Advice

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.

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.

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...

When managers and leaders don't specify the expected time investment of an ask, the time that is invested is almost never what was intended.

Learn how to apply open source community ideas to your organization to spread standards and best practices without sacrificing autonomy and innovation.

The best way to have more luck is to create it...

This passage here from John Gruber’s review of some new macs struck me in particular: Web browser rendering is surprisingly resource-intensive — partially because modern HTML, CSS, and Javascript are remarkably complex, and partially because most web developers are remarkably untalented and careless programmers

Tips from a marketing expert on how to sell yourself as a graphic designer.

In less than a week, I am taking a group of "soon to be" CodeCrew Code School graduates to BitCON in Nashville, TN. While I am excited that this will be an exhilarating, educational, and transformative experience, it hit hard this morning that it will be their first time at a Tech Conference. For aspiring junior software engineers, these events are crucial platforms to network, learn, and jumpstart their careers. However, navigating the hustle and bustle of a tech conference can be overwhelming

Being a web designer for 25+ years is hard to fathom. So much has changed, and achieving longevity in web design is really not easy.

Based on hundreds of interviews for Big Tech companies and startups

Chose life over balance to own your future.

Architects can save you tons of time, and prevent crucial mistakes from happening. They are very experienced software engineers, who have seen it all. * This applies to any cross-team Senior+ engineers you have. They can be called Architects/Staff/Principal engineers - in each organization it’s different.

What do Honeywell, IBM, and Pfizer have in common? Employees with strong professional networks. A study of 2 billion employee relationships on LinkedIn probes the power of such connections—and potential benefits for companies. Research by Frank Nagle.

Why product-market fit requires founder-market fit

Key challenges and opportunities for marketing leaders

The best analogy I’ve heard for startups is that they’re like looking for gold. Not because of the adventure, or the camaraderie, or the riches awaiting you on the other end. But because a gold-seeking expedition has two very different phases: first, you look for gold; then, you