👋 Hi, I’m Neal and I give Developers and Product Managers actionable & non-patronizing career advice.
I’m a regular contributor at The Muse and I used to write Devpost’s weekly careers newsletter to over 200,000 hackers.
I write from the heart & my own experience. I’ve worked at big companies and startups, switched careers, been laid off, ghosted by recruiters, asked to work for free, and made plenty of my own mistakes along the way.
In spite of all that, I’m thriving and you can too!
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February 2021
January 2021
September 2019
- The hacker mindset is a powerful, but double-edged sword
- Should you buy your stock options when you quit?
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
- The hardest part of finding a new job isn’t the interview
- Take ownership of your product, even if you’re not the Product Owner
May 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
- If you claim to be an expert at something, you’d better be able to back it up
- Start 2019 with actionable advice for students, job seekers, happy employees, and hackers
December 2018
- Take-home assignments prove that you can do the job
- Two things to look for when interviewing potential hires
November 2018
- Three short emails that’ll help you make money, hire, and keep clients happy
- Use the rest of 2018 to prepare for your 2019 job hunt
- If you join a company because you love its culture, be prepared for it to change
- Get over quitter’s remorse and new job jitters
October 2018
- How my friend negotiated a higher salary and better start date
- Lazy programmers can save their teams a lot of time and money
- How long can you afford to look for a job?
- Management is one way to advance your career, but it’s not quick, easy, or stress free
September 2018
- Juggling your classes, extracurriculars, and a part-time job
- 5 steps for a productive weekly retrospective meeting
- Developers work in sprints, but your colleagues operate on different time scales
- You’re a person, not a Docker container; your path to success won’t be the same as anybody else’s
August 2018
- Idolizing Steve Jobs won’t get you a job, but networking will
- A personal story about switching careers
- Interns, take advantage of your ‘exit interview’
- A primer on workers’ compensation
- Your past expertise can be an advantage during a career change
July 2018
- Do more with less using timeboxes
- Don’t miss out on these opportunities. You’ll be back in class soon enough!
- Get back into work mode after your vacation
- A masterclass in job hunting from a high schooler
June 2018
- Don’t judge a company by its cubicles
- A simple way to keep your résumé up to date
- You can’t avoid meetings, but you can make them suck less
- You might not care about your title, but recruiters do
May 2018
- Do’s and Don’ts of professional references
- Today’s code is tomorrow’s technical debt
- A new hire pro tip from the New York Fire Department
April 2018
- What are the next 5 bullet points you want on your résumé?
- Seperate the must haves from the nice to haves
- A 10 Week Plan to get the most out of your summer internship
- Don’t pigeonhole yourself to one tech, language, or job role
March 2018
- How To Suggest New Product Features
- Talking to your boss on a regular basis is 100% a positive career move
- HR reps & hiring managers aren’t that interested in your GitHub profile
- Things to think about before you start freelancing
- How to put hackathons on your résumé
February 2018
- What should you wear to a job interview?
- Setting goals is hard, but you got this!
- The most important love, is the love you give yourself
- Making unpopular product decisions
January 2018
- If you want to get paid more, prove that you’re delivering value
- How resilient is your company to a major service outage?
December 2017
- Step into the new year with a hacker mentality
- Upgrade your family this holiday season
- Nobody hires in December, but you can lay the groundwork for next year
- Your code’s legacy is what it enabled
November 2017
- Try empathizing with your manager
- Everything you do as a developer requires trust
- Smart questions to ask during interviews
- CEO Accessibility vs. Visibility
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
- Not everything you work on is going to be ‘high’ technology, and that’s OK
- Why is a modern tech company using an outdated stack?
- You can’t fix a company’s culture by yourself
- Before you dive into a salary negotiation, read this
- Write cover letters & résumés that get noticed
July 2017
- Focus too much on incremental gains and you’ll miss the truly transformative ones
- Practice your whiteboard test skills with the Battleship problem
- Six steps for surviving a layoff, from someone who did
June 2017
- You can wait around for recruiters to contact you, or you can be proactive and pursue the dream job you want
- Software Development is about solving other people’s problems
- Capital Rules Everything Around Me