Top all-time · #155
Irrational Exuberance
Personal blog · lethain.comprogrammingcareer
Irrational Exuberance is a personal blog at lethain.com about programming and career. Since 2007, 280 different Hacker News readers have linked it 597 times, most often “Migrations: the sole scalable fix to tech debt”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Will Larson's blog for engineering management and leadership, and as a source for his essays on migrations, staff engineers and building teams.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Commenters call the posts excellent and great, with one recommending the migrations essay as one of their all-time favourite essays on software engineering.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Migrations: the sole scalable fix to tech debt10 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2018-04-16
- Digg v4 Launch Story10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-07-02
- /9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2018-05-24
- "Good engineering management" is a fad7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-11-07
- A Forty Year Career6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-10-20
- How to Create Software Quality6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-06-17
- Facilitating AI Adoption at Imprint6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-12-09
- Your First 90 days as CTO or VP Engineering6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-01-13
- Notes on how to use LLMs in your product6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-04-09
- Layers of Context5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-01-15
What Hacker News says?
There's a common anti-pattern that goes like this: 1. A higher-ranked person (e.g. Agrawal) is screwing up in some way (e.g. not addressing security issues) 2. A lower-ranked person (e.g. Mudge) tries to get the problem fixed (e.g. addressing the security issues) 3. The higher-ranked person refuses, and it turns into a conflict 4. The lower-ranked person gets blamed for "not maintaining good relationships" or "being…
Comment linking /hard-to-work-with/
on “Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies”Submitted Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020) as a story · 367 points
HN discussion- https://diff.substack.com/ thoughtful analysis of finance and tech - https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ a couple things on here I would say you actually need to read if you want to write code for a living - https://lethain.com/ great insights on engineering management patterns and antipatterns
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Hard to work with as a story · 366 points
HN discussionThis is really not how most companies think about it. Unless you take an extremely broad view of what “management” is. As a term of art, used by people writing the JDs for “manager” jobs (source: have wrote those JDs), it specifically means having people reporting to you, being responsible for their productivity, growth, and development. The senior IC track does not (have to) involve management. It does involve a lo…
Comment linking /
on “A career ending mistake”Submitted Career Advice in 2025 as a story · 307 points
HN discussionI see people say that they're confused by it a lot, sure. But do the bugs get to production? That was my question. Buffer overflows get to production all the time! But do the concrete vs interface nils get to production or are they caught in dev and then someone opens an issue to ask why it doesn't work? I suspect it's more the later. Obviously, it would be better if Go didn't have this problem. If I made Go 2, it w…
Comment linking /digg-v4/
on “Go: What we got right, what we got wrong”Submitted Downturn career decisions as a story · 276 points
HN discussion(Disclaimer: I used to work at Reddit but left in 2018) While I think you're absolutely right, I think Digg made a number of other missteps with the Digg v4 launch that Reddit did not make. In particular, they shut down the old Digg site to reuse the servers for the new one, a mistake that Reddit was particularly careful not to make. Digg was also already on the way down before their failed launch, and before the ex…
Comment linking /digg-v4/
on “Reddit files to go public”Submitted How to present to executives (2021) as a story · 266 points
HN discussionAfter doing the first-time CTO thing three years ago in an established company with over 100 engineers, I think these two are the minimum required reading: An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Eng Management ( https://lethain.com/elegant-puzzle ) and The Art of Leadership, small things done well ( https://www.amazon.com/Art-Leadership-Small-Things-Done/dp/1... ) There are a lot more that were helpful to me, but those two e…
Comment linking /elegant-puzzle
on “Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?”Submitted Build versus Buy as a story · 255 points
HN discussion"An Elegant Puzzle" by Will Larson[0] is revelatory when it comes to leading a software engineering team. There is a solution to every organizational problem I've encountered in companies from single digits to thousands. That book alone, along with its intentional and organized bibliography is one of the best investments you can make in a tech career. Even without context on the size of your company, Larson's new "T…
Comment linking /eng-execs-primer/
on “Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?”Submitted Founding Uber SRE as a story · 232 points
HN discussionWill Larson has a lot of excellent material and an upcoming book specifically targeted for engineering executives. Check out https://lethain.com/tags/executive/ and https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-engineering-executi...
Comment linking /tags/executive/
on “Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?”Submitted "Good engineering management" is a fad as a story · 218 points
HN discussionAnother possible approach is "model, document and share"[1]: > Imagine you’ve started a new job as an engineering manager, and the teams around you are too busy to use a planning process. You’ve mentioned to your peers a few times that you’ve seen Kanban work effectively, but folks tried it two years ago and are still upset whenever the word is mentioned: it just doesn’t work here. > Your first reaction might be to…
Comment linking /model-document-share/
on “How learned helplessness happens in engineering teams”Submitted Some career advice (2019) as a story · 189 points
HN discussionIt works because management is bought into the politician's bullshit. So if another team member tries to call it out, then the manager labels the other team member as "hard to work with" ( https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/ ) instead of holding the politician accountable.
Comment linking /hard-to-work-with/
on “Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)”Submitted How to Safely Think in Systems as a story · 188 points
HN discussionTech blogs I follow (and one I write): - Irrational Exuberance![1] by Will Larson (ex Digg, Uber, Stripe) - focuses on engineering management - Hillel Wayne’s blog [2] - software engineering and formal methods - The Pragmatic Engineer [3] - software engineering & tech lead topics, written by myself [1] https://lethain.com/ [2] https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ [3] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What niche blogs are worthwhile to follow?”Submitted How the Digg team was acquihired as a story · 187 points
HN discussionhttps://lethain.com/ - not strictly programming, but more of tech career and management-related.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Great Blogs by Programmers”Submitted A Forty Year Career as a story · 168 points
HN discussionExcellent book. Also many great posts on his blog https://lethain.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?”Submitted One-on-ones with executives as a story · 149 points
HN discussion> Deep work with an open office? Dont make me laugh. Please for the love of god bring back cubicles. Or doors. 25 years ago, Microsoft Redmond had a slogan: "Every dev a door". In early 2000s, it began to be two devs per room. We all know what happened since. Open offices save facilities concrete money per seat. Productivity lost from lack of deep work is not a line item anyone knows how to track. The "every dev a d…
Comment linking /good-eng-mgmt-is-a-fad/
on “Instagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026”Submitted Reminiscing: The retreat to comforting work as a story · 132 points
HN discussionWill wrote one of my all-time favorite essays about software engineering: https://lethain.com/migrations/ He's worth paying attention to IMO.
Comment linking /migrations/
on “Career Advice in 2025”Submitted Notes on “A Philosophy of Software Design” as a story · 124 points
HN discussion
