/Career Advice

Hired’s 2023 State Of Software Engineers

tl;dr: (1) Engineers remain optimistic about the future. (2) Layoffs from May to December 2022 had the greatest impact on salaries and interview interest for junior and non-traditional engineers. (3) Demand for remote engineering talent remains high. Remote roles command higher salaries than local roles, especially in smaller markets. (4) The most in-demand coding skills and software engineering roles shifted.

featured in #396


Why You Should Send A Weekly Summary Email

- Jens-Fabian Goetzmann tl;dr: The weekly email has 2 headings, with 3–5 short bullets under each: (1) “Achievements This Week” i.e. the most important things you’ve done this week. (2) “Priorities Next Week:” the most important things you want to get done the following. The benefits are: it starts the week off right, ensure progress on the things that matter, enables introspection, aligns priorities, make invisible work visible and keep a record of achievements.

featured in #395


Why 'Product Engineer' Is The Most Fun Role I've Had In Tech

- Raquel Smith tl;dr: A product engineer is someone who works with customers and data to decide what should be built, and then goes and builds it themselves. Raquel discusses how it trumps software engineering in that it allows the individual the autonomy to make important decisions, and was a more fun career path for the author.

featured in #395


Building Your Executive Network

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will outlines several tactic for engineers to do this. “Your network is a collection of relationships, and relationships always work best when they’re built before you need them. Set a small goal, like meeting one new person each month, and slowly build your network up over time. Don’t make it your top priority, but don’t forget it either.”

featured in #394


How To Contribute To A Project You Have No Idea About

- Michal Warda tl;dr: Michael discusses his process contributing to Bun - a new JavaScript / TypeScript runtime, elaborating on the following workflow in this article: (1) Setup and run the tests for an existing codebase and get them green. (2) Write a test that fails. (3) Change the code. (4) Think if you need to add another test. (5) If you found a test to write then go back to 1. If you can’t think of a test you’re done.

featured in #394


The Art Of Knowing When To Quit

- Jim Nielsen tl;dr: Jim is inspired by the following quote and applies it to engineering: “I deeply respect people who have the courage to quit when they feel they have done what they wanted to do, expressed what they wanted to express, created what they wanted to create… It's called being done with something. And that's a good thing.”

featured in #391


Against Overwhelm

- Paulo André tl;dr: “Throughout my entire engineering management career, what percentage of the time did I spend in a state of overwhelm?” Paolo provides the tools to prevent you to become intentional with how you spend your time and energy: (1) Clarify what goals, and how they align with your team and company, so you have a framework to decide how to not spend your time. (2) Use the Energy Audit to create visibility on where your time, attention and energy are going. (3) Given your goals, focus on leverage instead of productivity. Use the modified Eisenhower Matrix to define what’s truly important and a multiplier of your input. (4) With all of the above, design your ideal week and overlay each actual week on top of it. Push yourself to reduce the gap, and use the two as a means to reflect and improve weekly. (5) Whatever you do, focus on that thing only.

featured in #390


How To Find Your Blind Spots

- Charlie Andrews tl;dr: "Reaching the next level” in a skill usually means adding one or two new minigames to your arsenal while making only modest improvements in minigames that you’re already aware of." Charles discusses how to improve your engineering skills with shorter feedback cycles.

featured in #388


Building A Great Relationship With Your Boss

- Paulo André tl;dr: "If I could pick one skill, and one skill only, this would be it - for any relationship, but especially so for the relationship with a manager. So many difficult conversations become a lot less difficult if only you get curious about the other person’s challenges and needs before getting into yours." Questions to ask are: What keeps my manager up at night? What is success for them now and in the long run? What pressures are they subject to? Where do they come from? What do they expect from me? And more. 

featured in #387


I’m Now A Full-Time Professional Open Source Maintainer

- Filippo Valsorda tl;dr: "I now have six amazing clients, and I’m making an amount of money equivalent to my Google total compensation package, which proves the thesis that it’s possible to be a professional maintainer earning rates competitive with the adjacent market for senior software engineers... I’m sharing details about my progress to hopefully popularize the model, and eventually help other maintainers adopt it, although I’m not quite ready to recommend anyone else drop everything to try this just yet."

featured in #387