In this interview with Johanna Rothman, author of ‘Hiring Geeks that Fit’, we discuss technical hiring and the importance of cultural fit. We cover how to identify the important parts of your culture, the essential steps in technical hiring, hiring diversity, the best questions and common mistakes made by technical candidates and hiring managers.

Johanna Rothman - Technical Hiring and Cultural Fit

In this interview with Lorna Mitchell, author of ‘N Ways To Be A Better Developer’, we cover some great tips on being a happier and more productive programmer. Including how to communicate with management, the importance of mentoring and learning new languages, improving your time management and dealing with complexity.

Lorna Mitchell - N Ways to be a Better Developer

We’ve interviewed Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier and author of ‘The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work’. We discuss his experience with remote working and running a distributed company. We go into the tools, processes and hiring practices necessary to succeed with remote working, as well as some of the drawbacks and challenges that come along with it.

Wade Foster - Remote Working Tips

We interviewed Adam Tornhill, a software architect who combines degrees in Engineering and Psychology to get a different perspective on software. We discuss his book ‘Your Code as a Crime Scene’, in which he describes using Forensic Psychology techniques to identify high-risk code, defects and bad design. He describes how his techniques are useful by themselves, but can also be used to make other practices like code reviews and unit testing even more effective.

Adam Tornhill - Using Forensic Psychology to Spot Problems in Your Code

We've interviewed Edmond Lau, author of 'The Effective Engineer', and a Software Engineer who has worked for the likes of Google, Ooyala, Quora, and Quip. We discuss ways to maximize your impact as an engineer, lessons learned from engineering leaders, key metrics to measure your effectiveness as well as ways to onboard new hires.

Edmond Lau - The Effective Engineer

In this interview with Oren Ellenbogen, author of 'Leading Snowflakes', we discuss development team leadership. We dive into the things great engineering managers focus on, how to 'code review' management decisions, keep code quality high and developers happy, as well as work well with other teams.

Oren Ellenbogen - Becoming the Leader Your Engineers Need

In this interview with Coraline Ada Ehmke, Lead Software Engineer at Instructure, we discuss data-driven refactoring and developer happiness teams. Coraline gives some great advice on the kinds of tests we should write for refactoring, tools to use and metrics to monitor, to make sure our refactoring is effective. We also learn about the role of refactoring in the Developer Happiness team at Instructure.

Coraline Ada Ehmke - Refactoring to a Happier Development Team

In this interview with Yitzchok Willroth, aka CodeRabbi, we discuss how he has applied Talmudic Maxims to improve Software Engineering practices at Grovo. We cover how in teaching others we can develop ourselves, the benefits of pair programming, how you can get product and engineering teams to work closely together and important metrics to focus engineering teams.

Yitzchok Willroth - From Talmudic Maxims to Software Engineering Excellence

In this interview with Ed Finkler, Lead Developer and Head of Developer Culture at Graph Story, we discuss soft skills that are important for developers. We dive into how things like humility and empathy impact your effectiveness as a developer, as well as ways to ensure you're always learning and how you can give back to the community.

Ed Finkler - Soft Skills for Hardcore Developers

In this interview with Justin Searls, Co-Founder at development agency Test Double, we discuss issues in open source software and what we can do about them. Justin raises problems for both consumers and contributors - like managing hundreds of dependencies to security issues and burnt-out maintainers. We dive into the efforts being made to address these and what you can do too.

Justin Searls - The Problems with Open Source (and How to Fix Them)

Interviews with makers about how they build great software

Fog Creek

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