Getting coffee with a bunch of local tech leaders, I surprised myself with how stridently I argued why companies should hire junior engineers. Lately, BigTech only wants elite squads of Staff devs tha
A few days into making One Million Checkboxes I thought I’d been hacked. What was that doing in my database? A few hours later I was tearing up, proud of some brilliant teens. But let’s back up. Note
“Every builder or workman that comes here says ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’,” Fiona Mitchell, says, standing in what was once a disused alleyway in Levenshulme, in Manchester, and is now a thriv
Last year, I read Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. In his research, Reeves outlines various factors leading to boys and men feeling excluded from society and failed by various systems, whether it be
The plan for the day — a radiant Monday at the end of June, with no classes to teach — included two hours writing his new book, one preparing the next program of his podcast, two more to record it, an
I’m writing this from a rental property, on a hillside overlooking the northern reach of the Taconic Mountains. A key feature of this property is a small outbuilding, designed and built by the current
Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder 25 Jul 2024, 22:10 p.m. "A Story About Jessica" by SwiftOnSecurity Open Source and Free Culture by Swift On Security The cybersecurity expert SwiftOnSecurity, a decade ago, wrote a parable called "A Story About Jessica" and posted it to their…
Things always get worse before they get better —The Sad Truth of Software Design (also lots of other activities) You have a design. You need it to be better at supporting new features. How do you get from here to there? Here’s the Sad Truth of Software Design—it always gets worse before it gets…
Her hair was curled. Her skin was powdered. Her white organdie gown had been tailor-made by the House of Worth. Her gloves, as all debutantes’ must, reached to the elbow. Her posture was from Miss Iro
Winners of the Nobel prize in economics tend to sprinkle their papers with equations. Daniel Kahneman, who died on March 27th, populated his best-known work with characters and conundrums. Early reade
Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. In 2013 lifespring church moved from the suburbs into a former cinema near the centre of Reading. At the time, its congregation w
(Updated February 28, 2024) This essay is also available as a conference recording you can watch here → I once had the opportunity to work for a startup that had fallen from tech debt into tech bankruptcy. Although we managed to get it back on the right track, it made me rethink the concept of tech…
Mar 21st 2024 |SWAKOPMUND Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. There are plenty of reminders of the colonial past in Swakopmund , a town on Namibia’s coast, if you kn
“OPPENHEIMER”, which won seven Oscars at the Academy Awards on March 10th, is a film about hubris and regret. Cillian Murphy plays the titular American scientist who builds the atomic bomb that will e
To understand what it is like to try to become an MP you could read memoirs, learned tracts or rulebooks. It is better to ask MPs about letterboxes. Every MP will have spent hours leafleting, and few
Most of us have the distinct pleasure of going throughout our lives bereft of the physical presence of those who rule over us. Were we peasants instead of spreadsheet jockeys, warehouse workers, and b
My two years (thus far) of "involuntary retirement" and subsequent forays through more interview processes than I care to count has yielded some interesting insights on our industry, recruiting teams,
Business is noisy. Business is full of people worrying loudly about projects, processes, and other people. These people have opinions, and they share them all over the place — all the time. This collective chatter is part of the daily regimen of a healthy business, but this chatter will bury the…
I think I have a problem with authority. Starting with my own. It troubles me greatly to hear that people see me as an expert or an authority, and not a fellow amateur. If I've learned anything in my
An allegory? Sarcasm? Humorous pastiche? You decide. The fanatical proponents of baseball tell us that it is a very exciting game, fun to play and fun to watch. They are clearly either stupid or evil
Atop an ordinary slab of office building in downtown Warsaw juts what at first might look like yet another example of architectural one-upmanship. But the 80-metre steel spire pointing out of the newi
Feb 29th 2024 |GRANTHAM “We could certainly fit 22 in here,” says Lee Steptoe, a Labour Party councillor, as he surveys an upstairs room in Grantham’s Guildhall. The room is large and imposing, with V
Feb 29th 2024 In the winter of 1991, around the time of the first intifada, Joe Sacco, then a young cartoonist and journalist, arrived in Gaza with no particular aim except “to see what’s going on”. H
The 20th century was not kind to ponds in Britain. Many were drained to create more farmland or filled in to make room for new buildings. Some went to waste, others were stuffed with it. The traffic w
They are dying out. Last month the final surviving member of the original SAS died. A year or so ago the last “Dambuster” pilot died. A few years before that, the last Battle of Britain Spitfire ace d
Not long after I moved to San Francisco, I started singing regularly with a choir. I hadn't sung with a choir in years, and this choir was pretty advanced: their material often included frequent key c
“EASY TO FIND and hard to leave.” That is how Sidmouth’s tourism website describes the small seaside town in East Devon, where the red cliffs turn the ocean water pink. The tagline could apply to live
In the nearly 40 years that The Economist has served up its Big Mac index, the price of the McDonald’s burger in America has more than tripled. In that same period the cost of another meaty treat—a ho
I t’s one of those things that, once you’ve seen, you can’t unsee. Once you’ve noticed the curved benches, the spikes embedded in doorways, the posts made for leaning rather than sitting, the carefull
T hat evening of April 3rd 1968, round Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, a mighty storm was blowing. The tin roof banged in the rain, and the rafters blew against each other. Yet the vast hall was p
Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android . I f you ever hear a professional investor talk about a trade that taught them a lot, prick up your ears. Usually, this is code f
I t was his Mum who started it. She was always singing round the house, turning any stray remark into a rhyme, such as “Let’s go to the show, we have to go now, you know….” Uncle Everett added to it w
Q UITE HOW the Pacific Ocean’s early long-distance mariners found their way so impressively will never be precisely known. Islanders had no written language, and by the time Europeans arrived in the P
Let me introduce you to WordStar 4.0 , a popular word processor from the early 80s. WordStar 4.0 As old as it seems, George R.R. Martin used it to write “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Why would someone use
Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android . I f you have ever longed to make your own cider, Eric Freeman would soon show you how. First, find the right apples: not from th
Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android . J ourdan Thibodeaux has had a job every day since his tenth birthday. These days the dreadlocked millennial flips houses, manufa
E ven their downfalls are spectacular. Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis’s exuberant b
O PEN A TEXTBOOK for a foreign language, and one of the first things you see is an alphabet, enumerating the letters used in the writing system and the sounds they represent. This is obviously crucial
“I awoke one morning and found myself famous,” Lord Byron once said. Just over a decade ago a secluded avenue of ancient beech trees in rural north Antrim, in Northern Ireland, experienced something s
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