An idea I've heard from many directions recently is that "we" (whoever they are) "need to be on the latest tech stack in order to attract developers". And yes, you do attract developers that way....
Just shut up and let your devs concentrate, advises Stack Overflow CEO Joel Spolsky
If you want to attract and keep developers, don't emphasize ping-pong tables, lounges, fire pits and chocolate fountains. Give them private offices or let
Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026
More than 30K technologists from 169 countries have shared their thoughts with us, and now it’s time to share everything we’ve learned with you. So let’s dive into this year’s Annual Developer Survey.
Developers, Reinvented – Thomas Dohmke
What started as fear of AI replacing developers is switching to pragmatically embracing the ambitious reality of AI and viewing it as a growth opportunity. As we build the tools of tomorrow, we can usher developers through this reinvention of their role in ways that are intuitive, delightful, and cater to developers’ curiosity, keeping them fulfilled and happy during the transition. That makes us optimistic. Realistically.
Guide to Incrementals/Appeal to Developers | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
We are Changing our Developer Productivity Experiment Design
Our second developer productivity study faces selection effects from wider AI adoption, prompting us to redesign our approach.
Building personal and organizational prestige
Most months I get at least one email from an engineering leader who believes they’d be a candidate for significantly more desirable roles if their personal brand were just better known. Similarly, when funding is readily available during periods of tech industry expansion, many companies believe they are principally constrained by their hiring velocity–if their engineering organization’s brand was just a bit better, they believe they’d be hiring much faster.
The developer’s dilemma
When it comes to making money, software developers are an odd bunch. Developers produce code, and code is in high demand. At a glance, it…
Creative Technologists are moving from the margins to the center
Once an obscure job title, creative technology is becoming a new way of working, and a core capability inside modern product teams. Soon…
We should rethink how we teach people to code | deadSimpleTech
It's fair to say that the tech industry at the moment is not in a good place. Software engineers tend to be detached, demotivated and unwilling to care much about the work they're doing beyond their paycheck. Code quality is poor on the whole, made worse by the current spate of vibe coding and whatever other febrile ideas come out of Sam Altman's brain. Much of the software that we write is either useless or actively hurts people. And the talented, creative people that we most need in the industry are pushed to the margins of it.
In Praise of “Normal” Engineers
Software engineer Charity Majors challenges the "10x engineer" myth, arguing that true productivity lies in team performance, not individual brilliance. She encourages building workplaces where "normal" engineers can thrive. Are we focusing too much on hiring "the best" instead of the right people?
The One Method I've Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires - Mattermark
Let’s be real. Interviews are a terrible way to hire tech candidates. Here’s why paying candidates to solve problems works.
Reasons to hire inexperienced engineers
There are many reasons to consider hiring inexperienced software engineers into your team, beyond the commonly discussed factors of cost and social responsibility. Hire to maximise team effectiveness; not to maximise team size. Adding more people increases the communication and synchronisation overhead in the team. Growing a team has rapidly diminishing returns. However, adding the... Read more »
How to Drop Out
People who work get bored when they don't work. People who don't work never get bored.
Idea Generation
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea...
10. Why Your Tech Startup Should Be a Worker Co-Op — Limeleaf Worker Collective
Steve Giordano from Interstitial and Ethan Winn from Obran join us to talk about one of our favorite topics: worker co-ops! What they are, how they work, and why we think they are a great corporate structure for tech startups.
How can developers better entice more people to join the Atmosphere? I think one potentially fruitful approach is to combine "you have one account you can use to log into lots of things" with "and those lots of things come pre-populated with all your friends." Here, Atmosphere shines.
