02.12.14 |
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Ben Blumenfeld over at Fast Company writes some solid advice, not just for landing a “dream job” but any tech job. What’s standout most is a quite from a design director at Square:
Designers spend so much time creating beautiful work and preparing their portfolio very thoughtfully; they shouldn’t forget the importance of having prepared questions as well–related to our customers, products, team or anything else that shows considered thinking beyond their presentation.
Having interviewed many candidates for developer roles, I find it a bit shocking how many otherwise very prepared, strong candidates have few to any questions that relate to the specific company they are interviewing for. You get the sense the candidate is a talented web developer that has no real passion for your product at all.
02.11.14 |
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Travis Miller writing on Medium:
You would think this goes without saying, but one of the stigmas designers and developers have in our industry, no matter how low they may be down the experience list, is that we tend to be full of ourselves. You don’t have to be a headline speaker to give some advice. If someone needs help, help them out. Don’t be a jerk.
02.04.14 |
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Many “work on what you love” pieces overreach in their optimism. But there’s something about this writing by Scott Belsky, cofounder of Behance, that’s compelling. Maybe it’s the compactness and realism of what he’s pitching: work on things that you have genuine interest for, talent and opportunity.
01.30.14 |
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Some simple public speaking and presentation tips by tech speaker Zach Holman. I dig the advice though I find the overall site structure, with small details broken up into lots of individual pages, a bit maddening.
01.22.14 |
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Front end developer and author Nicholas Zakas:
The things I look for in a front-end engineer have little to do with traditional computer science concepts. I’ve written before about what makes a good front-end engineer and how to interview front-end engineers, and generally I still agree with everything I wrote in those articles. I want enthusiasm and passion for the web, and understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and more importantly, how to use them together to create a solution to a problem.
01.16.14 |
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Michael Lopp, writing in his Rands in Repose blog:
This New Year, I wish you more blank slates. May you have more blank white pages sitting in front you with your favorite pen nearby and at the ready. May you have blank screens in your code editor with your absolutely favorite color syntax highlighting. May your garage work table be empty save for a single large piece of reclaimed redwood and a saw.
Turn off those notifications, turn your phone over, turn on your favorite music, stare at your blank slate and consider what you might build.
12.19.13 |
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Alice Marwick’s article has already gotten a lot of well deserved praise, but this passage really stood out as a smart (and simple?) observation that I’ve rarely spotted in other articles:
Certainly, a level of material wealth is necessary to participate in San Francisco tech culture. Very few pointed to the elephant in the room of assumed wealth: “People behave as if we all make kind of the same.” To forge the type of social connections necessary to move into the upper echelons of the tech scene requires being able to take part in group activities, travel to conferences, and work on personal projects. This requires middle- to upper-class wealth, which filters out most people.
The result of this mythology is that it denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual’s success.
11.25.13 |
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Other speakers from the Fronteers web conference were solid, but Robert Jan Verkade’s talk on work and the general future of the front end web industry was my favorite. Great work on some really unique slides as well.
10.25.13 |
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I’m already a big fan of Panic’s Mac app Transmit, so maybe I’m a bit bias here. But these offices are gorgeous. Love the multicolored, diagonally striped carpet on the main floor.
10.15.13 |
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Some excellent hiring advice from designer Paul Adams over at the Intercom blog. I especially liked his commentary on visual design:
Some commenters put forward that visual design is the primary thing that draws people in and is therefore the most important layer. This is not how I think about it. Visual design is certainly incredibly important, but people are also drawn to something with a promise of value – what the product is, what value it could deliver – in other words the work of the higher level design layers. Time and again we have witnessed ugly looking products succeed (for example Craigslist), and beautiful looking products fail.