Senior Mindset

How one sentence guides your career

Unlock the secret to guiding your career with a powerful positioning statement. Learn to stand out in the job market and attract opportunities that align with your expertise and values.

Why a tech meltdown is the best time to invest in your career

Invest in your career growth. Seize the moment to develop new skills and prepare for a brighter future

Own the outcome, not the work

Efficient problem-solving in engineering with a shift in perspective – focusing on user outcomes can lead to innovative solutions and change your approach to system design.

Insights for interviews from Kahneman's Noise

everything people say is bad about modern tech interviews is actually good 🤯

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 🚀

Coding is the easy part

Behind the scenes of a vendor migration project. What senior+ engineers do so you can focus on the code.

"If you're so good, why aren't you making 600k at BigTech?"

Swiz shares why he's not making the big bucks at a tech giant, from the soul-crushing grind of corporate to the funny money of tech compensation.

Own your career like an expert

You can achieve more with your career by leveraging your experience, advice, and ability to clear blockers, rather than just working hard. This approach of "force multiplying" your team can create more value than working alone

Squash merge? Really!?

Learn why squash merging is your friend - from hating it to loving it! Squash merging helps you keep moving and focus on the work instead of recording the work.

Why trunk-based development is best

Merging finished work straight to main and deploying to production right away, scales to teams of thousands. This approach is counterintuitive to many engineers who may be used to working on their own

Can you stay a senior engineer forever?

Here's an idea that can take the pressure off your career: Yes, you can stay a senior software engineer forever. But how?

Shipped code wins

Grow your career ... in this economy??

if you've been following tech news lately, things feel ... 😖 Between the layoffs, hiring freezes, investors suddenly caring about revenue, and whatever the heck stock markets are doing, we're in for a rough time. BUT!

The art of the cowboy merge 🤠

how do you catch a critical deadline that cannot be missed? We're talking external stakeholders, millions on the line, and it all hinges on *your* team getting it done on time. No overtime

Reader Question: What do collaborative teams look like?

New members on our team invariably say 2 things: 1. Wow I've never seen a team move this fast 2. This approach feels weird. I'm uncomfortable Teams like this are not common.

What coding tutorials and teachers get wrong

Chatting about teaching and learning complex technical skills with an engineer I'm mentoring. She's a former chef. We shared the same frustration with online resources.

Reader question: So about that perfect burndown chart ...

If your approach works so well, why isn't every team doing this?

Nobody is coming to save you

How do you react when you don't like The Process at work? Most programmers complain on social media, make a wry joke, and ... suffer. Not great

Reader question: Feeling guilt as a tech lead

Keep getting the guilt, that I'm not able to code, just running around for discussions and solving other issues, managing people. Any idea to manage all the fronts and get rid of this guilt?

You don't *have to* build it sloppy to go fast

My favorite mistake to make when I'm in a hurry is to think that I _have to_ build new features the sloppiest way possible. Find the quick fix and move on. But that's not true.

What makes a great software engineer?

In 2015 a group of researchers asked 59 experienced engineers at Microsoft "What makes a great software engineer?". Here's what they found.

Write abstractions, not just code

Wherein I use a silly example to show why you need more than small reusable single purpose functions to write good software.

Always have 3 answers

How do you stand out as an expert amid tech layoffs?

Coding forces you to understand the problem

Programming translates fuzzy understanding into exacting specifications. That’s why it’s hard. The Illusion of Explanatory Depth reigns supreme

A lesson on expertise from a great mafia movie

You cannot make something good until you understand who you're making it for.

There are no bad teams

it’s the leader, not the team

Writing software is like kicking a can

Writing software is a playful process of exploration and discovery. Like a game of kick the can on a Sunday walk.

The role of a senior+ engineer

"Every product org should have a senior+ engineer whose job it is to run around and make everyone else more productive" 🤔 That IS the role of a senior+ engineer

How we made the best burndown chart you've ever seen

My entire career I've never seen a sprint finished on time. The new manager said "Oh I think we can fix that" ... 18 months later he proved me wrong

When to join and leave a company, project, or trend

Timing changes everything. Who do you think has better engineers? The team that built Google from 9 million daily searches in 2000 to 1 billion in 2009, or the team that launched Google's 10th chat app last year?