Your Work Introduces You
Years ago, when I first joined Tripadvisor, we had a tool that moved data to Amazon Redshift. One of the engineers went on holiday, the tool had a few bugs, and people were bloc...
Career
Career growth, interviews, communication, productivity, and the habits that compound over time.
Trial By Fire
Teams spend months hiring a strong candidate. Sourcing, interviews, debriefs, approvals, compensation, notice period. Everyone treats the hire like a serious investment. Then th...
Escaping Status Theater
I still think about one migration project where everything was green until the final month. We did not have the luxury of extending the deadline. This was tied to external regul...
Managing Your Manager
Managers change more often than you realize, especially when a company is growing or downsizing. New roles, new org charts, new reporting lines. Other times, you’re shopping aro...
AI Broke Interviews
Interviewing has always been a big can of worms in the software industry. For years, big tech has gone with the LeetCode style questions mixed with a few behavioural and rounds....
Stop Wasting Brainpower
How many times have you found yourself saying: “I worked all day, but I didn’t get anything done.” I know, we have all been there. We feel bad about it, too. On the surface, it...
Climbing No More
Engineers have been reaching a common ceiling in their careers for decades. The pattern goes like this: an individual contributor gets promoted to a senior software engineer, an...
Yapay Zekâ Çağında Bilgisayar Mühendisliği
Son aylarda, ister posta kutumdan, ister web sitem üzerinden, isterse tanıdıklar aracılığıyla olsun, hep aynı soruya cevap veriyorum: “2025’te bilgisayar bilimi okumak hâlâ mant...
From Idea to Launch in 2 Weeks
Everyone’s been talking about LLMs. I didn’t want to be too late to the party. When everyone’s talking about doomsdays scenarios, I just wanted to see for myself. As an engineer...
Reflecting on Software Engineering Handbook
One year. May 2024. Back then, we were riding high, celebrating the launch of this with an amazing . Five days of glaciers and waterfalls, finally enjoying the fact that we fini...
New Manager Survival Guide
Alright, this is gonna be a long one. And not just a onetime thing. I'll keep updating it as I write more about leadership. I’ll try to link everything I’ve written before. This...
Take Self Reviews Seriously
This isn’t the first and definitely won’t be the last time I find myself in a conversation about the importance of self checkins, performance reviews, and all that socalled “ref...
Chasing Real Respect
You can fake a lot of things in business. Authority. Expertise. Competence. But you can’t fake certain , like respect. Think about the managers you’ve had in the past. The good...
The Invisible Difference
There are plenty of skills you can pick up along the way. Some come from , some through experience. A lot of it is just trial and error. And some from . You figure things out su...
Simple Task Management
I don’t have the best memory. Hell, I barely remember what I did yesterday. Over the years, I’ve tried countless apps to track my tasks, but most of them are too complex. Signin...
AI Balance in Work
I use AI, you use AI, and almost everyone uses AI. I don’t think that’s going to change. But how should we use it? I’ve seen people turn five bullet points into three pages — I...
Engineering Manager Interview Preparation
Layoffs seem to be everywhere these days. You scroll through feeds, and it’s another round of cuts, another company restructuring. If you're a seasoned manager, losing your role...
Work-Life Balance as a Manager
As an IC, you close your laptop at 6 PM, log off, and forget about the work unless you are oncall. As a manager, you check Slack at 10 PM because someone might need you. Your ca...
Tech Hiring Bubble Bursts
I wasn’t around in the 90s, but people who were say it was incredible. If you could code, you were set. Talent was rare. There were almost everywhere. In the 2000s and early 201...
The Reality of an Employer's Market
Lately, Iʼve seen a lot of posts about what employers should do or how they should treat candidates, what benefits they should offer, and how they should run their interviews. I...
Hiring Red Flags
Hiring is tough. It's one of the most important tasks a manager faces while growing their team. The problem with hiring is that a bad hire can significantly impact you financial...
From Misperception to Promotion
If you are in the realm of management, sooner or later, you will encounter someone who wants a promotion but isn’t quite ready for it. In fact, I have seen many cases where the...
Setting Goals
One thing I've learned over the years is that humans naturally don't have a longterm mindset. Without clear goals, it's easy to lose track of what we want to achieve. Defining g...
From Engineer to Manager
I often get asked whether someone should transition into management. In the past, this might have been the only viable growth path. However, in most large organizations today, t...
Interviewing Your Future Boss
I’m sure you have been asked if you have any questions during interviews. A few things come to mind. Often, we think we need to impress the other party. Nevertheless, tough ques...
Operational Skills Needed
Over the years, I've interviewed many candidates. One crucial skill that often gets overlooked is operational reflexes during oncalls. Surprisingly, few companies test for this,...
On Writing Software Engineering Handbook
I’m thrilled to share the story behind our newly published book with you. This project has been a labor of friendship and collaboration, and I hope our journey resonates with yo...
Navigating Layoffs
In the last few years, companies have begun laying off talent, leading to tough and depressing times for many. Some layoffs came as a big surprise, especially from companies tha...
