Senior Mindset

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.

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?

Your luck & opportunity surface area

Here's a comment that resonated yesterday and you might like. It's about how to maximize the opportunity in your work.

How do you know if serverless fits your project?

The hallmark of a true expert is understanding about the pros and cons of your technical decisions.

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.

The Magic Function principle

Write functions, mostly magic.

"silicon valley is like hollywood"

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

Why you can't find an engineering coach

Wanna learn boxing? Join a gym, find a coach. Tennis player with a kink in your game? Find a coach. Software engineer with a missing skill? Google, random blogs, fun newsletters, dubious podcasts, noise on twitter 🤨

You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service

You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service. The true question behind every interview is "How can you help us?"

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. 🤔

Why Understanding beats Knowledge

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

What if engineers were paid like athletes

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

Why you should talk about engineering salaries

What a hockey legend can teach you about career development

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

4 years of coding in San Francisco, lessons learned

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.

Why you aren’t drowning in recruiters, too

Should you work at a startup

How resumé-driven development shapes our industry

All that once was new is old again