Planning to be an Intern in the Bay Area during Summer 2012? Make sure to read an Intern's Guide to the Bay Area, and join the 2012 Facebook group. (via this guy, via this guy) Joel Spolsky, from the Joel On Software blog and StackOverflow, wrote an article with Advice for Computer Science College Students back in '05. According to Joel, No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.As such: here’s everything you ever wanted to know about tech internships, plus some bloviating about my experience. The TL;DR is, try to have at least two internships: on...

I prefer to come into work a little earlier before our 9 a.m. start time in order to leave before 5 p.m. My boss has no problem with my hours, though an older female colleague apparently does. She regularly tells me that this “special” work schedule is damaging my career trajectory and conveys to others that I am a diva. To that I reply, according to whom?There are many workplace assumptions that employees accept without question. Why does the traditional work day start at 9 a.m? Who decided 14 days is the proper amount of annual vacation time? Why do employees need to give a two-w...

I recently interviewed at a major technology company. I won't mention the name because, honestly, I can't remember whether I signed an NDA, much less how strong it was.I did well. Mostly because of luck. I normally step over myself when I interview. I guess I've improved over the years. Here are a few tips to ace your own interview.1. Don't write on the whiteboardWhen I interviewed at Palantir around 5 years ago, I had a lot of trouble with this. Yes, I knew next to nothing about computer science then, but I should have been able to answer many of those questions. For example, Palantir ask...

I will be very honest with you in this post. Most interview articles only show obvious mistakes, as if most people don’t know showing up late is bad form. I will tell you the things I didn’t really know about until I was the one interviewing, and interviewing for a variety of positions and person-types. No interview prep article ever prepared me in the right way for how interviewers really think. That is what I will be sharing with you today.When you first walk in to my office, I am expecting you to be one of the 99%+ people who I know I won’t hire in the first 5 mi...

Being a programmer, you have an invaluable skill that you need to learn to harness. Investors realize this already which is why they’ll spend stacks of cash to have you build them something that’ll someday be profitable. Large corporations realize the value in good developers and sometimes bend over backwards trying to retain their top talent. To be able to program well is a skill that people clearly value but why do programmers tend to place such little value on their own talents?I know amazing developers who have spent the last decade building other people a fortune in IP while...

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend who recently launched an online business, and it surprised me how our fears are never what they seem to beIt went something like this:B.: I need your help. I launched my product a few months ago, but I am not getting any sales.Me: Do you have traffic?B.: Not much, about 100 visitors a monthMe: Then you need to get more traffic. You probably need at least 100x that amount in your market to start seeing any sales.B.: And how do I get that many people?Me: It might take a while, but find out people who would love to have your product, or...

A manager took me aside at a recent engagement. “You know, Johanna, there’s something I just don’t understand about this agile thing. It sure doesn’t look like everyone is being used at 100 percent.”“And what if they aren’t being used at 100 percent? Is that a problem for you?”“Heck, yes. I’m paying their salaries! I want to know I’m getting their full value for what I’m paying them!”“What if I told you you were probably getting more value than what you were paying, maybe one and a half to twice as much?...

Young scientists at a Chinese genomics institute are foregoing conventional postgraduate training for the chance to be part of major scientific initiatives. Is this the way of the future?The approach to extended postgraduate training varies from country to country. The United States and Europe, for example, have long believed that students need to finish a multiyear programme of postgraduate work before they can fully participate in the front rank of research, whether in industry or academia.In Asia, scientific communities instead tend to value directed, practical research. In Japan, for examp...