People with experience solving small problems often underestimate the difficulty of solving big problems.

Read and watch at: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/scale-is-the-only-problem-left

If you are, like me, a certified brainiac who relishes in spouting endless factoids, I invite you to consider this: You might be wrong. Considering that you might be wrong will make it more impressive if you are right and, as a bonus, will make you a nicer person to be around.

If you want to be effective and professional, you better know your tools well and spend time gaining the required knowledge and experience.

Read and watch at: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/know-thy-tools

When communicating in a professional context, you want every communication to count towards something. This in turn means that you need to have crystal clarity about your goals. If you communicate without a plan, then it should be no surprise that your non-existent plan does not come to fruition.

Read, watch, and subscribe at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/all-communication-is-strategic

For the systems you own, do you ever look at the logs and metrics? If not, you are not the owner, you are, at best, the lazy guardian of a bunch of orphans, anyone of which could become the next Voldemort.

Read, watch, and subscribe at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-burdens-of-ownership

Hot take: If you want to work in this field, you need to understand computers.

Read and watch at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/keeping-it-real

You might be a distributed systems genius or the world’s best leet coder, but without tech support, your life would be miserable. Remember that next time you go to IT.

Read at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/appreciate-your-it-support.

 Interviewing is a skill and, much like penalty shootouts during major soccer tournaments, can be trained. Raw talent helps, but in a pinch, preparation beats talent and experience nine times out ten.

Read, watch, and subscribe at: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/candidates-please-prepare

It's a magical quality that will save you, even when you (like me) are the dumbest person in the building...

Read (and maybe watch) at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/getting-stuff-done.

I typically spend a large part of the weekend and most of the public holidays resisting the urge to sit down and do some work. That is obviously a terrible state of affairs and it is not a lot of fun either, so what’s up and why not give in?

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/taming-the-monkey-brain