Advice

Research from Google and others sheds light on the easiest path to cutting cycle time.

Programming lessons I’ve learnt over the last 7 years.

The “silent majority” was used by President Richard Nixon during his presidency and his campaign. In this usage, it referred to those Americans who did

Reading the docs straight through, like a book, can provide outsized benefits for your career.

This is another post in our Code Health series. A version of this post originally appeared in Google bathrooms worldwide as a Google Tes...

The most common human-related challenges that teams face.

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. Compound growth gets...

Unsure of what a word means and how it applies to UX in-practice? Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and Agile concepts.

Design Manager Sara Culver takes us through evolving the team's product design and writing career levels.

Learn how career ladders work and how to use a career plan to climb the ladder

When seeking tech advice, consider survivorship bias and the ever-changing job market. What worked in the past may not work today, and different factors like experience, location, and education background can impact opportunities. Seek guidance that aligns with your specific situation, connect with others, and embrace adaptability to find success on your own terms.

and how AI can help

A new set of principles for better workflows when making digital products

If you have the itch to found a company, start a business, not a startup. You'll earn more money and enjoy the experience more.

At FTX, Frank, and Pollen, software engineers were asked to do something potentially illegal, or to go along with what looked like fraud. They obliged in two out of three cases, landed in hot water, and now face jail time. A reminder why it’s never a good idea to go along with such requests.

The Burnout Playbook for software engineers

Our 10 person startup gets acquired by Google, we rebuild our product the Google way, and begin to understand that amazing things are possible at Google, if you play the Google game

Designing to scale can be a critical skill to learn in specific fields

When you discuss your promotion with your manager, how do you bring it up? What about when you tell a story in an interview? Or give feedback to a coworker? In each of these situations, our intuition often lies. Our intuition tells us things like: If I just tell my manager how much work I’ve done, he’ll appreciate me.

With actionable tips on how to develop them

In this post I describe how I wish I had archived all my old projects and my approach going forward.

Cofounder drama is the secret startup killer

Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.

Don't suffer and merely survive, aided by your noise cancelling headphones. Optimising for individual happiness can result in less of the joy that people find in teams that achieve great things together.

What can cause managers to play safe—pass on great opportunities, refuse to take risks and do the work they’ve always done before?

As grandiose as the title of this article might sound, I should clarify we’re talking about a low-stress, one-person company that I run from my flat here in Germany.

Many of the most important questions for running an organization don’t have clear answers. In most engineering organizations, both the teams working on infrastructure and the teams working on product feel they are undersized. It’s also true that most individuals feel they are undercompensated. In the boom times, there is often enough investor money laying around to say yes to all these questions, but many leaders are acutely learning the long-term costs of expanding our budget too far.

tl;dr: Google research found that psychological safety is the most important dynamic for an effective team. This was alongside other dynamics like dependabil...