2026W00

A few interesting articles I read over the past few days

• Distinguishing yourself early in your career as a developer — Honestly? This hit different. Phil breaks down the job market into three tiers and the advice that stuck: start local, skip the FAANG obsession early on, and—here’s what I appreciate most—write consistently about niche technical stuff. Not for clout, but because it’s genuinely one of the most effective ways to build credibility over time. The 6-12 month job search reality check is brutal but refreshing. Also, the idea that support or QA roles can be legitimate entry points into dev? That’s the kind of pragmatic wisdom people actually need.
• You Are NOT Dumb, You Just Lack the Prerequisites — I’ve definitely read this before, but revisiting it at the start of the year feels intentional. The premise is simple yet powerful: struggling with hard concepts doesn’t mean you’re intellectually incapable, it means you’re missing the foundational pieces. What resonates is the author’s journey—150 days of going back to basics in math, systematically rebuilding understanding. It’s the kind of humility and persistence we need more of. The analogy about jumping into a video game at minimum level? Chef’s kiss. This is the energy I want to carry into 2026.
• The Prison Of Financial Mediocrity — This thread captures something unsettling about where we are right now. A whole generation is effectively locked out of traditional wealth-building paths—no homeownership, no stable pensions, wages that don’t match cost of living. So what happens? People turn to high-variance bets like crypto, prediction markets, and sports betting because it feels like the only way to gain some agency over their financial future. The platforms and “hope sellers” profit regardless. It’s a depressing feedback loop where desperation meets exploitation. Hard to read, harder to ignore.
• How to add two vectors, fast — When Txus writes about low-level optimization stuff, you stop and pay attention. This is a deep dive into CPU vs GPU performance for vector addition—concrete benchmarks, memory-bound vs compute-bound problems, the whole deal. The best part? Learning that throwing fancy optimizations at a memory-bound kernel barely moves the needle because data movement, not computation, is the bottleneck. It’s a reminder that profiling and understanding hardware constraints beats clever code tricks. If you’re into performance engineering or just curious about why GPUs work the way they do, this is worth your time.
• How We Lost Communication to Entertainment — This one stings because it’s true. We don’t have social networks anymore, we have entertainment platforms optimized for engagement, not connection. The shift is subtle but devastating: people now accept lost messages, multiple accounts, algorithmic feeds that prioritize virality over trust. The author draws this generational line—older folks expecting reliability, younger users treating platforms like content feeds. What I appreciate is the refusal to chase critical mass. Instead: email, RSS, mailing lists, offline-first tools. It’s a smaller community, sure, but one built on actual communication. I feel seen.
• Designing remote work at Linear — Linear’s approach to remote work feels refreshingly intentional. It’s not just “we allow WFH,” it’s designed around freedom, trust, and deep focus. Small autonomous teams (2-4 people), rotating project leadership, zero-bugs SLAs, quality Wednesdays, feature roasts before shipping—these aren’t just rituals, they’re guardrails for maintaining quality without micromanagement. The goalie rotation for handling unplanned work is clever. And honestly? The 10-year equity exercise windows and sabbatical provisions show they’re thinking long-term about retention. This is what remote-first looks like when you actually commit to it, not just tolerate it.
• Engineers who won’t commit force bad decisions — This called me out a bit. The argument is sharp: when senior engineers stay non-committal in technical discussions, they’re not being careful or humble—they’re shifting the burden to less-informed teammates. Either junior devs end up guessing, or the loudest voice wins by default. The root cause? Fear of being publicly wrong. But here’s the thing: managers expect some calls to fail, especially on genuinely hard problems. The threshold is simple—if you have more context than others in the room, speak up. Caveats and hedging just create friction. It’s uncomfortable but necessary: taking a position, even with uncertainty, moves the team forward.