/Career Advice

Intellectual Honesty

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Intellectual honesty is the foundation for pretty much all professional and personal growth. If you want to improve at your craft, if you want to become a stronger and wiser operator… Wes discusses what this is and how to tell if you’re being intellectually honest. Ask yourself: Is this true? What evidence do I have for and against this? Am I telling myself a certain narrative to avoid facing a truth I don’t like? How might I recognize the truth in a neutral, objective way?”

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Good Software Development Habits

tl;dr: “This post is not advice, it's what's working for me. It's easy to pick up bad habits and hard to create good ones. Writing down what's working for me helps me maintain any good habits I've worked hard to develop. Here's an unordered list of 10 things that have helped me increase speed and maintain a respectable level of quality in the product I'm currently developing.”

featured in #549

Making Progress On Side Projects With Content-Driven Development

- Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya tl;dr: “In the last couple of years, I stumbled into a way to avoid getting stuck midway in my projects. It's not just about productivity: this also lets me let go of things when I reach a good stopping point. It helps me figure out what that stopping point should be.”

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The Art Of Finishing

- Tomas Stropus tl;dr: “This cycle of enthusiasm, struggle, and disappointment has become all too familiar. It’s the Hydra Project Effect: no matter how much progress I make, new challenges always seem to sprout in their place. But while this pattern may seem unbreakable, I’m determined to find a way to tame this beast. In this post, I’ll explore strategies for breaking out of this cycle of endless beginnings and unsatisfying middles.”

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Willingness To Look Stupid

- Dan Luu tl;dr: “The benefit from asking a stupid sounding question is small in most particular instances, but the compounding benefit over time is quite large and I've observed that people who are willing to ask dumb questions and think "stupid thoughts" end up understanding things much more deeply over time. Conversely, when I look at people who have a very deep understanding of topics, many of them frequently ask naive sounding questions and continue to apply one of the techniques that got them a deep understanding in the first place.”

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Leave Something For Tomorrow

- Thorsten Ball tl;dr: “Always leave your code unfinished the day before. That way I always know I can come back to a small problem that may only require three minutes to fix a test, or write a new method, or whatever the case is. Once I've been doing code for five or ten minutes, I tend to quickly become sucked into the problem and it's much easier to jump into the harder code at that point. Same rationale for stretching before doing exercise, basically.”

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Algorithms We Develop Software By

- Grant Slatton tl;dr: “I recently had a conversation with a distinguished tech CEO and engineer. I loved hearing his description of a software development methodology he's occasionally used, and it got me thinking about other heuristics and generalizations.” Grant discusses tactics to develop software effectively. 

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Derisking 12 Common Workplace Scenarios

- Wes Kao tl;dr: Wes covers simple ways to derisk the following workplace scenarios:(1) Sharing an idea your colleagues might find controversial. (2) Giving constructive feedback to a direct report. (3) Testing your offer. (4) You made a mistake and need to tell your customer. (5) Troubleshooting a technical issue. (6) Giving feedback to a peer. And more. 

featured in #543

Algorithms We Develop Software By

- Grant Slatton tl;dr: “I recently had a conversation with a distinguished tech CEO and engineer. I loved hearing his description of a software development methodology he's occasionally used, and it got me thinking about other heuristics and generalizations.” Grant discusses tactics to develop software effectively. 

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Practices Of Reliable Software Design

- Christoffer Stjernlöf tl;dr: Christoffer discusses the following: (1) Use off-the-shelf. (2) Cost and reliability over features. (3) Idea to production quickly. (4) Simple data structures. (5) Reserve resources early. (6) Set maximums. (7) Make testing easy. (8) Embed performance counters. 

featured in #542