30 May 2025 #mondaylinks
Hey, there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. This is not the first time we developers are being “replaced.” There’s a recurring cycle of hype (6min). No code, the cloud, outsourcing, and these days AI. You name it!
#2. Here’s a breakdown of what every job title truly means (6min). I plead guilty of using Senior [Insert Technology here] Developer.
#3. Don’t be discouraged about “Haskell” in the title. Here are some silly job interview questions (15min). It’s a good exercise trying to reimplement them in your favorite language, using a more “functional” approach.
#4. Starting from .NET10, we don’t need a solution or project file to run C# programs. We can simply run dotnet run app.cs Here’s the official announcement (5min).
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about six techniques to learn any skill faster (5min) and why free pizzas aren’t a good idea to motivate a team (2min).
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Want to make your SQL Server go faster? Brent Ozar’s special anniversary sale is almost over. Only two days left.
Until May 31st, get the prerecorded Mastering bundle and save $400. This bundle includes four advanced courses covering indexes, queries, parameter sniffing, and full database optimization. SQL Server was my kryptonite until I learned databases from Brent’s courses, and I highly recommend them. Grab the bundle before the sale ends.
See you next time,
Cesar
Want to receive an email with curated links like these? Get 4 more delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Don’t miss out on next week’s links. Subscribe to my Friday Links here.
29 May 2025 #misc
“The one who finishes all their tasks early can go home,” they told us.
It was at a past job, some time ago, in a galaxy far far away. That was their incentive to make us work harder. We were behind our deadlines and the local government’s. We were stuck in a rewrite within a rewrite.
But, surprise, surprise…
One guy finished all his tasks before the end of our 2-week sprint. I don’t know if he worked from home or padded all his estimations.
But they hesitated to give him the time off. We could tell by looking at our leader’s face when that guy handed in the time-off request form.
The next time the same guy finished earlier, they pulled more tasks from the backlog or ask him to join the on-call rotation. It was a carrot in front of the donkey.
Instead of building morale, they destroyed it and made all the trust evaporate.
Your development team doesn’t want free pizzas.
Oh, by the way, pizza was the next strategy after the “time off if you finish your task” strategy. Close to 100% sprint completion = free pizzas.
Instead of pizzas, give your team interesting work. Give them a challenge and share how that will impact the company. Give them room to figure out things on their own. And if they screw things up, don’t point fingers, let them fix things. Trust them. They’re human beings, not disposable resources. Motivation isn’t about perks. It’s about trust. Build that first.
And if nothing of that works, here’s how to demotivate them. Do the opposite.
28 May 2025 #misc
The other day, I jumped into a discussion on LinkedIn about slang for money.
I shared the Spanish slang for money:
- Plata. Same word for silver and money.
- Pavos, turkeys.
- Lana, wool.
And in some regions of my country, to designate millions:
- Melones, melons. Yes, just like the fruit.
- Palos, sticks. Yes, like pieces of wood.
While writing my comment on LinkedIn, I realized those words represent goods we used for value exchange centuries ago when we didn’t have coins or pieces of paper. I don’t know the exact origin of those words. But it makes sense, right?
These days, our definition of money has changed.
Time and attention are our most valuable assets now. The book “Your Money or Your Life” defines money as what we trade in exchange for our time. Maybe it isn’t crazy to imagine a future where “seconds of watching ads” or “minutes of doomscrolling” become our new currency. Not dollars or euros or pesos.
Maybe one day paying for dinner will cost an hour of attention or two. Scrolling, clicking, and absorbing ads designed to keep you hooked.
27 May 2025 #learning #books
Since 2020, we’re living in a new normal.
Constant layoffs, market volatility, AI stealing our jobs… The best thing to do is to learn new skills and build something we can’t be fired from.
But who has time to spend 10,000 hours becoming an expert to monetize a new skill?
Here’s where “Skip the Line” by James Altucher comes in. A book with strategies to ditch those 10,000 hours and learn a new skill faster, without going back for 4 or 5 years of college or begging to get into the small circle of “experts.”
Here are 6 principles I learned from “Skip The Line” to master any skill faster:
1. Do 10,000 experiments
It takes 10,000 hours to be an “expert.”
