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54 articles tagged #Career.
P.01A founding engineer isn't your first senior hire with better equity. Here's how to screen for the generalist, high-ambiguity skill set the role actually needs.
P.02Algorithm puzzles score memorization, not the job. Here's the five-dimension rubric we use to screen developers on what they'll actually do at work.
P.03A staff engineer is scoped by impact across teams, not seniority. Here is how to screen for that instead of promoting your best senior engineer.
P.04A DevRel posting draws speakers, content marketers, and ex-engineers who miss coding. How to work out which your product needs, what to test, what it costs.
P.05A solutions architect posting attracts cloud generalists, ex-consultants, and people who haven't shipped in years. How to tell them apart, and what to test.
P.06PM job descriptions read identically across companies. The actual job doesn't. Which of the three real PM jobs you're hiring for, and what the role costs.
P.07Shopify hiring split into two jobs, theme customization and app or headless work, that share a platform and little else. How to tell which one you need.
P.08Firmware hiring fails differently from web hiring. The pool is small, the specialisms don't transfer, and the usual coding screen tells you almost nothing.
P.09Deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, time to restore. What each measures, the tiers that separate elite teams, and where teams misuse them.
P.10Forward-deployed engineer postings grew over 1,000% year over year, with comp at $300K-$550K. What the role is, why it exists, and what it means for hiring.
P.11A data analyst is not a junior data scientist or a dashboard builder. What the role requires, how it differs, and the screen that finds decision-changing work.
P.12Most agencies keep a bad client months too long because nobody has a framework. How to recognise when it's time, and how to end it without burning bridges.
P.13EM hires fail for different reasons than IC hires. What to actually test: handling underperformance, technical debt calls, and pushback with the business.
P.14MLOps sits between the data scientist's model work and the DevOps engineer's infrastructure. What the role owns, what to screen for, and where people come from.
P.15Game hiring is not web hiring. How to tell Unity talent from Unreal talent, what to actually test for, and what it costs to get this right in 2026.
P.16Agent sandbox escapes, prompt injection, and tool-permission design are a distinct skill set from AppSec. What to screen for, and where candidates come from.
P.17Rails isn't the default startup choice anymore, but it didn't disappear. Where it still wins, where Next.js and Django beat it, and who should learn it.
P.18North Korea-linked campaigns hide malware in take-home coding tests, using steganography in SVGs to pass review. How to vet a challenge before you run it.
P.19AI agents made broad, shallow knowledge cheap to fake. What's getting scarcer is the depth to know when the agent is wrong. Specializing versus generalizing.
P.20June 2026 data shows software engineer listings up 30% with 67,000+ open roles, despite the layoff headlines. Who's hiring, and where the market shrinks.
P.21Most developers lose money by negotiating too early, disclosing their current salary, or taking the first number offered. What actually works instead.
P.22Most hiring managers look at the wrong things. Stars and followers tell you almost nothing. What to look for, and what AI changed about reading profiles.
P.23Both formats have real problems, and AI made take-homes worse. What each predicts, where each fails, and the hybrid that beats either one on its own.
P.24Most reference checks are theater: three friends say nice things and you move on. How to run calls that surface real information before you make an offer.
P.25LeetCode interviews are popular and mostly useless for predicting on-the-job performance. What the research says works, and how to build that process.
P.26A week-by-week playbook for onboarding a new software engineer. What to cover in the first month, what most teams skip, and how to measure whether it is working.
P.27The remote market is more competitive and more winnable than it looks. The developers who get hired aren't the strongest coders, they're the easiest to assess.
P.28Most technical job descriptions repel the people they're trying to hire. What senior developers actually look for, and how to write a posting that lands.
P.29Agency IP productization turns rebuilt code into recurring revenue: how to spot what's worth extracting, pick a packaging model, and price it.
P.30Most agency owners are the bottleneck in their own business. Here's how to build systems for client work, hiring, and operations that run without you.
P.31Standard Scrum assumes stable backlogs, but agencies face client reviews, scope talks, and projects that end. Here's the adapted sprint structure that works.
P.32Most agencies figure out support pricing and SLA structure only after a client calls at 11pm. A better approach: define what you're selling before the project launches.
P.33Most agency case studies fail because they document process instead of the client's decision and what changed. The structure that converts, and what to cut.
P.34Hiring full-time for a three-month surge is one of the most expensive agency mistakes. How to build a contractor network before the moment you need it.
P.35An ADR captures why a technical choice was made, not just what. One page per decision, stored in the repo. Here's the format and how to make it stick.
P.36Most software estimates fail before code is written, not from bad hours but unexamined assumptions. Here is a more honest, process-driven estimation approach.
P.37Most handoff docs get ignored once a client can't find their CMS login. What to write, how to structure it, and what agencies skip that causes support calls.
P.38How to structure agency payment terms: deposits, milestone billing, net terms, and late fees that keep cash flow predictable and overdue invoices rare.
P.39Show your reasoning, not just your tech stack. Here's what makes a developer portfolio stand out when every project claims AI experience in 2026.
P.40Most agencies invoice and move on. The ones that improve fastest sit down and ask what actually happened. How to run a debrief that produces changes.
P.41Most developers still run decade-old command line tools. Here's what's replaced them in 2026: faster terminals, Git UIs, shell prompts, and search tools.
P.42Scope creep looks like a client problem until you notice the same clients cause it every time and others never do. The difference is process, not personality.
P.43Every agency hits the same wall: more work than the team can handle, not enough volume for a hire. White-label partnerships are how survivors manage growth.
P.44Most agency developers never check the licence of an npm package until a client's lawyer does. What MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL and AGPL actually require.
P.45Developer burnout has a new texture in 2026: AI productivity pressure, skills anxiety, and blurred output-identity lines. What's different, and what helps.
P.46Retainer contracts promise stable revenue but often create scope creep and capacity problems. Here's how to structure retainers that work for both sides.
P.47Most technical proposals lose because they describe what will be built, not why the client should trust you to build it. Here's how to write one that actually wins.
P.48The honest read on web developer demand after AI's impact, which roles are hot, which are cooling, and what the working week actually looks like across employment types.
P.49Real revenue, profit margins, and owner take-home for solo, boutique, mid-size, and enterprise web agencies, including the messy parts most income reports skip.
P.50Gartner's $44.5B low-code market projection has arrived. Here's how Retool, Bubble, and FlutterFlow are reshaping development for professional teams.
P.51EditorPickMy first year running an agency paid me less than freelancing did. The real lessons on revenue, hiring, founder dependency and cash flow that fixed it.
P.52The developer career ladder split into IC, management, and hybrid tracks. Here's how each path works and how to pick the one that fits you.
P.53The developer employment landscape offers more options than ever. Here's an honest comparison of freelancing, agency work, and full-time employment to help you decide.
P.54Tech interviews are evolving. Take-home projects, AI-assisted coding, and system design are reshaping how companies evaluate developers. Here's what to expect.