Austin Brown

Unreal requirements are getting out of hand. Just saw a job posting asking for: 5+ years experience Expert-level certifications Established client relationships Proven track record of results For an "entry-level" position. Make it make sense. Dear companies: How does someone get 5 years of experience without getting their first opportunity? You're asking for unicorns and wondering why you can't fill positions. Meanwhile, you're missing out on: The hungry recent grad who'll outwork everyone. The career changer with transferable skills. The coachable candidate who'll become your top performer. Here's what entry-level should actually mean: Willingness to learn Strong work ethic Good communication skills Professional attitude That's it. Stop creating impossible barriers. Every skill you listed can be taught in 90 days. Character and drive can't be taught at all. Hire for potential. Train for performance.

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You don't need to hire a software farm for anything anymore. You need one developer who sits next to you for 6 weeks and learns how your business runs. Not how it looks in a deck. How it actually runs. The messy inbox system. The Notion doc nobody follows. The 4-step process your EA does manually every morning. A good AI developer, someone who works in n8n, Claude, and modern automation tools, turns that into systems that run without you. We placed one with a 12-person e-commerce brand. In 8 weeks he'd automated their order exception workflow, their influencer outreach follow-up, and their weekly reporting. The admin team is being trained in AI. Those that don’t adopt are gone. 3 tasks. Each one was eating 6-8 hours a week from someone on the team. That’s money in your pocket. 416h per year. That’s almost a full quarter's worth of work. A dev shop's savings don't matter if they can't ship. Ours do. I wrote more on this on more detail in the blog linked below: https://lnkd.in/gVpWJGZw DM me if you have been seeing AI happening in front of you and want to know how you can avoid missing out.

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Someone** asked me about my advice to devs for "traditional software engineers" who resist change. Being a true tech professional means you keep your toolset sharp, and up-to-date. If you refuse to do so, you are probably not a true professional, but opted to be either a hobbyist or someone who voluntarily retired from the profession, or plans to retire real soon. Both are fine - but don't be surprised if those looking for true professionals pass over you. ** this "someone" was my Japanese Translator for The Software Engineer's Guidebook, to be published by O'Reilly, with some additional content in it, like this one. I really dig their approach!

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The best developers I’ve ever worked with frequently said: “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” They didn’t bluff. They didn’t hide behind jargon. They didn't bs. They were honest. They were curious. They focused on solving the problem They were not focussed on protecting their ego. Your job isn’t to know everything, it's to create business value and you can't do that by bluffing your way through everything. Saying “I don’t know” doesn’t make you look weak. I actually respect it. Pretending you do? That’s what does damage. There isn't much worse in an interview when someone is trying to make up the answer instead of saying: 'I don't know, but if in the job i guarantee id work it out by...'

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All people that manage software devs should contribute code. Full stop. "But managers should focus on people, not code!" "They'll be too rusty to contribute meaningfully." "There's not enough time in their schedule." "That's what we hire developers for!" Once a year, every engineering manager should land a small code change into production. Nothing complex - change a button color or tackle a tiny task from the sprint backlog. By going through this process, managers will experience firsthand: navigating your code base, dealing with environment setup, waiting for CI/CD pipelines, addressing code review feedback, fixing failing tests, and working with deployment processes. These small frustrations are your team's daily reality. Ever wonder why "simple changes" aren't so simple? When a manager experiences how a 5-line code change can take hours due to dependency issues, environment quirks, and proper testing, those estimation conversations take on new meaning. Suddenly, "Why can't we just..." transforms into "I understand why this takes time." If managers struggle with this exercise, they're not failing—they're finally feeling what their teams experience daily. No amount of status reports or retrospective meetings can replace the visceral understanding that comes from wrestling with merge conflicts or waiting anxiously for test results. This isn't about embarrassing them. It's about building genuine empathy through shared experience. I say turn this into a celebration! Make it a "Manager Shipping Day" with the team rallying around their leader. Order lunch, pair program, and cheer when that commit finally merges. The shared laughs over configuration struggles create will stronger bonds than any team happy hour. This isn't about shaming managers because they haven’t coded in many years. It's about creating mutual respect through shared challenges and victories. Like how Amazon encourages leaders to listen to customer service calls to truly understand customer pain points, engineering managers need to experience the developer journey firsthand. You can't fully empathize with your team's challenges when you're only discussing them in the abstract. Great leadership requires understanding the actual work experience of those you manage. Coding annually keeps managers connected to the practical realities their teams face daily. What's your take? Should they be required to code?

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Good engineering starts with the truth. I once had a boss say, during a sales call: "if anyone asks, we're experts at socket programming in C#". We weren't; not by a longshot. And I wasn't comfortable lying about it, so I didn't. I still won't. The same goes for interviews. If I'm asked about a mistake I made, I won't downplay it; I'll lean in. I'll tell you about a *big* mistake I made - and the even bigger effort I put in to make it right. I don't want to land a job by pretending to be someone I'm not. And I certainly don't want to build systems on that kind of foundation. At this point in my life, success means feeling good when I wake up in the morning.

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Most dev teams think Swagger UI is documentation. I think it's the reason 60% of API integrations fail. Here's what's actually killing your partnerships… Swagger UI is not documentation. It is a tester. It is not a guide to first success. I’ve watched teams ship an API with a shiny Swagger UI and zero context. An integrator then spends hours clicking endpoints to guess the sequence. Launch stalls. Support explodes later. A working API is not an easy to use product. What was missing: • Plain language descriptions for each endpoint. What it does. When to use it. • Authentication path. How to get a key or token. Where it goes in the request. • First call guide. One page that gets a response in Postman in under five minutes. • Sequence map for core flows. Call A, then B, then C. What you pass from one to the next. • Try it for real. In-doc auth or a Postman collection so people can run the flow end to end. How I fix it in week one: 1. Write the First call page. Key, header, sample request, expected response. 2. Add an Auth guide with the exact steps and a copy-paste snippet. 3. Document the sequence for the top two jobs to be done. Show the order and the hand-off values. 4. Add plain language descriptions to every endpoint in Swagger. No jargon. 5. Publish a Postman collection and link it inside the docs. If a partner has to reverse engineer your API, you are burning time and goodwill. Fix the guides before the next sprint and your next launch will move. Which of these pages would have saved your team hours this month?

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You call it "over-engineering" when devs make software more complicated than it needs to be. But simpler solutions often require *more* thought. Complexity's easy. You just keep typing. (Or prompting.) That's why I call over-complicating "under-engineering".

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I think a lot about extremely good but undervalued developers, and how our industry's hiring processes fail them. At a previous job, one of the leaders of the company loved to say, "Excellent written and verbal communication skills are required for every role at this company." I pushed back. I said, "Our team could *easily* accommodate a nonspeaking developer, as long as they can use Slack/email." I didn't win that battle. The company was worse off for it. A developer I follow on social media used to post incredible pure-CSS demos, pushing the boundaries of what CSS can do and demonstrating a deep understanding of fundamental web technologies. That's not something I often see, even in senior web devs. That same developer spent years unemployed, somehow unable to land an offer despite their best efforts—and this was in the years before the AI hype train and widespread layoffs. Another developer I follow is occasionally featured in the news (!) for feats of niche hardware and software engineering that I can't begin to imagine taking on. But instead of having their pick of Fortune 500 companies to sign with, they rely on donations to make rent. I don't struggle much with interviews. I'm friendly, articulate, quick on my feet. But there are untold numbers of people who can code circles around me, yet are constantly screened out and denied offers because of anxiety, lack of disability accommodations, different communication styles, limited work experience, or a resume that doesn't have the right keywords. Companies who know how to find and hire those people have a powerful competitive advantage. They're onboarding and retaining extraordinary developers that the rest of the market doesn't even see. The rest of us can do better. #hiring #programming

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Want to hire engineers who stick? Drop the unicorn hunt. Focus on real skills, not fantasy lists. The hiring landscape for embedded systems engineers is brutal. You’re tasked with finding talent that blends hardware savvy with software wizardry, thrives under real-time constraints, and can write code that squeezes into the tightest of spaces. It’s a niche, high-stakes game. But here’s the kicker: your biggest obstacle might not be the talent pool. It’s your own HR team. We’ve all seen those job descriptions that read like a wish list for a mythical creature: - "10+ years of C++ on bare-metal systems" - "Expertise in AI/ML AND RTOS AND FPGA" - "Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering REQUIRED" Sound familiar? These fantasy lists aren’t just unhelpful-they’re actively harmful. Here’s what happens when HR gets it wrong: ❌ You end up with a candidate pool of zero. ❌ The hiring process drags on for months. ❌ Your team suffers from missed deadlines and mounting pressure. Let’s be clear: the best embedded engineers aren’t defined by a laundry list of buzzwords. They’re problem-solvers. They’re adaptable. They know how to navigate the quirks and chaos of real-world systems. What we really need is a shift in mindset: → Stop focusing on years of experience; focus on hands-on impact. → Prioritize core competencies over exhaustive checklists. → Collaborate with HR to align on realistic, role-critical needs. The next time you’re handed a unicorn job description, push back. Use data to show what’s realistic. Reframe the role around what actually matters. Educate HR on why embedded is different. It’s not about creating friction-it’s about building a process that works. Pushing back isn’t just about making your life easier. It’s about securing the talent that will stick, perform, and drive your team forward. Want to build a high-performing team without the hiring headaches? Let’s talk. #EmbeddedSystems #EngineeringRecruitment #HiringDoneRight #RunTimeRecruitment

