I asked around my network recently - in the last month or two basically every large company has put in spending limits per engineer. Curious what their S1 will look like when they go public.
https://arena.ai/leaderboard - I’ve found this company is a pretty good ranker - not sure their exact methodology but during day to day programming with Claude / gpt models I’ve felt qualitatively what they report
When I first graduated I read a bunch of tech focused books: they’re all helpful but I think practice and learning from more senior engineers is the most effective road to mastery! You can probably get away with not reading any of these books if you have good coworkers :).
That being said, these have been my favorites:
- designing data intensive applications (a great way of understanding systems + the basics of SRE)
- the senior engineer (I love the prototyping process he lays out)
- the effective engineer (lots of good gems for approaching prioritization)
- debugging (by David agans)- a great resource for a formalized debugging process if you don’t have one
- on writing well (I’m halfway through this, but it has been indispensable for writing tickets + messages at work)
I think these groups are out there, but unfortunately they are informal (not listed on the web or through a company), and also are not for a beginner level.
For me, I’ve been learning how to surf and cook. I found at an absolute beginner level no one really wants to go out surfing with you, or do dinner parties. I did find once I showed enough commitment, and reached a beginner-intermediate level, more people were willing to join me in learning, and form informal learning groups.
Therapists are trained to help and give you custom things to do based on what you need. I found one that gave me a lot of structured “assignments” and questions to ask myself and I’ve never felt better than I do now.
It's funny how hyped up stable diffusion is on HN right now: reminds me of when style transfer first started making it's rounds in 2017. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13958366
I think as technologists we want to think that code can "solve" some of the problems in the art world... but I think we still have a really, really long way to go.
I tried to get style transfer adopted at work (worked at a creative technology firm in NY) but frankly I think deep learning methods for art generation tend to be really unpredictable, which make them pretty hard to use for professional applications. Imagine deploying production code that only worked 85% of the time... would be a nightmare. I felt, and feel similarly about deep learning approaches to art. They're just so finnicky and unpredictable, for example, add a single extra pixel to that example in this article and the output would look completely different.
Either way, cynicism aside, stable diffusion is awesome :).
As someone who took their first software engineering job as a junior during covid, I have to say I definitely struggled to learn and execute on tasks in a way which I know I wouldn't in an in person setting.
I found asking for help as a junior is definitely harder when you don't have people around (walking up to someone's desk vs slack message with ~20-60 minute delay then zoom call): and I often found myself blocked on tasks.
I found learning is generally harder remotely for me as well: the sheer amount of information + resources + help you get from serendipitous conversations with other engineers should not be understated. It's the same reason people got so angry over paying so much for remote university: it is objectively a worse learning experience.
I think this is just my personal stance: but I think in my perfect world I work in office for the first 5-10 years of my career to optimize for learning + relationship building, and then once I get more senior (or have kids) I transition into either hybrid or fully remote.
I’m a programmer, and my dads a doctor, and for ten years I’d always tell him that something like 20 questions could do his job.
After about 5 years he did this graduation speech and in it he referenced that: “yes, AI is getting great, your phone is a supercomputer, but the truth is that a computer will never be able to hold the hand of a dying patient and tell them it will be all be okay.”
honestly, not too bad :).
I don't really use it as a "follow this as a guiding design pattern" piece of advice, but I think the philosophy is really useful when dealing with relationships with people, and taking risks in life. Over the past years, thinking "how will I aestheticize my life" has led me to some really interesting + fulfilling relationships and let me experience a lot of life.
Sure, I have gotten burnt quite a few times, but in hindsight I regret nothing. I think the pain and joy and people I've met from just putting myself out there have given me a lot of perspective on life.
That being said, I'm getting to the age where I think I'm ready to settle down a bit: this philosophy I think is most useful if you're young or lost and also don't have much responsibility.
I wrote this back when I was 18, in response to the question “what kind of life do you want to live?” but I always come back to it. Something about it still resonates with me.
“What kind of life do you want to live?”
“A life full of color. I couldnt bear to have a boring life: I want my days to be full of joy and pain and laughter and success and failure and broken hearts and love. To be honest I don’t care where I end up, I just want to look back and smile at a life I painted with all the colors I could find.”
love this question: especially about the distributed systems.
Something I've been thinking about, not necessarily in the interviewing world, would be to have a simulation of distributed systems for non-production code: in theory I think you totally could have a simulation layer for databases / server loads and test how your code performs in such environments.
I guess it exists in production: but haven't seen it for either a) learninga bout distributed systems, or b) for interviews
I agree, I climb a lot IRL and yep, VR can't come close to touching that experience :).
But yeah as far as what VR is good for, there are definitely places where it sings: and where people tend to make a mistake is thinking that it can be a 1-1 with reality and is supposed to replace existing experiences, like climbing or skydiving. I think it's more of a creative medium that will need a really long time to develop (think film, which has had over a century to get its feet under it).
Anyway as an example: this video is kind of the inverse of skydiving, (360 camera on a balloon floating into space), but definitely an interesting experience that can't really be replicated on traditional media.
Agreed. I’ve done generative art for many years now: and I have found generally (with a couple exceptions of course), the most successful artists in the space all have a strong foundation in drawing/painting/graphic design.
> make doing the right thing easier and the wrong thing harder.
I’ve never heard it put so succinctly! In the realm of breaking social media addiction I’ve tried to block all feeds on my laptop using chrome extensions, logout on mobile. To be honest: it’s the “make the right thing easier” that has been tricky for me. I’m trying to read more, but frankly post work tiredness does make diving into good books kind of tricky. Not 100% sure what the right “right thing” to replace social media in my life is yet.
Nice! I love local bookshops and anything that supports them over Amazon is great.
I plan on getting “Evicted” and and “Streetfight” based on your recommendations too, thanks for making this site!