Career Articles

Phoning it in

I pride myself on never phoning it in. I’m a passionate individual and I try to always bring that fire into whatever I’m doing. I’m a big believer in Extreme Ownership and giving 110%, cranking it 11, or whatever other euphemism you can throw in to describe the situation. That […]

FizzBuzz in TypeScript 3.0

FizzBuzz, the engineering smoke test that quickly reveals if somebody is drastically under qualified in their development abilities. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the exercise, most are able to make short work of it. It only leverages a small handful of programming concepts that even the most novice developer should […]

Keeping up with what's next

Had an interesting conversation today with a buddy of mine. He was telling me about how he’s mastered gulp and right on cue, I asked “why not webpack”? No, I didn’t triage that into a lecture about how superior Arch Linux is or anything. Quite the opposite, I got to […]

How to do stuff

So I read this Lifehacker article the other day discussing Google’s top 10 “how to” searches worldwide from 2004 to 2017. I was like “Good God Lemon, I know how do that stuff!” Enough banter, here’s Josh’s guide to doing a bunch of stuff: How to tie a tie Put […]

Side projects are not a threat

Say it with me, side projects are not a threat. If anything, they should be viewed as a form of continuing education. Before you say anything, I’m fully aware that there are assholes out there that choose to run their side business(es) while they are on the clock. They tend […]

SumoMe is hiring!

Cheesing out on this week’s post as I’m scrambling to get ready for our company retreat in Puerto Vallarta. That being said, I woke up today and checked out our latest SumoMe email newsletter, A week in the life of a Sumo. I was floored by the email. Not because […]

My skills have nothing to do with my interest

Recently a former co-worker of mine (by way of company acquisition) reached out about a project he was hoping that I would work on. I declined but worked in a small bit of permission networking and made an introduction to one of my buddies because I thought that he may […]

Never stop learning

As cliché as this post’s title is, I tend to forget this simple truth from time to time. This week was one of those weeks where I learned a ton of shit. Worked with some new to me libraries. Learned a new term that I’m on the verge of over […]

Developer titles are bullshit, Part 2 - Universal titles

Last week in part one, I discussed the lifecycle of a developer that just started a new job. The gist was that when someone starts a new role at a company, they generally have to learn the lay of the land. Regardless of their technical prowess there is always a […]

Developer titles are bullshit, Part 1 - The lifecycle of a developer

This is a pretty universal truth, most developer titles are complete and utter nonsense. Shit like “Junior Developer” and “Senior Engineer Level 2”, sounds like we’re playing Dungeons and Dragons. Sad part of this is, most people will say they don’t care about titles but then they are quick to […]

Fizz Buzz in PHP

Fizz buzz is a fairly common screening question to help sniff out non-programmers during the interview process. The task is to print out numbers 1 through 100 but for multiples of 3 print out “Fizz” instead of the number and for multiples of 5 print “Buzz” instead. If the number […]

10 office pranks you should try at your own office

Before I start talking about office pranks, I want to give a shout-out to Noah Kagan for his post We Analyzed Nearly 1 Million Headlines. Here’s What We Learned post. The truth is, this post is just a list of some of the notable office pranks I’ve either orchestrated, witnessed […]

Why work so hard to stay at the bottom?

Not a day goes by that I see a headline about the need for a minimum wage increase. I read about staged sit-ins, protests and boycotts. I see people investing a ton of time and energy to remain the lowest paid workers in the country. I generally keep my political […]

Quitting a job you just started

It’s happened to everyone, you just started a brand new job, probably event left a decent job for it, only to realize that the new job sucks and you absolutely hate it. It happened to me recently, I was starting to get cabin fever working for myself and decided to […]

Swallow your pride and stop blaming your tools

I was at my favorite neighborhood biergarten last week when I spied a flyer on the bar for the today’s Cinco de Mayo event. Upon closer examination, I noticed that the kerning was set very high in between the Ma and the Yo so it looked like Cinco de Ma […]

Co-founder Application

This is partially for LOLz and partially for serious. I’m a guy in Tampa looking for people that want to kick ass with me. I know some very talented individuals in the area but nothing’s really gotten off the ground with them. Most of that is because they have day […]

LinkedIn Endorsements are Nonsense

Recently a former coworker of mine sent out an email to her LinkedIn network pleading with us to leave her a thoughtful recommendation instead of just endorsing her for skills. Unfortunately, I never worked directly with her at the job (albeit part of the same department) and never really interacted […]

Recruiters need to learn to listen

If you’ve ever seen my LinkedIn profile you know that I don’t take my professional life all too seriously and that I also have an underlying disdain for recruiters. Have I been through a recruiting company before to get a job? Absolutely, but I’d never do it again (most likely). […]

Advice on Freelancing

A friend of mine recently asked me for some advice in regard to a freelancing project he was in the quoting phase of. I figured, what a great topic for a blog post! Keep in mind though, I haven’t freelanced in years, mainly because I am not a fan of […]

Why you don’t make $80k+ and how you can get there

First off, you’re going to be offended by this, partially because it’s true and partially because I’m right. The reason you don’t make $80-100k (or whatever the magic number of deservingness [my word, you can’t have it] is as per Hacker News) is because you don’t deserve it, for one […]

Are Flash developers the new COBOL developers?

The game’s changing with HTML5 and I’m starting to hear the same type of comments from the mouthes of Flash developers that I’ve been hearing from COBOL developers for years. The gist of the comments is that what they use is never going away (which in the case of COBOL […]