/Career Advice

Learning To Learn

- Jason Liu tl;dr: (1) Environments matters: Identifying the right environment is crucial for learning. Changing environment can be effective. (2) Get ahead and teach: If you're able to get ahead of your peer group, you can teach them and learn from them at the same time. (3) Process vs outcome: Try to set process based goals. (4) Periodize your training: Set long time horizons and peak at the end of them. Take breaks and deload weeks. (5) Learn from people actively doing what you want to do. Ask yourself how far along they are in their journey. (6) Focus on fundamentals to avoid unforced errors. 

featured in #505

How To Send Progress Updates

- Slava Akhmechet tl;dr: 15 tips, including: (1) Understand your role, and with each update add to the body of evidence that you’re a good steward in that role. (2) Add a little randomness to the cadence. (3) Know what your next update will be and work toward it. (4) Always start with a one sentence TL;DR and a 2-4 sentence recap of the overall goals of the project. (5) Within reason, deliberately engineer pleasant surprises so you can include them in your updates. And more.

featured in #505

Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself

- Jason Liu tl;dr: Many topics covered, including the following: (1) How to be lucky: Develop a wide field of perception to see opportunities. Ask yourself if you're so focused on one thing that you're missing obvious opportunities. (2) How to get a job: Merit alone is often not enough. Focus on being someone people want to work with. High agency - thinking proactively about how you can help - is key when reaching out. (3) Impostor syndrome: If someone hires you, believe in their judgment. Don't insult them by having impostor syndrome. 

featured in #505

Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself

- Jason Liu tl;dr: Many topics covered, including the following: (1) How to be lucky: Develop a wide field of perception to see opportunities. Ask yourself if you're so focused on one thing that you're missing obvious opportunities. (2) How to get a job: Merit alone is often not enough. Focus on being someone people want to work with. High agency - thinking proactively about how you can help - is key when reaching out. (3) Impostor syndrome: If someone hires you, believe in their judgment. Don't insult them by having impostor syndrome. 

featured in #504

Fear Makes You A Worse Programmer

- Julia Evans tl;dr: (1) Fear can make you overly conservative as a programmer, afraid to make important changes. This leads to worse software in the long run. (2) Better tools and processes reduce fear to make changes e.g. version control, automated testing. (3) How an organization reacts to mistakes is critical i.e. blameless postmortems. (4) Some fears spread to others if not addressed. (5) Fear creates "local maximums" - it prevents you from making big improvements and keeps you stuck in a suboptimal state.

featured in #503

"Insecure Vibes" Are A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

- Wes Kao tl;dr: "If you appear hesitant, doubtful, or desperate… The other person picks up on it. You get more nervous. They start doubting you." Before you hit send, ask yourself: (1) Could this be interpreted as sounding defensive? (2) Am I overcompensating or overexplaining? (3) How would I respond on my best day? (4) Would I say this if I felt secure?

featured in #501

Four Responses To Feedback

- Ed Batista tl;dr: Ed discusses 4 responses to feedback: (1) Express appreciation for the positive. (2) Easy changes you're happy to make. (3) Hard changes you're willing to attempt. (4) Changes that will be too difficult or costly to undertake. “Recognize that every piece of negative feedback contains a request for change and that all change carries a cost.”

featured in #501

The Basics

- Thorsten Ball tl;dr: “Here’s what I consider to be the basics. I call them that not because they’re easy, but because they’re fundamental. The foundation on which your advanced skills and expertise rest. Multipliers and nullifiers, makers and breakers of everything you do.” These include: (1) Keep your change free of unrelated changes. (2) Make sure that your PR is up-to-date against latest on your main branch. (3) Before you comment on something, read the whole thing.

featured in #500

Managing Up: 11 Ways To Get Better Feedback

- Wes Kao tl;dr: (1) Make it insanely easy for your manager to give you feedback i.e. ask for specific prompts. (2) The word “feedback” might feel loaded. Ask what to do differently and what worked well e.g. “What’s missing? Could you mark which parts of this memo are confusing?” (3) Give them permission to rip your work apart and encourage them to be direct

featured in #500

Managing Up: 11 Ways To Get Better Feedback

- Wes Kao tl;dr: (1) Make it insanely easy for your manager to give you feedback i.e. ask for specific prompts. (2) The word “feedback” might feel loaded. Ask what to do differently and what worked well e.g. “What’s missing? Could you mark which parts of this memo are confusing?” (3) Give them permission to rip your work apart and encourage them to be direct

featured in #499