That’s about 10 years of part-time practice. But the world is changing so fast. By the time you’ve put in those 10,000 hours, everything will be different.
Instead of tracking hours, track experiments. Small and consistent actions that teach you a skill faster.
A good experiment:
- is easy to set up and do
- has little downside
- has huge potential upside
- has never been done before
- teaches you something
“You know something is a valid experiment when you take out what you normally do, get curious about an idea, as in “What if I try…,” and then, you suddenly feel fear.”
With experiments and real projects, we learn way more and faster than in any classroom. Remember passive learning is just entertainment.
2. Master your microskills
Whatever you’d like to learn, chances are it’s not a single skill, but a range of microskills.
“Break apart a skill into 20 microskills. Figure out how, each day, you can get better at each microskill”
Writing isn’t just one skill. It’s headlines, openings, storytelling, calls to action, editing, formatting… And that’s just non-fiction.
3. Master idea calculus
You can cheat your way through those 10,000 hours by bringing your expertise from other areas.
Add a new idea or concept to an existing idea in the field you’re learning. Or subtract an existing idea from it. Or mix two disparate ideas from another field to create a new one.
4. Find PLUS, EQUAL, and MINUS
To learn anything faster, you need to find your PLUS, EQUAL, and MINUS:
- PLUS are your mentors. People online or offline who you can learn from. If you can’t find mentors, books are always good mentors.
- EQUAL are others learning the same skill. These are the people who challenge you and encourage you to keep learning.
- MINUS are people you can teach. Teaching is the best (and fastest) way to learn anything.
5. Follow the 50/1 rule
The 80/20 rule has a close cousin.
You know the 80/20 rule, right? 80% of wealth is accumulated by 20% of people. 80% of outcomes come from 20% of effort. 80% of views and reads come from 20% of posts.
But what if we apply the 80/20 rule to itself? 80% of 80 is 64, and 20% of 20 is 4.
And if we apply it again? 80% of 64 is 51.2 and 20% of 4 is 0.8. OK, let’s round that up to 50 and 1.
It means that 1% of effort brings 50% of outcomes. That’s a cheat code to get results faster.
If you’re writing, that’s your headline, opening lines, and first paragraphs. Or your titles and thumbnails if you’re doing YouTube.
Whatever you’re doing, find your 1%.
6. Find your wheel and its spokes
One thing is mastering a skill. Another is making money off of it.
Find your wheel, your main subject or skill. Once you’ve found your wheel, look for spokes. Ways to monetize and expand your wheel.
If your wheel is photography, your spokes could be:
- Sell stock photos,
- Offer wedding photography services,
- Shoot product images for small businesses,
- Shoot LinkedIn-optimized portraits for executives,
- Offer walking tours through the most scenic spots in your city,
- Teach a budget-friendly photography course for beauty creators,
- Offer “I fix and enhance old photos” services,
- Create a course for better pet photography,
- Start a newborn photography business,
- Run workshops to teach others,
OK, I already wrote my 10 bad ideas for today… And you got the point. There’s more than one way to monetize a skill. Don’t marry a single one. I’m talking about ideas here.
The world still needs experts. No doubt. I wouldn’t want guesswork in an operating room. But you don’t need to be an expert to make a living. You don’t need 10,000 hours. You need more experiments, faster feedback loops. This new world is for fast learners, for those who know how to skip the lines.
26 May 2025 #writing
No matter how thoughtful your content is, without a strong headline, people won’t read it.
In How to title your blog post or whatever, there’s this tip for headlines or titles:
“Consider title-driven thing creation. That is, consider first choosing a title and then creating a thing that delivers on the title. It’s sad to admit, but I think there are many good things that simply don’t have good titles. Consider not making those things… In practice, it’s often something in the middle: You start to create your thing, then you choose a title, then you structure your thing to deliver on the title.”
Title-driven creation not only applies to blog posts, but also to other forms of creative output:
- Before making a course or paid product, write its landing page.
- Before writing a book, choose a title, write a summary, and design its cover.
Before creating, write the marketing materials first. For blog posts and social media content, that’s the headline.
Every headline is a promise. Keep your promises, and your readers will trust you.
Here are some of my best healdines.