎅
December 20th, 2019
Thank you, friend 🦃
November 27th, 2019
What makes you a true master
November 25th, 2019
"I’m a ocean of failure... so I swim"
November 21st, 2019
How to succeed as a lead engineer – tactics and mindsets from practice
October 25th, 2019
DO more _work_ less
October 11th, 2019
San Francisco v. Europe part 2
September 16th, 2019
Thoughts on San Francisco after 2 weeks in Europe
September 11th, 2019
After 9 months of freedom, today I start a new job
July 22nd, 2019
Friend, go offline
July 12th, 2019
Hustle, life, and Bernoulli trials
July 2nd, 2019
Coders, protect your hands; you won't like coding without em
June 24th, 2019
Build one to throw away
June 19th, 2019
The Principle of Charity in tech
June 5th, 2019
The web moves fast, how do you keep up?
May 7th, 2019
Freedom from Obligation
April 24th, 2019
What I loved about Reactathon 2019
April 1st, 2019
How Grit superchargers your career
March 22nd, 2019
Do you use any special time tracking software?
February 22nd, 2019
What makes you a senior software engineer anyway?
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.
February 13th, 2019
This kid is amazing
January 25th, 2019
When you don't think you're good enough
January 21st, 2019
A bunch of cool things and neat little tips
January 14th, 2019
Focus on the process, not the goal
January 11th, 2019
How I sidehustled $180k and why it almost killed my business
December 31st, 2018
Never give up
December 14th, 2018
Why you should write [code] every day
December 3rd, 2018
To experience true flow, try baking 👩🍳
November 14th, 2018
Some life advice I learned from computer science
November 12th, 2018
31
October 26th, 2018
Why you aren’t drowning in recruiters, too
October 17th, 2018
It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work – a review
October 9th, 2018
The joy of being a beginner
October 3rd, 2018
A lesson in sales from the guy who sold me $1500 of gear when all I wanted was a $100 pair of gloves
September 25th, 2018
How I sponsored my own genius visa
September 21st, 2018
Two days in New York with mum & sis ❤️
September 17th, 2018
Online workshops are MORE interactive than in-person workshops
September 5th, 2018
Lifestyle inflation after 3 years of San Francisco
August 14th, 2018
I'm tired – a poem
August 7th, 2018
Answering some common questions about React + D3 2018
August 2nd, 2018
What a 3:36 marathon does to your body
July 30th, 2018
How running a side business is a lot like running a marathon
July 25th, 2018
The surprising benefit of hiring interns to write your code
July 20th, 2018
What Richard Feynman taught me about joy
July 12th, 2018
Hire these interns
July 10th, 2018
The day I drove a Porsche 356 Speedster
July 6th, 2018
What's an intermediate dev anyway?
June 21st, 2018
You have permission to suck
June 19th, 2018
Some tricks I learned recording & publishing an educational video every day for 30 days
May 24th, 2018
How I prepare for a talk at an 8,000 people conference
May 21st, 2018
What I learned at MicroConf Growth 2018
May 10th, 2018
Gratitude is hard – My first week with the Five Minute Journal
April 19th, 2018
Does blogging really drive sales?
April 17th, 2018
What I learned from Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
March 29th, 2018
Reactathon 2018 was a hoot ❤️
March 22nd, 2018
Coding is bad for you
March 16th, 2018
Working IN your career vs. ON your career
March 7th, 2018
Why everything must change every five years
February 23rd, 2018
The story of my family is the story of survivorship bias's other side
February 19th, 2018
Don't say yes when you're happy
January 17th, 2018
After a week I must begrudgingly admit VSCode is a better editor than Emacs
November 10th, 2017
Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon
November 3rd, 2017
How resumé-driven development shapes our industry
All that once was new is old again
October 19th, 2017
What I learned from teaching StubHub about React and Redux
October 17th, 2017
What it's like to be a statistical super minority in tech
September 12th, 2017
From couch to sub 4 hour marathon in 4 short years
July 25th, 2017
Best coding headphones: Bose QuietComfort 35
July 19th, 2017
First day with a new 2017 MacBook Pro
June 15th, 2017
What I learned from Cal Newport's Deep Work
May 26th, 2017
Do you really need immutable data?
May 24th, 2017
The Best Goulash of your Life
May 18th, 2017
Why People Read my Weekly Emails
March 20th, 2017
This is how I connected my Canon DSLR as a webcam
March 9th, 2017
The Trouble with Vacation
March 1st, 2017
60 seconds, 2000 miles
January 4th, 2017
If the first page of The Martian was written in different type systems
December 15th, 2016
Let's talk about filter bubbles
November 11th, 2016
These 19 Words are the Only Self-Help & Business Advice You Need
November 7th, 2016
I did an AMA, and it wasn't crickets.
