Top all-time · #19983
Nicholas Broune
Personal blog · biggestfish.substack.comcareerprogrammingbusiness
Nicholas Broune writes Catching the Biggest Fish, a personal blog at biggestfish.substack.com about career, programming and business. Since 2022, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “Data as Placebo”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Observations on various aspects of working in tech, focusing on software engineering.
Most-linked posts?
- Data as Placebo2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-09
- Standups Considered Harmful2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-16
- In defense of coding interviews2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-29
What Hacker News says?
Reminds me of this post: https://biggestfish.substack.com/p/data-as-placebo
Comment linking /p/data-as-placebo
on “A/B testing gets misused to juice metrics in the short term”Submitted Planning is for doing as a story · 192 points
HN discussionA/B testing has a ton of issues as well that make it easy to be fooled https://biggestfish.substack.com/p/data-as-placebo
Comment linking /p/data-as-placebo
on “No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias”Submitted In defense of coding interviews as a story · 162 points
HN discussionTesting is not one size fits all https://biggestfish.substack.com/p/testing-is-not-one-size-f...
Comment linking /p/testing-is-not-one-size-fits-all
on “Don’t mock what you don’t own”Submitted Standups Considered Harmful as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere’s a good rebuttal: https://biggestfish.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-coding-inte...
Comment linking /p/in-defense-of-coding-interviews
on “How to Hire Good Engineers”Submitted Standups Considered Harmful as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSimilar article: https://biggestfish.substack.com/p/information-asymmetry-par...
Comment linking /p/information-asymmetry-part-1
on “The Market for Lemons - Alex Russell on JS frontends”Submitted Data as Placebo as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Do More with Less as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Equality Testing and the Halting Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Startup Equity Is a Scam (and That's Okay) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vulnerability During Transition as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Adding Value the Easy Way as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Testing Is Not One Size Fits All as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Adverse Selection in Tech as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted An Uneasy Case for Project Management Tools as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted When to Satisfice (and When Not To) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are Promotion-Oriented Cultures That Bad? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Impact at Startups vs. Big Tech as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted In Pursuit of Job Happiness as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Peter Principle Revisited as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Flexibility in Startups vs. Big Tech as a story · 1 points
HN discussion