Links

A home for Jihad Esmail.

Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save

Many teams start with the MVP. But what if the key to shipping great products wasn’t starting small — but starting big? Could great products start at the finish line?

Strategies and tactics for staying productive.

Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate on simple tasks? I finally cracked the code using thermal receipt printer and game design.

This handbook represents the best of our collective knowledge on management and serves as the foundation of our internal training program here at Clearbit.

Today, I would like to talk about a common challenge that many designers face — creating and updating design portfolio. Portfolio is essential thing that presents your work to potential employers…

A reflection on control, burnout, and the strange weight of technical fluency.

One of many stories about a tech market undergoing transformation. (If you’re out there on the market, don’t lose sight of your strengths. You are awesome.)

How I built a web archive by hand, the tradeoffs between manual and automated archiving, and what I learnt about preserving the web.

Build a private, self-hosted, and extensible productivity notes-taking system using Directus and Docker - inspired by Obsidian and single-file workflows

Tired of migrating notes apps like Obsidian or Evernote? Learn how to build your own private, long-term PKM using self-hosted Directus for control & longevity.

Learn how to setup your MacBook faster with Brewfiles and macOS defaults.

tools, tactics, troubles along the way

Stuck in lock down with time on my hands and an itch to work on something new, I picked back up a side project I started about a decade ago, to build a better resume for developers.

As Highline Solutions turns six, I just wanted to step back and write a bit about what we've built, our mission, and the values we've formed on our journey.

On-call in big tech is bad, found out why.

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?

software used to be functional. now it’s personal. this is an essay about tools, taste, and the quiet ways we curate identity through what we launch.

Notes on a revolution in slow motion.

A collection of things I've learned over my decade in the industry, on how and where to look for jobs, applying, interviewing, talking about yourself and your work, and all those other fun things. For whatever it's worth.

One of life's greatest simple pleasures is creating something just for yourself.

A guide to basic digital hygiene.

After twenty or so years as a software developer, mostly in consulting, I felt like I could handle myself in even the most tenuous situations. As an independent, it instantly felt different.

As a full-time employee, I used to loathe bullshit. But after going independent, I learned there's a flip-side to it.

A simple rule that every good, veteran programmer seems to follow with respect to managing their time.

Charity Majors of Honeycomb.io debunks the "10x engineer" myth, emphasizing team productivity and building inclusive, high-performing engineering teams.

We like lists because they are an objectively good way to organize information. They allow readers to quickly and easily get what they want.

(or at least work better)

My personal framework for reading research papers.

I prefer scripts to real aliases when defining a custom command.

Le Wagon forme des développeurs web et des data scientist à travers des formations intensives (bootcamps) de 2 ou 6 mois, à temps plein ou partiel. Depuis 2013, cette école a déjà formé plus de 11 000 étudiants. Présente dans 44 villes et 25 pays, elle a choisi Notion pour s’adapter à son organisation très horizontale. Le premier objectif était de mettre à disposition de tous ses campus des guides opérationnels. Mais l’outil n’a pas tardé à s’imposer pour le partage des connaissances et la collaboration des équipes.

In an ironic twist, I'd started writing this year in review at beginning of December. It's been a bit of a wild ride since then with the COVID Omicron variant.

If you ask a room full of software engineers what they think about recruiters, there are a number of themes that arise. There are jokes about how overwhelming the experience is, the volume of…

It's been said many times that to have lots of good ideas, we need to have lots of bad ones, too. We need lots of ideas, period. What people often skip over when talking about producing ideas is the effort and skill required to filter out the bad ones and...

In March 2011, I drafted an article explaining how the team responsible for Google Chrome ships software. Then I promptly forgot about it. I stumbled across the draft a few days ago. Though it is now…

Cal Newport writes about how organizations can beat back the scourge of overwork and the stress that goes hand in hand with it, particularly while many workers are remote during the coronavirus pandemic.

Cela fait plus de deux ans que je travaille chez beta.gouv.fr, où un collectif de plus de 250 personnes passionnées par le service public (agents publics, dé...

L'entrée dans le monde de la tech s'ouvre de plus en plus aux femmes. Mais quid de la suite ? Comment sont-elles considérées  lorsqu'elles sont effectivement devenues développeuses ou data scientists ? Quels dispositifs peuvent être imaginés pour les aider à rester dans ce milieu alors que les femmes ont significativement plus de risques d'abandonner leur carrière technique que leurs homologues masculins ? Elisabeth Fainstein, Coach Développeuse pour le programme Entrepreneurs d'intérêt général et fondatrice d'electronictales.io fait le tour de quelques initiatives émergentes – du monde associatif aux grands groupes, en passant par les start-ups et le secteur public –, afin d'examiner les effets de celles-ci et de rêver aux solutions de demain.

Bonjour et bienvenue à vous qui consultez ces quelques mots. Aujourd’hui, j’ai décidé de prendre ma plume et de vous emmener avec moi dans une réflexion qui m’intéresse depuis maintenant un certain …

Putting Thoughts on Trial is a CBT activity focused on the examination of irrational thoughts. Your client will act as a defense attorney, prosecutor,...

Long story short: I’ve taken a new position in Luxembourg and I have tofind an apartment, in a different country, in a reasonably short time.

I was kinda preparing to roll my eyes at this, but it's pretty good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XctnF7C74s What I like are the actual examples, even if they are made generic. Definitely prefer seeing good/bad examples rather than just stating a tip without backing it up with an example. This is a good line: Therein lies the beauty…

When my digital todo lists became overwhelming, I designed a minimalist system that fits in my MagSafe wallet.

John Oliver dedicated the primary segment of his most recent episode on Meta and it's many moderation and privacy failures and violations. It was a well-reasoned take if not a redundant one for everyone who's spent time following these issues. What I found most compelling was his guidance to —...

We are told that technology is on the brink of ruining everything. But we are being lied to, and the truth is so much better. Marc Andreessen presents his techno-optimist vision for the future.

A practical, science-backed model for growing quality professional relationships.

Rethinking the balance between coding passion, life, and maintaining healthy boundaries.

The personal site of designer Naz Hamid.

I've been creating small, hand-written websites to organise my files. It's a lightweight, flexible approach that I hope will last a long time.

Personalisation sells, but good design satisfies. Don't wait for perfect execution. Ship and iterate. You don't need to fill your time. Creating calendar white …

Meta's apps have almost 3 billion daily users. It's scooped up unknown numbers of email addresses and phone numbers for people who never signed up.

The new/old way of keeping a digital journal

You’re someone who’s got dreams. If I ask you what a life lived to the fullest looks like, you imagine things like traveling the world, falling in love, or starting a company...

A higher quality discussion emerged among commenters allowed to use personas instead of their real names.