Career

The Problem Hiring has been coming up a lot in some of my social feeds again. It’s a problem I’ve experienced, and seen often from both sides of the table. And most companies don’t get this right. Do I have all the answers? No. But I do have some thoughts. The Trigger The conversation trigger for this post was: “During the developer hiring process, has anyone found an alternative to take-home code tests and live code tests? Companies have stopped using take-home tests as they believe that it’s too easy to cheat using LLMs. About 70% of technical hiring managers that I’ve discussed this with admit that live code (and architecture) tests aren’t working, as too many skilled developers produce poor results due to the artificial time limit.” ...

This came up in my feeds today. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until I can’t anymore: never before has there been a time where we needed to be more intentional about training and mentoring juniors than now. As much as I love and use it, my biggest worry with current AI tooling has always been that it takes the thinking and understanding away from you. This is different from previous coding tools. Many just obfuscated or abstracted concepts, others assisted with tedious tasks, but this time the tool does it all. And it’s making us lazy, and it’s making us less capable. Studies are starting to show this. ...

The words we choose matter. People have been calling me pedantic for a long time, but I’ve never seen the problem with that. Words have particular meanings. Even synonyms are just “similar”, not usually the same. Some time back I wrote a blog post about “Why You’re NOT an Engineer (also Why It [Probably] Doesn’t Matter)” The key point I made: there IS a difference between a coder, a programmer, a developer, and an engineer (although some people disagreed). ...

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in tech is boundaries. When to set them, how to enforce them, and (occasionally) when to cross them. Learning this early in my career made it easier to apply later – like now, running my own business. If I don’t get paid when I don’t work, then I don’t work when I don’t get paid. Simple. But this isn’t just on my mind because I’m chasing overdue invoices (though, you know, that too). It started when I saw posts and articles about how 996 culture is gaining traction among startups and founders, especially in Silicon Valley. You know, the “work 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week” grind. And this is despite most people knowing it’s unhealthy. Despite the constant complaints on social about burnout and not having a life outside work. ...

🤖 I love how every new LLM release triggers a wave of “AI is coming for your job!” posts, only for people to realize a few weeks later “oh, nope, sorry, not this yet” 😏 💡 While AI tools are certainly force multipliers for productivity, even with agents, they’re not replacing humans yet. Even the best apps I’ve generated with Bolt or Replit eventually need human intervention and fixing. 🎯 Hot take incoming: I find it amusing when people consider these simplistic example AI-generated “apps” as “real development”. Most modern webapps are already essentially just careful combinations of frameworks and styling, using existing tools that solve problems in generic ways. That’s not novel software development. ...

Trigger warning: this is a bit of a rant. Also, it contains opinions. Specifically mine. If you are allergic to other peoples opinions, or likely to experience anger or hatefulness when hearing others opinions, this post is probably not for you. Also, if you actually are an Engineer, have a cookie. Intro I spend a large amount of time on interviews. Or I did, up until mid 2020, but whatever. Sure, it’s not as much as large corporations fielding thousands of applicants, but I’d wager more than the average startup. I’ve conducted a couple hundred interviews myself, and I’ve been interviewed a couple ten times. ...

Intro I don’t know why this has been on my mind the last few weeks, but guess that means I need to write something down… I love Bruce Lee. I don’t generally think of myself of someone who has “heroes”, but if there is one person outside my father who has greatly inspired me and changed how I think about life, it would be Bruce Lee. At first, as a little kid with silly hopes and crazy dreams, it was just all the cool fighting scenes in his movies that made want to be like him. ...

Clarity for the purpose of this post 😏 code monkey, n. a computer programmer who is not involved in any aspect of conceptual or design work, but simply writes code to specifications given programmer, n. an organism that can turn caffeine into code. Introduction Once upon a time, (many, many moons ago) at the very start of my career, I was just a “code monkey”; an individual contributor to the grand scheme of the digital jungle being fed instructions from primates higher on the food chain and was expected to simply do what I’m told. ...

Ah, another “trend” I’ve seen online in the last year. I wonder which AI recommendation tool suggested this one to the thousands of small YT channels and influencers who needed a topic… Okay, saltiness aside, I actually found this one quite interesting. And not because I agree with most of the approaches I’ve seen people recommend (it is shocking how many just want to punt their own products or their sponsors), but mainly it was interesting because I was thinking that… ...

Today again, I was triggered. So here is a hastily written post about my thoughts. sigh 😔 I feel like every week there is new thing which my inbox spams me with. If it’s not AI taking our jobs, it’s some [insert new and shiny framework] which will render [insert current “industry standard”] useless, or it’s about how everyone will get let go because of the market correction and recession, or whatever, so many stupid things. ...