Swizec Teller is a software engineer, speaker, and educator sharing lessons from his journey from junior developer to Silicon Valley. He writes about engineering skills, career growth, mindset, and practical tactics for succeeding in tech.
58 articles from this blog
A developer reflects on missing the Shopify IPO and shares criteria for evaluating startup career bets, from market size to personal passion.
A software engineer discusses the benefits of clear project planning and scope definition to reduce stress and improve team productivity.
Introduces an open-source, agentic approach to end-to-end testing that records user interactions to reduce flakiness and maintenance.
A senior engineer explains what hiring managers look for in a tech resume: clear demonstration of increasing scope and impact over fancy titles.
Practical steps for successfully leading a software or tech project, focusing on scope, communication, and iterative delivery.
Explores how people and team ownership, not just technical patterns, are key to untangling and preventing messy 'ball of mud' software architecture.
A developer argues that AI tools, while feeling productive, actually create more low-priority busywork and reduce overall effectiveness.
Explains how stack ranking helps teams prioritize work effectively by forcing tough decisions on what to work on next.
Explores the deeper lesson of Chesterton's fence in software engineering: understanding why code exists, then deleting it if it's obsolete.
![The job behind the job [of a high level IC]](https://alldevblogs.blob.core.windows.net/thumbs/article-b03a8ce45619-full-305e340d.webp)
Tips for high-level individual contributors on balancing operational fires with strategic goals using business and industry awareness.
Explores how feedback works in tech careers, using regression to the mean and advice on focusing on strengths vs. weaknesses at different career stages.
Compares modern UI frameworks like React, HTMX, and TanStack that are shifting back to server-rendered markup, with practical use cases.
Explains how to replace useEffect+useState patterns with useSyncExternalStore to fix jank in React apps, especially during server-side rendering.
A software engineer explains how deep thinkers can appear witty and spontaneous by preparing reusable anecdotes and metaphors, similar to coding functions.
Analyzes whether to join an AI startup, focusing on career growth and company investment potential in a tough market.
A tech leader shares lessons on scaling engineering teams 3x in a year, focusing on communication, delegation, and navigating uncertainty in a high-growth startup.
Explores two types of pair programming: expert-driven for speed and learner-driven for teaching, with tips for effective collaboration.
A software engineer's reflection on managing priorities and technical debt in a fast-growing company, comparing it to spinning plates.
Explores using HTMX to create server-side UI components without React, comparing it to tRPC and React Server Components for building interactive admin pages.
Explains how to replace brittle, synchronous side-effects in endpoints with a resilient, event-based system using queues for better error handling and performance.
