Using AI in subjective domains (e.g. content, design) only gets you ~90% of the way there. Still need a person with high taste to get real quality Using AI in objectively verifiable domains (e.g. code, data formatting) makes it much easier to get high-quality results

If your writing is too wordy, no one will read it. If no one reads it, less value in writing it If you can remove a word but preserve meaning, then remove it

Broke 10k subs on YouTube 🎉🎉 Thanks for all the support! It's been a lot of fun making these podcast videos and trying to improve the quality for the community If you have any suggestions for future guests or the podcast in general I'm always open to feedback!

Principal Eng (IC8) from Meta interview footage is edited and ready for posting, will drop it tomorrow. We discussed: • his promos from IC6 -> IC8 • why he accepts diffs that will break prod • his notetaking system in vscode Any guesses on who it is? 👀

Living in nyc is so much fun, but I think I'm spending ~2x what I was in sf if not more... combination of: • More to do that I want to pay for • Wanting to enjoy the moment more since being young in NYC feels temporary • Things just being more expensive Worth it though

"New grad hiring drops 50% compared to pre-pandemic levels", I doubt that this is fully due to AI tooling automating routine tasks though Any ideas on the real reason behind this? Chart below is from "The SignalFire State of Talent Report - 2025":

Interview with the Distinguished eng (IC9) ex-Meta, ex-OpenAI is ready! One of my favorite conversations so far, super excited to share with you all Such interesting advice and stories about Zuck/John Carmack. Will drop the episode here tomorrow morning, follow if interested

New ergo office chair experiment, trying to find something better for my posture than the Herman Miller Aeron chair

Just interviewed an Principal Eng (IC8) from Meta, another one in the editing pipeline. We discussed: • his promos at Meta from IC6 -> IC8 • his notetaking system • IC8 impact working 40 hours a week If interested, follow and I'll post about it here when it's ready

Just interviewed a Distinguished eng (IC9) ex-Meta, ex-OpenAI for the pod. One of my favorite conversations so far, super excited to share with you all Such interesting advice and stories about Zuck/John Carmack. Will polish it up and launch it in a bit

"How to get a return offer from FAANG internships" clip just went viral on my IG (~100k views, 907 shares, 1.7k saves) I've had 5 interns at Meta, here's the gist on what a strong internship performance looks like:

Little known fact that I'm building a hardware side project. Was thinking through the Trump tariffs with my cofounder We don't really have any other options aside from China. They do it faster and cheaper (even with the increased cost from tariffs)

Who is your favorite writer in tech/software engineering? Looking for more quality examples to learn from

Did a talk at UCLA about "industry secrets I wish I knew before graduating college" for UPE & ACM clubs If you're curious what we talked about, drop a reply and I'll share the recording link when it's ready:

Anthropic CEO: "In 3-6 months, AI is writing 90% of the code. And then in 12 months we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code" This scares junior engineers but not senior+ engineers. Here's why:

Biggest reason software engineers fail to get to Staff, through examples: 1. Give updates no one cares about 2. Present in meetings and everyone tunes out 3. Share opportunities that don't resonate The fix for this problem:

Why keeping a "work diary" is helpful for software engineers: Writing down what you do, useful commands/info, and ongoing investigations expands your memory. This is critical in software engineering since there's so much to remember. Here are a 4 use cases for this diary:

High agency is when: • Initiative - You're proactive rather than reactive • Control - You believe you can influence & control outcomes • Autonomy - You set direction based on your judgement Agency is easier to understand through examples, here are 9 for software engineers:

Learning from experience is slow. Much faster to learn from other's stories Here are 3 career stories from Staff+ engineers at Meta, Airbnb and Amazon that you can learn from to save you time:

Every engineer will eventually decide to become a people manager or stay an individual contributor (IC). Neither path is objectively better than the other. I compiled all my notes from senior managers and ICs I chatted with when considering the switch myself. Some takeaways:

If you agree that 10x engineers exist (they do, trust me) we'll soon see them become 100x or even 1000x engineers AI assisted tooling will give them more leverage which is a multiplier for their exceptional judgement

"New jr developers can't actually code" because of LLMs is overblown: • LLMs make it easier to learn (interactive prompting/questioning) if you want • Today, you don't need to think much anyway (if you want to copy-paste from existing examples/Google, you can) For jr devs:

The longer you work as a software engineer, the more you realize that writing code is rarely the hard part. Cursor / AI makes this even more obvious.

