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...
Engineering Career Series
Software engineering career advice that holds up: how to read career signals, manage your boss, navigate interviews, and build a long career well.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Prisoner's Dilemma
On September 3, 1949, a weather plane was flying over Japan. It detected traces of radioactive isotopes. These elements decay quickly, which means they had been created recently...
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...
No Fluff Please
I've seen countless socalled resume coaches who stuff resumes with flashy buzzwords like 'scalable' and 'fast.' It's all fluff, and it doesn't land real results. A truly impactf...
Leadership Archetypes
I’ve had all kinds of bosses over the years. Some of them were visionaries. Some others were quiet geniuses. One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to survive and maybe even...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...