To be happy at work, understand yourself — First, a little bit about me: I am a software engineer that graduated in computer science 20 years ago and since then have been building software one way or another. I have worked in all sorts of environments, like small startups, consultancy companies, big companies, launched a few startups over…

If you work with software outside of the US, you’re most likely being paid between 2x and 10x less than folks in the SF Bay area. Don’t believe me? Most big tech companies are hiring new grads for north of $200k usd/year, right out of college. …

I’m not a young engineer anymore as this year I’m turning 40. With the grey hair came the experience in engineering systems, but also in how to detect and avoid bad deals. I decided to write this after seeing a twitter discussion about how startups are having a hard time…

It’s easy to get carried away with your ideas and end up with an unnecessarily complex, large piece of code. Then you look at it and marvel at the beauty of what you produced while others dread the possibility of having to maintain it in the future. After it goes…

If you’re like me, you chose where you live accounting for the office location, you already optimized the time you leave your house every day, and you use Waze or Google Maps to give you up-to-date information. If you’re really like me though, you’re still not satisfied with it. My…

Over the years I’ve worked with dozens of engineers, if not hundreds. Out of this universe, most were competent, many were pretty good and, only a few were truly great. They were 10x engineers. This latter group is very diverse, every one of them come from a different background, with…

A few weeks ago the company I work for announced we were expanding, opening a second office in Columbus, Ohio. Caught by surprise, I automatically passed on it in my head with a “very cool, but obviously not for me”. Since 2011 when I left Brazil for the first time…

During one on ones with more junior engineers I often get questions like “what should I do to get to the next level” or “what should I improve on” or even “what defines a senior engineer” and although there are multiple answers for all of these questions, there are some…

I’ve been working with software uninterruptedly since 2002 and over time, along with writing code, I’ve run hundreds of interview sessions with software engineering candidates. I’ve also been on the other side of the table a few times and I have some insights on a few little things that matter…