TIL: Cuckoo hashing • "collisionless" hash tables • O(1) worst case lookup + deletion • O(1) amortized insertions Idea is pretty simple + interesting:

Why I hate wasting engineering time in meetings:

"After trying Cursor, I realize the value of 80% of my technical skills dropped to zero. The leverage for the remaining 20% of skills went up by at least 10x." Working on an essay to articulate what the 20% is. How would you describe the 20%?

You're a great software engineer if you: • Focus on problems that matter, not just tech • Understand leverage and the value of uplifting others • Write well and often • Own your projects end-to-end • Set direction using data • Learn through curiousity

Meta is hiring like crazy, start prepping for algo interviews Last time I interviewed, I got 7 offers out of 8 onsites from Google, Meta, Riot, Affirm, Blend, and a few others Top 3 changes I made that increased my interview -> offer rate:

'C' Engineers: "There's a bug. Someone should fix it" 'B' Engineers: "There's a bug. Do you want me to fix it?" 'A' Engineers:"There was a bug. I fixed it so it can't happen again, recruited someone to be responsible for it, and made it so similar future bugs are easier to fix"

UCLA failed to teach me how to write for software engineering. At Amazon & Meta, I spent 1000s of hours learning how to write through trial and error. I reduced what I learned into 5 simple points:

It's bittersweet that one day (probably this year) cleaning up code will no longer be necessary It's so satisfying deleting dead code and fixing things Imagine, though, a fully-typed, null-safe codebase with no dead code, using all the latest patterns with up-to-date comments

After two years of writing a weekly newsletter, we reached 100,000+ subscribers 🎉 Since writing is important for engineers, I figured it’d be helpful to share everything I learned about writing after 100+ essays. Top 3 points that helped me write better:

CS new grads, you might like the podcast I've been working on Comment from YouTube:

After many late Thursday nights, hit 100 weeks in a row on Substack without missing 🎉 Next goal, more sleep...

What Worked (and Didn't) in a Decade of Goal Setting:

Thinking about next year:

2024 wrapped: > Switched to AI/ML team > Added 200k+ followers on socials > Walked LA marathon > Launched podcast > Gave conference talk in Prague > Took my parents on a dream vacation > Hired well for my passion project > Got scuba certs See you all in 2025!

Big tech is back 🎉 Reddit is full of new offer posts:

Many such stories, if you're interested in working at Meta apply now

Taken from Blind, surprised the comments actually believe it: "H1Bs are more likely to not complain compared to Americans, since H1Bs have a short window to find another job or be sent back." "Hiring an h1b is like hiring someone who is constantly on PIP mode."

Why most engineers don't make it to Staff: They have the wrong behaviors and mindsets. I went from Junior to Staff in 3 years at Meta because of how I worked. 3 behaviors that helped me (you can copy):

22 yr old founder on 84 hour work weeks (see Tweet), some thoughts: - Transparency is a good thing - Employee churn from burn out will hurt long-term progress - Measuring outputs (results) >> measuring inputs (hours spent)

Ricky made it to Staff (IC6) at Google by 28 yet he says he isn’t the most skilled software engineer.  Here’s how he did it:

Every engineer in college thinks raw intelligence is everything, but I think they’re wrong. Here’s how I’ve seen this story play out:

Writing is the most useful skill for a career in tech. Doing it well in industry is different from what you learned in school. Give me two minutes to show you how to write effectively at work:

Companies: Why is it so hard to find software engineers to hire? Their interview process:

Only 3 of the 56 classes I took at UCLA matter in my day-to-day software engineering work at Meta. They are CS31, CS32 and CS35L. Here's what each of these courses are about: