career articles

2012, Thursday afternoon, sprint review. Twelve smart engineers, three product people, zero decisions. Every proposal dissolved into “yeah, that could […]

Two weeks ago I sat through a board call with a seed-stage startup. Burn rate north of “I’d rather not […]

Last Tuesday I had three draft CTO offers sitting on my desk — from a fintech, a health-tech, and a […]

When you messaged me last Thursday, if I’m not mixing up my calendar invites — you asked a deceptively simple […]

Last week I found myself comparing two pull requests: both touched the same service, both under 200 lines, yet one […]

First week at mindnow, I walked into a planning meeting and instantly felt outclassed — three people were quoting Erlang […]

Dear Reader, I read your note yesterday evening while skimming through a stack of CVs from this semester’s graduates (the […]

Dear Tim, Your note popped up on my screen last Monday around 23:40. I was about to shut the laptop […]

Falsehoods Junior Developers believe about becoming Senior Habits of great software engineers Proper Software Development Estimations Why software projects fail […]

I was approached at a meetup recently right after my talk on system design. Coffee in hand, a junior dev […]

Dear Robert, The two-sentence version: the code isn’t your code, and feeling bruised about it is normal. Everything after this […]

Back when my Linked In still said “Junior Rails Dev (contract)” I had a very cinematic idea of what “Senior” […]

Hello Alex, I still remember the week after my own graduation — half-terrified, half-buzzing on cheap espresso, convinced that one […]

Hello Torb, I keep getting versions of your question in my inbox: “No one hires juniors, what do I do?” […]

Dear Friend, I read your note yesterday morning, coffee still brewing, and the frustration in your words felt familiar (I’ve […]

Last Friday I opened my inbox to yet another message that started with, “I don’t have a CS degree, but […]

Tuesday night, somewhere between sip three and four of espresso, I caught myself rewriting the same helper function for the […]

I was standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company had put together, feeling like a […]

I spent most of yesterday afternoon watching a junior dev hover over the “send” button in Slack, type a question, […]

That Slack message from someone on my team — dropped at 11 p.m. right after our deployment window — read: […]

I still remember a hiring session from late 2022: two junior applicants, same age, same enthusiasm. One had just finished […]

Short answer: Keep your day job for now. Spend evenings and the odd Sunday hacking on the idea until you’re […]

The penny dropped for me during a late-night pitch deck review. I was proudly walking the investors through our fault-tolerant […]

It was 3 a.m., the office lights were off, and Slack was still pinging because I had forgotten to pause […]

2017. I’m two weeks into a “senior developer” gig at a seed-stage startup, happily shipping features, when the founders corner […]

I still remember walking into my first sprint planning at mindnow back in 2016 — two whiteboards full of stickies, […]

I still remember sitting in a hostel at 2 a.m., job offer in one hand, fountain pen in the other, […]

Lessons learned from becoming CTO of a small startup How to build remote teams properly Things they didn’t teach you […]

I’m jet-lagged, running on too much espresso, and decided to finally hit “publish” on the notes I’ve been stashing in […]

⛓ Implementing Atomic Habits in IT 🏆 Promotion-based development 📈 The Toxic Grind ⛓ Implementing Atomic Habits in IT 🏆 […]

Two Fridays ago I picked up a bottle of Swiss pinot to celebrate a long-overdue bonus hitting my account. I […]

I spent last week digging through old HR docs, trying to stitch together a halfway decent career ladder for our […]

I got burned once — two unpaid salaries, a panicked Slack message at midnight, and a curt “we’re out of […]

Picture this: it’s 7 p.m., the cleaners are vacuuming the hallway of our shared office space, and I’m still fiddling […]

Somewhere around year fifteen of writing code I noticed a weird blind spot. A junior engineer would ask what felt […]

The night after my graduation ceremony I signed an offer from a fintech startup that operated out of a half-empty […]

Last autumn I was still at the office at 02:07, waiting for a flaky Jenkins job to turn green. Out […]

This piece is part of the Technical Manager Guide. Think of it as field notes from someone who’s broken more […]

Last Tuesday I grabbed a cappuccino at ViCAFE, the tiny kiosk next to Bürkliplatz. On the tram I ended up […]

Right after our last sprint review, I overheard someone on my team asking, “So what does our Product Owner actually […]

Jakob pinged me on Slack at 23:18—one of those “hey, quick question” messages you know isn’t quick. He’d noticed the […]

🔥 Wednesday, 10:13 AM. I had VS Code open, coffee cooling to room temperature, and exactly zero lines of the […]

🤖 I shipped my first “next big thing” sometime in 2010, posted the link on Hacker News, and refreshed the […]

Last Thursday I caught myself doom-scrolling at 6:30 am—coffee still brewing, half-awake, already tense. I’ve lived through recessions, the dot-com […]

🚀 Founders Guide 2022 📚 Q&A for Startup Founders 📰 Previous Newsletter Issues 🛠️ How to be a better technical […]