Mike Chen

I send the same 5 blog posts to pretty much every new software engineer I mentor. They're all articles I wish I'd read when I started my career, about salary, priorities, and decision-making. Sharing here in case they're helpful: 🧵

Just got off a call with THE Mike Chen. Can confirm, not a coffee chat dud. hahaha JKJK Great "meeting" you finally!! PS my parents shut the air off upstairs and i'm DYING. @chenmike.com #careerswitcher #techcommunity

Loved the convos this past week on nickyt.live with @chenmike.com. Here’s a short where Mike talks about using AI in his development workflow. Thanks again for hanging! youtube.com/shorts/f06d2...

And we're live! Come hang with @chenmike.com and me as we discuss their path from individual contributor, to engineering manager to CTO!

Excited to chat with @nickyt.online tomorrow about my journey from IC -> manager -> CTO Planning to talk about all the adjustments I had to make along the way to be successful in each new role Hope you can join us!

🎊 Happy New Year! I discovered a lot of very cool dev stuff in 2024, from libraries to devtools to educational resources. Thought it’d be fun to share them all, to help kickstart your 2025! Let’s go through the list. 🧵

Was very excited to see this amazing piece of work by @samwho.dev come together It's always so impressive to see people take a pretty academic topic like Turing machines and make them so accessible. Awesome visualizations and writing. Well done!

A Christmas Hackathon! The Let's Get Technical Discord group is partaking in a holiday hackathon. They're taking a break from the Gridiron Survivor apprenticeship program to do something relaxing and fun.

Same to @nickyt.online, had a great time chatting today, one of the nicest people in the community! Love his streams, brings in lots of different people about interesting web dev topics. Check it out when you get the chance nickyt.live

This is such a unique way to learn about history — an interactive map showing historical borders, battles, and people of note One of the most interesting things I've seen on the internet in awhile www.oldmapsonline.org/en/history/r...

terriblesoftware.org/2024/12/04/t... Great read for new managers or anyone thinking about becoming one. Sums it up well: "Success for you is as simple as asking yourself two questions: 1. Is my team shipping? 2. Are they happy? If the answer is “yes” to both, don’t worry; you’re crushing it. 🎉"

This is a really great starter pack - I found a few people from the old site I didn’t have yet. go.bsky.app/3b9A8JY

Happy "Sign Up For All The 'Advent of ____' Coding Challenges Day" for those who celebrate!

The conference badges are here! It may seem small but it feels like I have climbed several massive mountains to get to this point. I've never been more proud to be here. The Week of the conference! Are you coming to hang out with YOUR community? #CommitYourCode

Josh's courses are on the shortlist I feel comfortable recommending to all frontend engineers. I've been doing this 14 years and I still learned a bunch from both courses. Even if you're a senior engineer and know everything (unlikely), you'll learn a lot about how to mentor and teach effectively.

I always tell new engineers to be cautious when using AI for code gen. Even worse than sneaking trash into your code, it hampers your learning. IMO it's hard to learn how to code if you're not typing code into your IDE. I highly encourage asking the AI questions though, that's an amazing use case.

A small change I've made when taking tutorials that's massively improved my retention: Instead of building anything along with the instructor, I just watch, then try building it after from memory. I refer to the tutorial when needed Something to consider if you're buying courses this Black Friday

I love seeing that blogging on personal websites is THRIVING. I was thinking of starting to write again on Substack, but I’m convinced how much better it is to dust off my website. So much more effective for allowing personality to shine through and communicating using the full power of the web.

Loved this write-up of the debugging process for a complex problem: 1. Develop hypotheses about the issue's root cause 2. Eliminate potential issues one at a time by making changes/copying working examples and seeing if the issue persists Worth a read if you're working on your debugging skills!

Any time you ask someone for help, they're wondering: • How much work will this be? • Will this person respect my time? • Am I going to have to hold their hand? They ask these questions even if they like helping people! Show them you're willing to help yourself first.

I go through phases sometimes when I wonder if I actually like programming Being on Bluesky and watching people make cool shit has answered my question. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited to learn and build

My 3-year-old looking out the window at the Seattle weather: "The weather's all ruined!" Totally get it, little guy

Awesome use of the Bluesky API It's really nice to be on a platform that encourages people to build again

IF YOU WERE PART OF TECH TWITTER IN ANY WAY, can you comment here so we can find everyone we knew in the community. I feel like I am going crazy trying to search for accounts and it is exhausting. Can we get a thread going on of everyone? Let's bring the community back together over here.