Recently I came across a Reddit post where the author wanted to know if their on-call situation was standard or if it was out of the ordinary. The post describes a tire fire, not a production-ready software system: "Is it normal to get alerted multiple times each and every hour of oncall, and then expected to go …

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Why can't you just add this new feature or fix that lingering bug? After all, it's the time and effort for that change alone - right? But it's not just the cost of what work you choose to tackle - you're also paying the price for all the other work you didn't implement instead. That's the opportunity cost. Opportunity …

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As a staff-plus engineer, you likely advanced through your career solving challenging technical problems. And now that you've reached the staff-plus level, it'll just be more of that - won't it? Sorry! While in well-crafted staff-plus roles you will have sufficient focus and time for helping teams solve technical …

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Over the past 15 years I've reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of pull requests. From pull requests against projects I built and maintain to PRs submitted as promotion portfolio reviews in projects I've never seen or worked on, and everything in between. Over time I've developed a set of four key items I look for in each …

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