October 27th, 2016
Go the fuck home
October 20th, 2016
The daring rescue of a parrot in the streets of San Francisco
October 19th, 2016
Why coding is more fun than engineering
October 14th, 2016
My weekend at Forefront in New York
October 11th, 2016
Some facts about US household income
September 29th, 2016
My blog is the best resource online for "60*60"
September 27th, 2016
Magic shiny paint
September 23rd, 2016
It's a trap
September 6th, 2016
I Got Schooled
September 2nd, 2016
After a year, my first business diary retires
August 26th, 2016
It's Just Like Knitting
August 24th, 2016
MacOS filesystem's annoying little quirk
August 23rd, 2016
Teaching beginners
August 19th, 2016
Probably the dumbest idea I ever had
August 2nd, 2016
The surprising difficulty of paying the US government
June 23rd, 2016
Does it even make sense to move to San Francisco?
May 13th, 2016
What I learned from Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking
February 11th, 2016
What I learned from Kathy Sierra's Badass
September 18th, 2015
What I learned from Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning
August 17th, 2015
The Focus app reduced my decision fatigue
May 26th, 2015
The worst software bug I've ever had to deal with as a user
February 12th, 2015
It took me ten months to write a video course
February 5th, 2015
This is how lifestyle inflation snuck up on me
January 7th, 2015
Week 20: Making ad-hoc polymorphism less ad hoc
April 30th, 2014
Week 19: Relativity theory and time perception
April 14th, 2014
Week 18: the role of diet in periodontal disease
March 18th, 2014
Week 17: What happens when you only eat meat for a year?
March 3rd, 2014
Week 16: On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules
February 19th, 2014
Week 15: A tutorial on the expressiveness and universality of fold
February 13th, 2014
Week 14, heuristic evaluation of user interfaces
January 28th, 2014
Week 13, constructing logic circuits in mammalian cells
January 23rd, 2014
Week 11, Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers
January 7th, 2014
Week 10, The myriad virtues of Wavelet Trees
December 25th, 2013
Week 9: Life at low Reynold's number
December 16th, 2013
Week 8: What a girl who plays rugby can teach organizational leaders
December 9th, 2013
Week 6, A query on confirmation
November 25th, 2013
Week 5: Random Structures from LEGO Bricks and Analog Monte Carlo Procedures
November 18th, 2013
Week 4: Tiny insects evolve anuclear neurons
November 11th, 2013
Week 3: Of lion manes and human beards
November 3rd, 2013
Week 1: Turing's On computable numbers
October 20th, 2013
This paragraph describes YOU perfectly
September 10th, 2013
Fun with cheap iPhone lenses
July 5th, 2012
Programmers are optimists
May 25th, 2012
Why every entrepreneur should take up boxing
February 10th, 2012
Why programmers work at night
December 15th, 2011
"Startup rollercoaster" isn't even the half of it
October 25th, 2011
Calorie counting is silly
September 20th, 2011
Mac OS X Lion and Wi-Fi
September 18th, 2011
Seems I am in love with learning
September 14th, 2011
A longboard and a school system
September 12th, 2011
KVM and the great outdoors
September 11th, 2011
The quickreading
September 10th, 2011
I learned two things today 9.9.
September 9th, 2011
I learned four things today 8.9.
September 8th, 2011
I learned two things today 5.8.
September 5th, 2011
I learned two things today 4.8.
September 4th, 2011
I learned two things today 3.9.
September 3rd, 2011
I learned two things today 31.8.
August 31st, 2011
I learned two things today 30.8.
August 30th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.8.
August 29th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.8.
August 28th, 2011
I learned two things today 27.8.
August 27th, 2011
I learned two things today 25.8.
August 25th, 2011
I learned a couple of things these days 22.8. 23.8. 24.8.
August 24th, 2011
I learned two things today 21.8.
August 21st, 2011
I learned two things today 20.8.
August 20th, 2011
I learned two things today 19.8.
August 19th, 2011
I learned two things today 18.8.
August 18th, 2011
I learned two things today 16.8.
August 17th, 2011
I learned two things today 17.8.
August 17th, 2011
I learned two things today 16.8.
August 16th, 2011
I learned two things today 14.8.
August 14th, 2011
I learned two things today 12.8.
August 12th, 2011
I learned two things today 11.8.
August 11th, 2011
I learned two things today 10.8.
August 11th, 2011
I learned two things today 9.8.
August 9th, 2011
I learned two things today 8.8.
August 8th, 2011
I learned two things today 6.8.
August 7th, 2011
I learned two things today 7.8.
August 7th, 2011
I learned two things today 5.8.
August 6th, 2011
I learned two things today 2.8.
August 2nd, 2011
I learned two things today 1.8.
August 1st, 2011
I learned two things today 31.7
July 31st, 2011
I learned two things today 30.7.
July 30th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.7.
July 29th, 2011
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"