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Software Engineers, Engineering Managers, and related folks will know this already, but there's a big difference in the types of software that you can write. Engineers will tend to prefer working in one over the other. And most people on the business side (particularly if you see engineers as "resources" rather than people) think that the engineers are completely fungible and can be used in either model. The first key differentiator is between *building* and *assembling*. Think carpentry versus a flat pack from Ikea. Some folks would be more than happy to get a bunch of hex nuts and particleboard and swenglish instructions to make their bookcase. Others want to saw the wood, drill the holes, sand the edges, and craft a bookcase. I fall into the "builder" category. I'm not happy in a software role where I just take a bunch of third party products and solutions and assemble them together into a product. Of course, I will always take help from the appropriate services and tools where it is available, or if it's a solved problem I don't have to reinvent (to use the bookcase example, I don't need to forge my own nails and screws.) When you're establishing your engineering or technical teams, understand what sort of team you are creating — is it one of craftspeople who want to build a novel solution or is it one of people who are happy to grab all the components and hook them together. There's nothing wrong with either, but it will make the difference between a happy team and a team who is not enjoying their work.

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Stop stuffing your controller with logic and DB calls. Let it breathe. Here's why splitting concerns isn't just clean, it's smart. 👇 ✅ Why service delegation wins: 🔁 Reusability: Business logic belongs in services, not controllers. 🔍 Testability: Unit test your logic without booting the entire web layer. 🧩 Scalability: Easily plug in caching, retries, or other layers later. 💡 Good architecture isn't extra work—it’s future-proofing. #3 #SpringBoot #CleanCode #Java #BackendTips #RestController #Modularity #ATKWrites

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I guess I’m not in touch with the current generation of developers, but when I see someone post skill issue in a response to someone’s post it seems like a dismissive and useless comment. My guess is that anyone who says skill issue has never worked with the person they are posting the comment about. Everyone in this industry believe it or not is growing their skills which means that skill issue is a reductive and a meaningless point. No one has reached the precipice of knowledge in tech and never will, so get over yourself and join everyone who is learning everyday and getting better at the craft of building software to solve human problems.

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You don’t need a title to mentor someone. You don’t need 10+ years of experience. - If you’re a mid-level dev who’s survived your first production incident - If you’ve refactored something that was painful the first time - If you’ve learned to ask better questions in PRs You’ve got something valuable to share. Odds are that if you're reading this, you DO have something valuable to share. Mentorship isn’t about having all the answers. It's about sharing your experience and offering guidance. Sometimes the best mentors are only a few "steps ahead". And that’s enough. That’s how the next generation levels up. Who has been a helpful mentor to YOU? ---- 📨 Sign up for my email newsletter! 🗣️ Share with your network!

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Experienced developers: Stop saying you're "just a developer." You're not. You're a problem solver who happens to use code. I see 10+ year veterans underselling themselves every day: "I'm not ready to lead a team" "I'm never gonna be better than the 10x developers" "I'm not senior enough for that role" Meanwhile, you've: - Created products that made your boss rich - Prevented system outages that would cost millions - Built features used by thousands of users daily - Mentored junior developers who are now thriving But you focus on what you DON'T know instead of what you DO. Here's the truth: Imposter syndrome isn't about lacking skills. It's about lacking perspective. You compare your behind-the-scenes to everyone else's highlight reel. Stop it. Your experience IS valuable. Your solutions ARE needed. You DO belong in those senior roles. The companies that don't see your worth aren't worthy of your talent. Find the ones that are. ♻️ Repost if you needed to hear this today. What's one thing you accomplished this year that you're proud of? Share it below 👇

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Lately I’ve spoken with way too many developers who wait 1–2 WEEKS to get their code reviewed. To me, this is a sign of a dysfunctional engineering culture. Here are 3 reasons a long review process kills teams: 1. Unshipped code is worth $0.00 to the company. Every day it stays unshipped is a day the company misses out on the value that feature creates. 2.  Slow feedback = slow learning. Good reviews teach you something. If you learn the lesson two weeks later (“rename this,” “wrong abstraction,” “missing error handling”), you’ve already built the same mistakes into your next feature. Fast feedback compounds. 3. An unreviewed PR becomes an ‘open loop’ in a developer’s mind. It creates stress because you can’t release, you have to remember the context, you need to maintain a workspace, and you need to explain to customers why the feature isn’t out yet (when it should be). This is NOT a call to rubber-stamp PRs. It is a call to set aside time EVERY day to review the code your teammates poured blood, sweat, and tears into. If you are on or want to run an effective engineering team, one of the core metrics to get down is time to first review. P.S. I wrote my latest newsletter on how I review code effectively. Read it and subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/g_-VMXnP

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