Likes from 24 December 2023

The great dirty secret of the software industry is that an awful lot of the work that is critical to sustainably build and maintain a software system/product/whatever only happens in the wild because one person with a little extra care and a little extra time decided "I'm not going to wait for this to get priority. I'm not going to wait for permission. I'm just going to do this because it should be done, and damn the consequences."

Ha, did not realize that with Microsoft's acqi of GitHub, they pushed it into so many government and enterprise spaces a lot more quickly. Probably why the leadership team there caved to Microsoft, it was more money.

Attached: 4 images · Content warning: Meat and alcohol

Just because you love what you do doesn’t mean it’s not work. It doesn’t devalue your work or time. I know we’re so used to it because of capitalism, but work doesn’t have to feel bad, tiring and draining all the time. It can feel good and still be work.

On 17 September, I made a choice. Waking up from 15 hours of lost time, at a friend’s house, when I should’ve been home the day before. I had clarity. Enough. I’ve shared before a…

okay I’ve let Jesus in, what’s next

I have interviewed 100s of candidates for software engineering positions. I’ve done take-home tests, in person challenges, pair programming with the candidates. All of them were awful experiences for me and especially for the candidate. I can only think of a single instance where a code challenge exposed a poor software engineer and I could definitely have made the same assessment just by talking to them. Lately I’ve stopped doing any software or mental puzzles. I don’t do any of that when I interview designers or QA people or HR people, so why would I be particularly toxic towards software engineers during the hiring process? Instead, I actually read their resumes (which is significantly quicker than doing interviews, asking them to repeat the same information), and then I ask them questions like: - Where do you get your tech news? - How do you learn about new technologies? - What do you most appreciate in your coworkers today? - What is a perfect workday like for you? I specifically avoid trap-style questions like “what is your greatest weakness?” or “why are you leaving your current job?” I recommend that you make a plan for what you want to learn about the candidate, e.g. “are they good at acquiring new skills?” or “do they share the same values as the team?” and then structure the interview around that. Be a non-toxic manager. Make your company look good during the interview process. Get better candidates. #jobs

Attached: 1 image behold, the wreath of khan

Newsletter subscribers might be surprised to see a slightly new design. I’ve moved away from Substack and back to Buttondown, an indie mailing list service. Every email will be free from now on; paid …

ADHD is not “can’t sit still disorder” ADHD is “posting in 10 group chats, subreddits and other posting platforms, never using the search function to see incidents of the same question being raised, asking for tips on how to do complex things like feed yourself and do one task. Upon discovering that you just sort of have to do the thing, you close all the tabs. You ignore your previous attempts to find an answer and do the same post a week later in the hopes that someone has come up with the perfectly suited to you way to do one task. You feel shame and embarrassment and anger and often nothing at all, whilst neurotypical people tell you that it’s easy to do one task you just have to want to do it. You want to do a lot of things but even the things that give you joy are insurmountable” disorder :)

Attached: 1 image made the mistake of looking at the youtube trending tab and, um, that's not the word I'd have used...