Every time I read someone else’s blog it feels like I fall down a rabbit hole of cross posts to other people’s blogs and end up adding more things to my to-read list than I cross off. I’m going to do the same to you, but on purpose. These are blogs I recommend others read.

jvns.ca

I like Julia Evans’ blog because she manages to teach a whole lot in each post. Her posts are also great for reference in very specific situations (like the one on questions she’s asking in tech interviews) and are often super actionable. I’m especially a fan of the “summary of a day at recurse center and what I learned” style posts, as well as the “__ exercises” posts like the ones on curl and git where she’ll teach a bit about something. I also love her zines.

Irrational Exuberance

People keep telling me I’d be a good manager. I really don’t think so, or at least I don’t aspire to be a manager, but I still enjoy reading Will’s posts about engineering leadership and management. It was through his blog that I was first exposed to the ideas like using engineers’ morale as a resource during long scale migrations that drag long past deadlines. I also really enjoy his pieces about mapping out an engineering career. He’s the kind of person I’d like to have as a manager, because I feel like I could trust his input. I actually took an interview at Calm recently purely because he just became CTO.

Made of Bugs

I’m not sure what it means that so many of these are current/ex Stripe employees. I’m keeping my eye on where these people end up though in the interest of working with one or more of them someday. Nelson worked on two tools that I absolutely love (Sorbet and LiveGrep), but I think I first heard his name in reference to Accidentally Quadratic which is just one of his many side projects.

Study Hacks

Cal is one of my favorite authors. So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Deep Work, and Digital Minimalism were all incredibly influential on me. I also recommend his podcast. His posts are a mixture of inspiration porn and helpful advice for living a more productive lifestyle.