Everyone’s been talking about vibe coding lately. I’ve been doing it myself. Launched two projects. Okutaç and Caccepted. It’s the kind of work where you don’t analyze, architect, or overthink. You start simple. You come up with features. You poke at the product until it makes sense. You skip the logs, skip the diagrams, and rely on repetition and intuition […]
If you’ve worked in software long enough, you’ve probably seen it: a CRUD app serving a handful of users, deployed on a Kubernetes cluster with half the CNCF landscape stitched together for good measure. On paper it looks impressive. In reality, it’s a Rube Goldberg machine solving problems the team doesn’t actually have. Contrast that with Levels.fyi. The site now […]
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 opportunities almost everywhere. In the 2000s and early 2010s, that momentum kept going. Engineers climbed fast, management and then director roles in their 30s, big paychecks, life was good. Then came the pandemic, and […]
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, yet it’s a capability that greatly distinguishes engineers. There is a gap in interviewing. Some of the candidates excel in code interviews and system design but not on the operational side of things. They can […]
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 experience in backend systems, their expertise often lies in different domains. It makes direct alignment almost impossible. Over the years, I have conducted countless interviews. I’ve also run plenty of mock design sessions for mentees. […]