For ten years I had crippling writer’s block. Like many creatives, my writing suffered when my mood stabilized. It’s an unhealthy relationship with the craft that began to dissipate four years ago, and in the past year lifted almost entirely. I’m very proud to be writing consistently—ever improving—and an article of mine is being featured today in the humor publication Slackjaw. It’s a short satirical piece about the absurd hoops you have to jump through to be hired as a software engineer. The full version is here.

Learn Rust inside and out

Rust is the hot programming language right now, and an essential pedigree even if you’re interviewing at a company that converts early 2000’s wig stores into dating sites for divorced tradwives. How else will you convey an unyielding recreational drive to stay relevant? Free time is for suckers, Liberal Arts grads, and employed engineers who know Rust.

Memorize every algorithm in existence

What’s important in software isn’t understanding design patterns, writing efficient code, or resourceful problem-solving, it’s whether you’re an encyclopedia of algorithms in a hypothetical universe where Google doesn’t exist. At any moment a suitable candidate must be able to write a program that derives the first one hundred Mersenne prime numbers. What if Alan Turing rises from the grave and demands a Q2 turn-around on an unnecessarily encrypted calculator app? Get your shit together.

Live in “The Cloud”

Traditional on-premise computing is dying. Soon, your entire job will be hosted in The Cloud: databases, web servers, work happy hours — even the preservation of your body-orphaned consciousness (willing or otherwise). Get a head start by renting a cramped studio apartment in the Metaverse for $9,000 a month, where poverty has also transitioned into the digital age.