/Career Advice

Take Your Time Making Decisions

- Matt Rickard tl;dr: "I taught myself how to breathe slower. How to slow things down. How to not answer somebody instantaneously… You can always move slower. The world will basically wait for you if you’re deciding something consequential. And you can always say, ‘I’d like to think about that a little bit.’ So the only reason to feel panicked is if you’re panicking yourself, and that’s your fault. You don’t have to do that. You can take your time, you can weigh things. It’s very infrequently that the timing has to be instantaneous."

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How To Build Trust

- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: "These are all going to be fairly high-level, just skimming the surface – I could probably write a full post for each point, but will keep them brief to avoid making this article into a book." Jacob elaborates on the following: (1) Act consistently. (2) Communicate clearly and transparently. (3) Be reliable. (4) Set and respect boundaries. (5) Use role power sparingly. (6) Give feedback. (7) Give credit, take blame. (8) Delegate effectively. (9) Sponsor and coach. (10) Respect confidentiality but be clear about limits. (11) Ask for permission to give feedback, suggestions. 

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7 Books That Changed Me The Most As A Software Engineer

- Jordan Cutler tl;dr: "Books are one of the best ways to grow as a software engineer. They give you actionable takeaways based on decades of knowledge and experience.” Jordan organizes his book recommendations into the following 7 categories: (1) Writing & communication. (2) Software design. (3) Challenging conversations. (4) Relationships. (5) Engineering soft skills. (6) Productivity. (7) Engineering Management. 

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Traits I Value

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: 15 traits valued by the CTO at Meta: (1) Ownership: Valuing individuals who take full responsibility for their tasks, allowing others to trust that these tasks will be handled competently without constant oversight. (2) Rigor: Preferring team members who think thoroughly and exhaustively, understanding all alternatives, assumptions, and limitations to ensure well-informed decision-making. (3) Bias for Action: Appreciating those who recognize the cost of gathering information and the cost of delay, and who act decisively to maintain progress.

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The 100 Best Bits Of Advice From 10 Years Of First Round Review

tl;dr: "End every meeting or conversation with the feeling and optimism you’d like to have at the start of your next conversation with the person. If you envision running into this person again and how you want that to go, it’ll undoubtedly influence how you navigate a present conversation — usually for the better. Chris Fralic on how to become insanely well-connected."

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A Guide To Public Speaking For Software Engineers

- Jordan Cutler tl;dr: Jordan discusses: (1) How to improve your body language, wording, and tonality. (2) How to create a presentation structure that keeps people listening to you. These concepts can be applied to in-person & remote tech talks, demos, technical direction presentations, leading meetings and interviews. 

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Productivity

- Sam Altman tl;dr: "I think I am at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place." Sam discusses what to work on, how to prioritize tasks, physical factors (eating, sleeping, drinking, etc...) and more. 

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7 Types Of Difficult Coworkers And How To Deal With Them

- Jordan Cutler tl;dr: Jordan interviews Raviraj Achar - who has been a tech lead at Meta for 5 years - about how he manages difficult co-workers. The following are the first 3 archetypes discussed: (1) Risk-Averse: The Habitual Defender: They want to avoid risk at all costs and don’t want the system to break. (2) Risk-Taker: The Trailblazer. The opposite of the prior archetype. This person often feels the risk is justified or they will propose ideas without scoping out the risk. (3) The Stealthy Critic: They will have opinions but save them for the last minute before something is ready to ship. Or they will comment on your design doc and leave things in an ambiguous state. 

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Advice To A Novice Programmer

- Mark Dominus tl;dr: Mark wrote a memo to his daughter, who’s studying data structures, to memorialize the important process issues surrounding writing software: (1) It's important to remove as much friction as possible from your basic process. (2) It's tempting to cut corners when writing code e.g. "you need to optimize for quick and easy reading, at the cost of slower and more careful writing." (3) Debugging is methodical: always have clear in your mind what question you are trying to answer, and what your plan is for investigating that question. (4) After you fix something significant, or add significant new functionality, make a checkpoint copy of the entire source code.

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Positioning Yourself Near The Opportunity

- Matt Rickard tl;dr: From Jensen Huang, the co-founder of NVIDIA: "You want to position yourself near opportunities. You don’t have to be that perfect. You want to position yourself near the tree. Even if you don’t catch the apple before it hits the ground, so long as you’re the first one to pick it up. You want to position yourself close to the opportunities." Matt argues that this is true on a personal level. 

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