/Career Advice

Separation

- Jason Fried tl;dr: “In my experience, a key skill to develop is the ability to separate one thing from another. To prevent the small from becoming the all... Developing the ability to tease things apart helps you compartmentalize the less desirable from the more desirable, and see the whole map, with all its separate states of like and dislike, favorable and unfavorable. There’s a very good chance that when you do that, you’ll like a lot more than you despise.”

featured in #516

SWE Laws Of Power

- Eliran Turgeman tl;dr: “Have you ever noticed how some software engineers seem to rocket up the career ladder, while others, just as talented, barely move? It’s not always about how good you are with code; sometimes, it’s about playing the game smartly. This got me thinking when I was reading “The 48 Laws of Power.” I chose the 5 laws that I think are most relevant and impactful for software engineers.” (1) Never outshine the master. (2) Concentrate your forces. (3) Win through your actions, never through argument. (4) Make your accomplishments seem effortless. (5) Always say less than necessary. 

featured in #514

Communicate Like A Senior: Use Clear Deltas

- Jordan Cutler tl;dr: Communicate using quantified before and after states and see the benefits in performance reviews, influence, and clear expectations. Jordan shares explicit examples of how to put this into practice.

featured in #514

Programming Mantras Are Proverbs

- Luke Plant tl;dr: “I believe that many of the arguments we have around software development practices could be avoided by the simple understanding that all of our mantras need to be understood as proverbs and not laws. If you understand proverbs, then you’ll know that every proverb has an equal and opposite proverb.”

featured in #514

How To Understand Things

- Nabeel Qureshi tl;dr: “The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved.” 

featured in #514

How To Understand Things

- Nabeel Qureshi tl;dr: “The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved.” 

featured in #513

Who Pays You? And Why?

- Brian Kihoon Lee tl;dr: “I get asked for career advice from time to time. While each situation is different, a recurring theme is disempowerment - feeling like there’s nothing you can do to advance your career. To help diagnose, I like to ask two questions: Who pays you? And why? These two questions encourage you to leave the comfort zone of job descriptions and confront the reality of what it’ll take to get to the next level at your current job, or potentially a new job. I’ll explain how I think about these questions, and this hopefully helps you think through your own situation.”

featured in #512

My Favorite Teacher

- Thorsten Ball tl;dr: “He taught us that you can summarize anything, in whatever length you want. He could summarize the Cold War in two sentences. A new law around unemployment benefits and social security? Four sentences. Bismarck’s forced resignation and all the political maneuvering that proceeded it? Three. Whenever someone would fail to summarize something, he’d say: “you’re not thinking clearly.” Summarizing is thinking clearly.”

featured in #512

Cognitive Load In Software Development

- Artem Zakirullin tl;dr: “There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It's not a fancy imaginary concept, it can't be misleading - cognitive load is there, and we can feel it.” 

featured in #512

Cognitive Load In Software Development

- Artem Zakirullin tl;dr: “There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused by high cognitive load. It's not a fancy imaginary concept, it can't be misleading - cognitive load is there, and we can feel it.” 

featured in #511