Top all-time · #2618
code.dblock.org
Personal blog · code.dblock.orgprogrammingcareer
code.dblock.org is a personal blog at code.dblock.org about programming and career. Since 2010, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 94 times, most often “Pros and Cons of Going from Management Back to Individual Contributor”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for engineering leadership and open source advice, covering recruiter responses, interview processes, and making a company's code open source by default, drawing on the author's time as Artsy's CTO.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Pros and Cons of Going from Management Back to Individual Contributor3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-18
- Becoming Open Source by Default2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-02-09
- Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-11-09
- Why One Giant Source Control Repository Is Bad for You (and Facebook) (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-16
- How do you reject Engineering candidates?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-26
- Do Not Fix Bugs Reported in Your Open Source Projects2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-22
What Hacker News says?
Nah, I've got better things to do. My old boss, however, has good advice on how to make them useful, for those who care to respond: https://code.dblock.org/2015/01/09/how-to-make-recruiter-spa...
Comment linking /2015/01/09/how-to-make-recruiter-spam-useful-my-canned-response.html
on “Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe”Submitted Github is Your New Resume as a story · 174 points
HN discussionFor anyone reading their post, we're so humbled by Kickstarter mentioning the tiny Artsy for having inspired some of this work. If you're interested in the open-source by default conversation and need some ammo to bring this to your team, start at http://code.dblock.org/2015/02/09/becoming-open-source-by-de...
Comment linking /2015/02/09/becoming-open-source-by-default.html
on “Open sourcing our Android and iOS apps”Submitted Keeping a Changelog at Work (2020) as a story · 162 points
HN discussionA giant repo works for Google, and works for Facebook, and Microsoft, but it's bad for the development community at large. If you start centralizing your development you’re killing any type of collaboration with the outside world and discouraging such collaboration between your own teams. http://code.dblock.org/2014/04/28/why-one-giant-source-contr...
Comment linking /2014/04/28/why-one-giant-source-control-repository-is-bad-for-you-and-facebook.html
on “Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place”Submitted Moving to New York: a Guide for Software Engineers as a story · 100 points
HN discussionI joined AWS 6 months ago at 43 as a principal engineer, transitioning from a CTO role of a Series D company, and wrote about it. https://code.dblock.org/2019/11/17/the-pros-and-cons-of-goin... I would recommend it.
Comment linking /2019/11/17/the-pros-and-cons-of-going-from-management-back-to-ic.html
on “Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s”Submitted Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support as a story · 72 points
HN discussionRunning is amazing. I find it as addictive as programming, but much healthier. I encourage anyone sitting behind a computer a lot to pick it up. Your inner geek can also publish your Strava runs to a Jekyll blog (shameless plug: http://code.dblock.org/2018/02/17/auto-publishing-strava-run... ) :)
Comment linking /2018/02/17/auto-publishing-strava-runs-to-github-pages.html
on “Roger Bannister has died”Submitted RoR Win: “Getting Things Done” with MongoDB Mongoid as a story · 61 points
HN discussionYes, I think all employees involved is a huge win. In our company of 3, we do that. But one thing that's problematic from the customer's point of view, is: "Who should I contact to solve my problem?" The ideal experience in my opinion is a single contact point, with the authority and knowledge to solve every issue you have. That's of course unrealistic, but I want to find a way to approximate that. The closest thing…
Comment linking /alla-klein-a-fake-person-in-charge-of-customer-support
on “Stop Using noreply”Submitted How to Reject Engineering Candidates as a story · 37 points
HN discussionFor reference, here's my article claiming the opposite: http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume
Comment linking /github-is-your-new-resume
on “GitHub is not your new résumé”Submitted Java Native Access (JNA) is now a Githubber as a story · 33 points
HN discussionBlogged: http://code.dblock.org/i-want-to-contribute-to-open-source-w...
Comment linking /i-want-to-contribute-to-open-source-where-do-i-begin
on “Ask HN: Want to work on open-source, don't know where to start. Advice?”Submitted Continuous Deployment with Heroku-Bartender as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI was working at Artsy while the OP was CTO (:wave:) and tried to help out a bunch on fostering a good attitude towards OSS - there's quite a few notes in both artsy/README and the blog - (the making of artsy/README) https://artsy.github.io/blog/2018/08/21/OSS-by-Default-Docs/ - (OSSing our apps) https://artsy.github.io/blog/2019/04/29/how-did-artsy-become... - (OPs writeup on the philosophy) https://code.dblock.org…
Comment linking /2015/02/09/becoming-open-source-by-default.html
on “Artsy Engineering Handbook”Submitted Just Say “No” To Mailing List Spam by Recruiters as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThis is a great read on this topic, by Artsy’s CTO Daniel Doubrovkine – http://code.dblock.org/2015/02/09/becoming-open-source-by-de...
Comment linking /2015/02/09/becoming-open-source-by-default.html
on “Ask HN: Convince boss to open source”Submitted Open-Source Is Simply Part of my Team’s Job Description as a story · 13 points
HN discussionFirst, the state of the art of "taking technical interviews" hasn't changed in the last 10yrs at least. This is, when we as an industry are harbingers of "change". The bottom line is that the interview process is time consuming, expensive and often not the aspect of your job for which you will be held accountable for (i.e. you get fired if you are unable to recruit). An interviewer in such a case, has no incentive t…
Comment linking /how-to-reject-engineering-candidates
on “Ask HN: Can we fix the interview process for engineers?”Submitted Beer Mug: contribute something small to an open-source project as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAs Peroni mentioned, Targeted is more effective yet difficult. A good approach to this is something that I would call "passive targeted recruiting", basically implement policies as "always be recruiting" and having your doors open (office-hours work great for this), take 1 - 2 hours of your week to talk with people interested in knowing more about your company, etc. Also I would say enforce cultural fit over technic…
Comment linking /help-me-fix-tech-recruiting-become-a-recruiter
on “Ask HN: What is a better recruiting strategy, casting a wide net or targeted?”Submitted Mongoid_fulltext: full-text n-gram search for your MongoDB models as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted In Defense of Heroku as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Do Not Fix Bugs Reported in Your Open Source Projects as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Oracle Didn’t Learn From the Redhat Experience, PRs a NoSQL Database as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Corporate Change: Contributing to Open Source (2010) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Enginelopers and Devengeers: How do You Title Engineering Hires? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Leaving Amazon as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
