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...

From Individual Contributor to CTO with Mike Chen

YouTube video by Nick Taylor

youtube.com

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

From Individual Contributor to CTO

Mike Chen, CTO at Motivo, joins Nick Taylor to discuss their path from individual contributor (IC), to engineering manager, to CTO.

buff.ly

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!

Nick Taylor@nickyt.online · 2y ago

Looking forward to chatting with @mikechen.io this Wednesday. Come hang as we dig in to going from an individual contributor (IC), to engineering manager to CTO! https://buff.ly/3PozAaf

🎊 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!

Sam Rose@samwho.dev · 2y ago

What does it mean for something to be Turing complete? I answer this question, and more, through a series of fully interactive Turing machine simulations! Play, pause, step forwards and backwards, and even write your own Turing machine programs in my latest blog post. samwho.dev/turing-machi...

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

Nick Taylor's live streaming schedule

Links to Nick Taylor's live streaming channels and content

nickyt.live

Nick Taylor@nickyt.online · 2y ago

Had a great coffee chat with @mikechen.io today. Thanks for hanging and the great convo! ☕ If you aren't already, go give him a follow!

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...

TimeMap.org - World History Atlas

The easy-to-use getaway to historical maps in libraries around the world.

oldmapsonline.org

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. 🎉"

The 6 Mistakes You’re Going to Make as a New Manager

Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager is tough but rewarding. The key is to delegate, find new sources of fulfillment, focus on quality over quantity, maintain proper engagement…

terriblesoftware.org

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

TL;DR to this thread, > 2/3s of the responses say they're still using Client-Side Rendering at work, despite so much conversation around Server-Side Rendering and React Server Components A really good reminder that what gets talked about most in tech circles doesn't always reflect market realities

Tanner Linsley@tannerlinsley.com · 2y ago

What kind of React app do you get paid to work on (not hobby projects)? - CSR, no SSR - Isomorphic SSR - RSC Again, if you don’t use React at a paid gig, don’t reply. If you maintain multiple, reply with the one that makes the most money (the product, not yourself)

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

the internet sucks in part because no one makes their own personal websites anymore aftermath.site/website-musk...

For Love of God, Make Your Own Website - Aftermath

The internet felt like a limitless expanse of free expression. Now I usually end up at the same three or four websites.

aftermath.site

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.

Josh W. Comeau@joshwcomeau.com · 2y ago

🏠 I’m having an Open House! This has become a bit of a tradition for me. Every Black Friday, I select a couple of lessons from my courses and make them public for a few days. This way, potential students can test-drive the content and see if it’s a good fit for them! The doors have just opened. 😄

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.

Danny Thompson@dthompsondev.bsky.social · 2y ago

AI arguments? Is this really a hot take? Learning to code in 2025 and beyond, I guess I will say this until someone can change my mind.

Felt a little overwhelmed on the last day of work before holiday and remembered the time I got personally mocked by an NPC in Sea of Stars

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 can’t believe we have another month of getting dark earlier whose idea was this?

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: 🧵

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!

Alberto Gimeno@gimenete.net · 2y ago

😱 Not so short JS horror story: githero.app was performing really badly when using the back button in the browser. The whole app was refreshing. Initially I thought I was doing something wrong but quickly saw that it could only be that the routing library was not listening to the popstate event.

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.

Rizel Scarlett 🇦🇬🇬🇾@blackgirlbytes.bsky.social · 2y ago

I be getting so tight when someone is like “if you know of any roles that would be good for me, reach out” You dont want a job. LOL cuz why do other ppl have to do the work for you?

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

Hard agree. For our small engineering team, our application asked only for resumes (no cover letters), but if someone took the time to write a thoughtful email alongside their resume, I read every word. It really set them apart if they did even a halfway decent job with it.

Josh W. Comeau@joshwcomeau.com · 2y ago

Ive been involved in hiring at several of the companies I’ve worked at. At one company, I saw all of the direct applications, I was the first person to review them. The quality was *terrible*. Most people put zero effort into their application. A tiny bit of effort can go a long way. 🧵

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

⭑ salma@whitep4nth3r.com · 2y ago

Here is a popular blog post of mine. I'm definitely not posting this just to test showing bsky likes on my blog posts 👀

Please enjoy this thread of people named Mike Chen discussing being named Mike Chen

Dr. Mike Chen@mcycee.bsky.social · 2y ago

@mikechenwriter.bsky.social, how many Mike Chen’s have we got here?