As the newest academic job season enters its most intense phase, I realized it had been many years since I last really analyzed the job market. I made a post back in 2017 documenting the results of…

How much do you charge per hour (and project) for freelance work?

An idea that we discussed recently that stuck with me: ten extra minutes spent making sure what you send is concise and clear can save the organization two hundred minutes. The math is simple. Send…

Today’s guest post comes from Skyler Holobach! I’ve known Skyler forever, as one of our fellow deliverability experts in this world of email, and now she runs her own company focused on email…

Amid ongoing turmoil, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) announced yesterday that Rita Kalyani is no longer its chief scientific and medical officer, “effective immediately.” The…

The Board affirmed a refusal to register the mark TALKIE for, inter alia , "downloadable computer chatbot software for simulating conversations in the field of entertainment, education, creative…

For decades, leadership was viewed as the natural next step in career growth. Moving into management meant greater influence, greater responsibility, and often greater fulfillment. Today, that…

Korea's National Tax Service hired thousands of debt collectors this year, quietly linking two very different searches.

I've always been told you can't trust a weatherman. Forecasting has gotten dramatically better, but there's a reason most apps stop pretending after a week or two: beyond that, you're not getting a…

Toxic culture rarely starts with a bad actor. It starts with the leader who saw it, said nothing, and called it patience.

In a market full of talkers, the builder has an unfair advantage.

Hi there, I’m Steven 👋 I enjoy solving hard problems. I currently work on the GPU performance team at Jane Street where I think hard about making models train faster on GPUs.

From software company Linear, a blog post from last year titled Why we committed to a zero-bugs policy : When we tell people that Linear maintains a zero-bug policy a common response is disbelief. It…

This essay was originally written for and submitted to the Pragmatic Engineer essay contest in October 2026. At some point earlier this year I realized I was not enjoying work the way I used to. I'm…

Domestic models carry the volume, and US models are kept for the hardest coding.

TL;DR Certifications are not bad; chasing them is. A badge proves you reached the passing mark on one exam on one day. It does not prove you have run the service in production, and the terms attached…

In business communication, the writer should pay the cost of clarity. Slack reactions, bare instructions, and abbreviations push it onto readers.

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New Zealand is getting its first artist alley store! I talk to the owner to see what's up.

You may have seen these “loud working” types. That is someone who is always announcing how hard they are working, how valuable they are and how important they are to the…

Derek Sivers brilliantly explains in under five minutes what it takes to be a leader. Not all TED talks deserve your attention, but this one definitely does. And Derek Sivers himself too. After his…

A few years ago, I was having coffee at a conference with a friend and fellow speaker, when someone approached with a question."Jay!" she said. (A fine opening, I thought. For that, dear reader, is…

"When people see AI as a more competent, trustworthy, and preferable source of input than a colleague, they replace human interactions that otherwise would have built or maintained trust."

I'm trying something new:Second Violin Advisory | Engineering leadership coaching and advisoryCoaching and advisory for engineering leaders: executive coaching, engineering organization reviews…

According to Lord Google: kofiwidget2.init('Buy Me a Coffee', '#46b798', 'A604H55');kofiwidget2.draw(); ▪️To net $150,000 a year from a dairy farm, you generally need between 120 and 750 milk cows,…

David Wolfe is a barrister who, with his brother, inherited a farm, a rather special farm called Wakelyns, that his parents, particularly his father who was an agricultural researcher, had set up in…

Engineering leaders say AI agents write code much faster, yet their release cycles are no faster than before. Typing was never the bottleneck: here's where the time really goes, and what I'd change…

Working out loud is more than telling people what you’re doing. It has two halves, and each one on its own falls short. The first half is observable work: your documents, drafts and decisions…

On the 14th October, fifteen freelancers met up in the beer garden of the Battle of Trafalgar pub to talk freelancing, tech, AI and motor racing. This is some of what we talked about: Switching from…

My vocation is to produce useful software. Hand writing was always a constraint, not a feature. I know all too well the necessity of finding a way to pay for the labor of producing the software, but…

The Anthropic Institute’s newest report says that the company’s junior recruitment has begun to slow down. All block quotes below are from this report. Anthropic has been hiring for a smaller share…

This week, when your brand is not for everyone (especially Zuckerberg), and that's a good thing.

I turned The system around the code into a video. It's the same argument: AI made writing code cheap, but delivery moves at the speed of its slowest step, and for most teams that step is review.

A product story is the shared explanation of what your product does, who it's for and why it matters. Here's how to write yours with your team.

If you schedule an hour for a meeting and your meeting lasts for an hour, you have failed for three reasons: An efficient person completes almost all tasks in less […]

This week, Netflix announced substantial layoffs. Moreover, content chief Bela Bajaria and film head Dan Lin have been pushed out this week too. What's wrong at Netflix? According to the Wall Street…

A good friend put it simply: accountability goes up, credit goes down. When things go wrong, leaders take accountability. When things go well, credit flows down to the team. One of the clearest signs…

The Board upheld a Section 2(e)(1) refusal to register the proposed mark PERMANENT JEWELRY WELDER , finding it to be merely descriptive of electric welding machines and welding education services.…

At the recent Open Source Summit Europe in Prague, the Linux Foundation / TODO Group just released the 2026 version of their State of OSPOs and Open Source Management Report: Expanding Open Source…

Hi everyone. Reminder: This Wednesday October 21st at 10am Pacific Time, please join me and fellow rabble-rouser Aparna Rae for a fun and informal conversation where we bust some of the myths about…

Isn’t it wonderful that you get to do the things that you do? All of them. You get to use your gifts at work to serve others. You get to...

FDPPI has been the leader in the DPDPA domain and has been taking leadership in directing the community towards the requirements of a Post DPDPA eco system. FDPPI started with conducting…

“When you know more, you’ll see more, you’ll do more, and you’ll be able to execute better.” Excellence comes from paying attention to the details other people might overlook. Early…

I remember sending the breakup email almost a decade ago. It took me days to work up the courage. Early one Sunday I emailed Dan to tell him 20Skaters Hockey didn’t support captains organizing league…

job loss & cortisone mania

I’ll jump straight to the headline: I’m calling time on my role as CEO at Welcoming Australia. When you believe in an idea and its potential, you build it in...

AI cut the cost of sending a submission to almost nothing, so signal and noise both went up by a factor of ten. The triage queues were built to never miss, and that's exactly what's breaking. Some…

A case study in procedural atrophy

Seventy-five years ago, this couple were enjoying some new records, thanks to the foresight of their local dealer, who used direct mailing to drive record sales. They were pictured in the October…

A long time ago, I was on the radio. And there I am, above - in a photocard I’ve still got. I was on The Pulse, in West Yorkshire, from 1993 to 1995. I then did swing on Hallam FM until the end…