Bireysel Katılımcılar ve Yöneticiler
İş hayatında sıkça karşılaştığımız yöneticilik(management) ve bireysel katılımcı (BK / individual contributor) rolleri, aslında birer yaşam tarzını temsil eder. Bu iki rol, kişi...
Leading from Where You Are
When we were building Areca, a realtime billing engine for Turk Telekom, we were a small team competing against giants like Amdocs. They had the brand recognition, the scale, an...
The Power of Consistency
One of my friends from primary school didn’t go to high school. At first, it was a bit surprising, but his family was making kebap, and he wanted to run the family business. Bec...
The Path to Leadership
Leadership is not a position. It is a journey that changes how you see yourself and the people around you. You begin as an individual contributor, focused on your own craft. Ove...
Embracing TikTok
I've had a TikTok account for a while. I was a passive scroller. But, today I made my first video based on . It's about how building a great team is like cooking a good meal. Yo...
Talent Sourcing Journey
Talent sourcing is one of those things everyone claims to understand until they actually have to do it. On paper, it sounds simple: find great people, hire them, done. But anyon...
Cracking Coding Bottlenecks
In software development, we obsess over component benchmarks and algorithmic complexity, chasing milliseconds latency and BigO wins. But, time and after time, I’ve found that th...
Achieve More by Meeting Less
Meetings are part of leadership. We need them to align and understand. Yet, we often do it at the expense of action. The success lies in the milestones achieved. In essence, "Fe...
Becoming a Rockstar Engineer
In the software development realm, people often debate about 10x engineers or rockstars. But what does that really mean? How can you become one? There isn’t an easy answer, but...
Turning Defensiveness Into Growth
As a leader, part of the job is helping people grow. That usually means giving feedback. And while we often picture feedback as a simple “I share, you listen,” the truth is it o...
Why You Should Read More Code
In university, I have master students studying software engineering. I often ask them one question: how do authors become authors? Do they suddenly start writing great novels in...
Embrace the Unknowns
Why do we often stick to what's familiar? It's simple: it feels safe. However, staying in our comfort zone means missing out on intriguing experiences. Think about the thrill of...
Teaching Software Engineering
As a software engineering instructor, I’ve taught a diverse group of master’s students with varying technical backgrounds. Not everyone comes in with the same level of expertise...
System Design Interviewing Tips
System design interviews are inherently subjective. Outcomes depend on many factors, including the backgrounds of both the interviewer and the candidate. Even if both have exper...
Missed Opportunities
Itʼs been a while and I havenʼt posted anything new on my blog. Life, work, and priorities often got in the way, but the urge to write never really went away. Itʼs time to get b...
Leetcode Hard
Over the years, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table. To become better at conducting interviews and preparing for my own, I spent time solving and reviewing coding pro...
Yazılım Mühendisliği Kariyer Merdiveni
Yazılım şirketleri, mühendislik mesleği seviyelerini dikkatlice oluşturmalı ve çalışanlardan ne beklendiğini, roller arasındaki farkı ve kariyer gelişimi için alanları açıklayan...
The Real Work Is Social
I get along with people. I talk, I joke, I do the normal office stuff. But even with that, something about how work actually works has always felt off. You think the job is most...
Yazılım için İngilizce Öğrenin
Geçenlerde sitem üzerinden bir eposta aldım. Yazılım mimarisi ödevine yardım edebilir misiniz diye soruyordu. Meşgul olduğumu ama zaten internette benden bu konuyu daha iyi açık...
I'm no longer a Scrum Master
Recently, I received an email from Scrum Alliance. My Scrum Master Certificate has expired. As expected, the email was suggesting to get certified again, a friendly nudge to sta...
How I Work as a Software Engineer
When I started out, I thought productivity meant speed. Ship fast, fix fast, move fast. Working in startups taught me something different. When everything around you changes con...
Consistency Matters
When I look back at the projects I’ve worked on, the most peaceful moments were always when the code felt consistent. Everything lined up. Names made sense. Files looked familia...
A guide for Code Reviews
Code reviews shouldn’t be about ego. Still, every time you send one, you’re putting yourself out there. You want your work reviewed but at the same time it makes you vulnerable....
Java Developer vs. Software Engineer
Java developer vs. software engineer is discussed quite often, especially among programmers trying to define what truly separates a coder from an engineer. One of my friends kep...
Moving from Java to Python
I recently started a new role in AWS networking, and it’s the first time I’ve gone from writing everything in Java to writing almost everything in Python. Honestly, the shift is...
Yazılım Mühendisliği Mülakatlarına Hazırlık Rehberi
Yazılım mühendisliği mülakatları her geçen gün daha da zorlaşıyor. Mülakatlara iyi bir sonuç almak ise yılların birikimi ve insanın mülakat esnasındaki performansı ile doğru ora...
Hello World
I am starting this blog, even though I do not really know what I am doing yet. I see engineers blogging and sharing what they learn. It looks cool, and it feels like a good habi...