Tag: #career
Writing on GPUs, LLMs, MLOps, Kubernetes — and mindset · 229 posts
Maximizing Your Strengths — Amplify What You Are Good At Instead of Patching Weakness
What happens when you move the energy you spend covering weaknesses toward growing strengths? This essay lays out the logic of the strengths-based approach, how to discover your own strengths, the shadow side of overusin
2026-06-16 · 22 min read #mindset#strengths#career#self-awareness#productivityHumble Yet Sharp — Speaking in Facts
Humility and confidence do not collide. Separate opinion from fact, speak with data, remove ambiguity, and hold strong opinions loosely. This piece covers the trap of political speech and the craft of delivering feedback
2026-06-16 · 17 min read #communication#mindset#career#decision-making#feedbackHow to Be Good at Programming — Principles, Habits, and Depth
A builder essay that defines what being good at programming actually means, then works through fundamentals and debugging, abstraction and simplicity, readable code, testing, deliberate practice, reading code, and the sk
2026-06-16 · 17 min read #programming#craft#deliberate-practice#debugging#code-qualityUnderstand the Why, Not Just the What — How to Work With Your Manager
How to grasp the purpose behind a request instead of its surface. Alignment conversations, managing up, proposing better alternatives, scripts for asking why politely, the craft of giving and receiving feedback, and maki
2026-06-16 · 15 min read #career#management#communication#feedback#mindsetAlways Ask Back — Good Questions Make Good Outcomes
The output of someone who asks one clarifying question before acting diverges sharply from that of someone who does not. From the danger of assumptions, to the craft of asking back to find the intent behind a request, to
2026-06-16 · 17 min read #mindset#questions#communication#requirements#collaborationLeaving Your Comfort Zone — Turning Discomfort into Growth
The comfort zone is pleasant, but it stalls growth. This essay covers how to tell the learning zone from the panic zone, how to deliberately design discomfort, and how to keep challenging yourself sustainably without bur
2026-06-16 · 19 min read #comfort-zone#growth#mindset#career#learningI Want to Grow — Work with People You Can Learn From, and Be a Good Influence Yourself
Growth does not come from willpower alone. Environment shapes people. This essay covers how to find colleagues and mentors you can learn from, how to be a giver rather than only a taker, and concrete ways to grow togethe
2026-06-16 · 19 min read #growth#mentorship#career#collaboration#giverDeliberate Practice — Experience Alone Will Not Make You Better
Why ten years on the job can leave your skill stuck, and the principles of deliberate practice that break the plateau. Covers concrete methods for developers — reading code, reimplementing, code katas, postmortems — plus
2026-06-16 · 19 min read #career#deliberate-practice#growth#learning#engineering-cultureQuestions to Understand Context — The Person Who Digs into the Why
Given the same task, the output of someone who digs into the background is different. From the gap between a surface request and the real problem, to grasping business context, stakeholders, and constraints, to asking "w
2026-06-16 · 15 min read #mindset#context#problem-solving#stakeholders#collaborationPhilosophy for Engineers — Applying Stoicism and Pragmatism to Your Work
How to apply the Stoic dichotomy of control, the pragmatist test of what works, essentialism, and craftsmanship to an engineer everyday life. Not abstract sermonizing, but concrete use in code reviews, incidents, and car
2026-06-16 · 22 min read #philosophy#stoicism#pragmatism#engineering#mindsetSaying I Do Not Know — The Power of Intellectual Honesty
Admitting what you do not know is not a weakness but the fastest way to build trust. From the real cost of bluffing, to the craft of saying "let me check and get back to you", to the habit of separating facts from guesse
2026-06-16 · 18 min read #mindset#intellectual-honesty#trust#communication#careerWorking Hard Matters, But Working Well Matters More — Balancing Effort and Leverage
A look at why effort alone hits a ceiling, with concrete examples of leverage through code, content, delegation, and automation. It covers priorities and impact, the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, the b
2026-06-16 · 11 min read #mindset#leverage#productivity#career#effectivenessWhich Work Makes the Biggest Impact — Prioritizing by Impact
Being busy and being important are different things. The definition of impact, ICE and RICE for weighing effort against effect, the important-vs-urgent matrix, choosing what not to do, the trap of local optimization, and
2026-06-16 · 13 min read #career#productivity#prioritization#impact#mindsetMoved to culture/maximizing-your-strengths (en)
This post has moved to the culture category. See culture/2026-06-16-maximizing-your-strengths.en.
2026-06-16 · 1 min read #mindset#strengths#career#growthThe Art of the S-Tier Demo — For Developers Who Build but Never Show
From why the PostHog How to demo essay struck a nerve, to the structure of an S-tier demo that opens with a 15-second hook, scenario scripting, demo-mode flags in code, and ten common failures with recovery lines. A prac
2026-06-12 · 22 min read #demo#communication#career#presentation#developer-productivityThe Craft of 1:1s and Feedback — A Practical Guide for Both ICs and Managers
How to turn ritualistic 1:1s into a real growth tool. Covers agenda templates, a 20-question manager library, a comparison of SBI, COIN and Radical Candor, five difficult-feedback scripts, and safe upward feedback phrasi
2026-06-12 · 18 min read #one-on-one#feedback#management#communication#culture2026 Developer Job Market Survival Guide — Resumes and Job Search Strategy in the Age of AI Screening
How to survive the 2026 hiring market, where AI screening is universal and applications have exploded. Covers an impact-driven resume formula, ATS tactics, portfolio strategy, referral scripts, and salary negotiation, al
2026-06-12 · 18 min read #career#resume#job-search#interview#networkingThe 30x AI Engineer Is Defined by Taste, Not Speed
An introduction to and expansion of the widely discussed Substack essay How to be a 30x AI engineer with taste. As AI commoditizes code production, the differentiator becomes evaluative judgment — deciding what to build
2026-06-12 · 19 min read #ai#career#engineering-culture#productivity#code-reviewThe Developer Who Works in Writing — Design Docs, ADRs, and Persuasive Technical Writing
Why writing is the senior engineer leverage skill, practical templates for design docs and ADRs, the craft of documents that survive review, bad-writing before/after fixes, and how to use AI for writing without losing yo
2026-06-12 · 22 min read #technical-writing#design-docs#adr#documentation#careerArtisans and Builders — Where Developers Should Stand When LLMs Erode Their Careers
Built around two essays — Artisans and builders from the Stack Overflow blog and the HN-viral LLMs are eroding my software engineering career — this post redefines developer identity in the AI era. It covers the democrat
2026-06-12 · 22 min read #career#ai#engineering-culture#llm#senior-engineer