About a month ago
- Conflict feels costly but keeping systems at tension can sometimes be the key to consistent results...
about 1 month ago
- The best way to win as a business is to move fast. And the best way to move fast is with a smoothly functioning team. There are many ingredients that go into an effective team – hiring, performance management, incentive structures, clear goal setting, streamlined processes, and...
2 months ago
- One of the biggest mistakes is shielding people from the pain they need to learn. Firing People I first became a manager when I was 26. I first had to fire someone when I was 26. I spent the whole week anxious. The night before I couldn’t sleep. On the day of the firing I was...
4 months ago
- Finally, relief: tax regulation hurting the US tech industry is striked off for good - for the most part, that is....
5 months ago
- The Red Queen Scenarios in Sales & HR Are Fueled by AI Apps Yesterday a friend starting their job search asked for my take on today’s job market. In my note back, I noted that AI-assisted writing is making it even harder to stand out: AI has made it so easy for people to write...
6 months ago
- Note: we’ve lined someone up, which means submissions for the apprenticeship are now closed. But please keep your eyes peeled for future opportunities. Ian and I have a ton of fun projects brewing, so we’re looking for a creative, passionate, […]...
7 months ago
- We might be seeing the end of remote coding interviews as we know them, and a return of in-person interviews, trial days and longer trial periods. Could hiring be returning to pre-pandemic norms?...
9 months ago
- Many leaders struggle with complex delegation. Failure to delegate often makes you a bottleneck. There are few things more demoralizing for a team than spending days trying to get a leader to do something that takes them minutes, Failure to delegate also creates key person risk,...
- There are 35% fewer software developer job listings on Indeed today, than five years ago. Compared to other industries, job listings for software engineers grew much more in 2021-2022, but have declined much faster since. A look into possible reasons for this, and what could...
10 months ago
- How has this uncertainty affected software engineers at the Chinese-owned social network?...
about 1 year ago
- AI is changing how hiring works, and that makes in person connections even more important....
over 1 year ago
- A classic problem for any sizable organization is to decide where to standardize and where to allow autonomy. At its core, all organizations must have some things they require of all members. Otherwise, is it really an organization? While some standardization is necessary, many...
- “Why do you want to work for us?” I have run into this question many times as I’ve been applying to and interviewing with lots of companies. 99% of the reason people want to work for a company is because of money. That’s it. They want to be able to pay off debt. They want to be...
- Question: Here's the thing, I’m kind of stuck trying to figure out what a CTO actually makes in terms of $$$, most of the people in the field are secretive about how much they're getting. It's not just about the money (okay, it's a bit about the money), but also understanding if...
- I started The Pragmatic Engineer Job Board in October 2021. 2.5 years later, I am shutting it down permanently, despite a reasonable success in traction. The shutdown was triggered by my vendor – Pallet – discontinuing their job board and talent collective approach. However, I...
almost 2 years ago
- This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Wave. I used to think that behavioral interviews were basically useless, because it was too easy for candidates to bullshit them and too hard for me to tell what was a good answer. I’d end up grading every candidate as an...
- Individual Contributor (IC) engineers are unique in that they are the majority of any cross-functional development team, often outnumbering PM and design by 7-to-1 or more. This scale leads many to start to think of engineers as a commodity. This is a mistake. For example, agile...
- For the first time ever, I was laid off, and had to find a new software developer job. I managed to find a new one, but it took longer than I thought, and it was a lot of work. I … Continue reading →...
- Hiring big-company experienced executives to your startup is hard but important. It’s important because (done well) they will inject very useful experience into your organization. There are many high-consequence business moments that you cannot easily prepare for by reading a...
- How did you get into the bottleneck? A growing startup commonly underinvests in its onboarding process. The need to scale up headcount rapidly can come about unexpectedly. An event can trigger the team scaling – perhaps the product took off with customers, or the startup...
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