Frantic

https://frantic.im/ I’ve been coding for 20 years now, sharing insights I’ve learned about software engineering, product design, side projects, productivity.

Hey team, This is Joe and Stopa. We're best friends, worked at FB / Airbnb together, and are now building a company. A bit back, we did an intense job search together. We went through 20 onsites, and landed senior / staff offers. We noticed that though there was a lot of content out there on interviews and negotiation, some of the ideas that made the biggest difference for us weren't talked about. Some of many things: - Lots of essays talk about getting a job in a week. The more senior you get, the more time you need to make the right decision. (It took us 100 days) - Negotiation advice is often about the offer stage, but negotiation starts before you pick up your first phone call from the recruiter. - There's lots of advice on algo interviews, but most of the advice on System Design / Engineering interviews is missing the key ideas you need to communicate So, we decided to make a course. Initially we planned to charge for it, but thought it would be better to make it a public utility for hackers instead. We hadn't done much with the course, but recently one of our friends shared how helpful it was to him, through his essay, "On Leaving Facebook" [1]. That inspired us, so we revamped it, and now present you the new and spiffy version. We're proud to share this you with you :). JS [1] https://frantic.im/leaving-facebook

I switch between commonly used apps with a single shortcut (e.g. ⌥E opens VSCode, ⌥D opens Chrome). Details http://frantic.im/macos-app-shortcuts I use a simple TODO file for side projects https://blog.frantic.im/all/todo-file-for-personal-projects/

> That said I'm shocked devs are playing too since they have a comfy life. I guess it just taps into the same primitive reptilian brain reflexes. An interesting firsthand view on the dynamics of the motivations comes from HN post from some times ago (https://frantic.im/leaving-facebook). Some excerpts: > The salary is high. Facebook aims to pay top 5% compensation in the market (we’ll get back to that). This makes a lot of other things very comfortable: you can go to a restaurant without worrying too much about the bill, get a nicer car, a nicer house, better stuff. > The benefits are top notch. Almost every doctor I visited said “wow” when looking at the health insurance. It’s very comfortable to know that you are likely not going to receive a huge bill for doing an ultra sound for a routine checkup. > Then there’s the Prestige. Facebook gets a lot of blame in media lately, but in everyday life it’s still very prestigious place to be working at. Getting a mortgage or a car loan is easy, saying you work for Facebook gets you on the fast line. All the benefits above, in one way or another, are relative¹ ("niceR" car, not "nice" car) so ultimately, it's a matter of aspiring because aspiring, rather than aspiring to reach a certain level. So unfortunately, being a developer with a comfy life tends not to have an effect on ethics. Note: the above statements give an unfair image of the author/full article; the extracts are only meant to give an idea of certain…