Engineering Career Series | Yusuf Aytas
Engineering Career Series<br>Software engineering career advice that holds up: how to read career signals, manage your boss, navigate interviews, and build a long career well.<br>April 8, 2026·4 min read<br>Your Work Introduces You<br>Years ago, when I first joined Tripadvisor, we had a tool that moved data to Amazon Redshift. One of the engineers went on holiday, the tool had a few bugs, and people were bloc...
May 13, 2026·7 min read<br>Why We Ignore Advice<br>The other day, I caught myself giving advice again. I do that a lot. Probably too much. While I was talking, something hit me. I have been told the right thing many times in my...
April 20, 2025·4 min read<br>Take Self Reviews Seriously<br>This isn’t the first and definitely won’t be the last time I find myself in a conversation about the importance of self checkins, performance reviews, and all that socalled “ref...
April 6, 2025·8 min read<br>The Invisible Difference<br>There are plenty of skills you can pick up along the way. Some come from , some through experience. A lot of it is just trial and error. And some from . You figure things out su...
December 13, 2018·7 min read<br>The Real Work Is Social<br>I get along with people. I talk, I joke, I do the normal office stuff. But even with that, something about how work actually works has always felt off. You think the job is most...
November 9, 2025·13 min read<br>Managing Your Manager<br>Managers change more often than you realize, especially when a company is growing or downsizing. New roles, new org charts, new reporting lines. Other times, you’re shopping aro...
September 20, 2025·9 min read<br>Prisoner's Dilemma<br>On September 3, 1949, a weather plane was flying over Japan. It detected traces of radioactive isotopes. These elements decay quickly, which means they had been created recently...
July 14, 2024·6 min read<br>Interviewing Your Future Boss<br>I’m sure you have been asked if you have any questions during interviews. A few things come to mind. Often, we think we need to impress the other party. Nevertheless, tough ques...
October 13, 2024·4 min read<br>No Fluff Please<br>I've seen countless socalled resume coaches who stuff resumes with flashy buzzwords like 'scalable' and 'fast.' It's all fluff, and it doesn't land real results. A truly impactf...
November 4, 2023·8 min read<br>Leadership Archetypes<br>I’ve had all kinds of bosses over the years. Some of them were visionaries. Some others were quiet geniuses. One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to survive and maybe even...
November 1, 2025·21 min read<br>AI Broke Interviews<br>Interviewing has always been a big can of worms in the software industry. For years, big tech has gone with the LeetCode style questions mixed with a few behavioural and rounds....
June 12, 2022·14 min read<br>System Design Interviewing Tips<br>System design interviews are inherently subjective. Outcomes depend on many factors, including the backgrounds of both the interviewer and the candidate. Even if both have exper...
February 7, 2024·4 min read<br>Navigating Layoffs<br>In the last few years, companies have begun laying off talent, leading to tough and depressing times for many. Some layoffs came as a big surprise, especially from companies tha...
November 27, 2024·6 min read<br>The Reality of an Employer's Market<br>Lately, Iʼve seen a lot of posts about what employers should do or how they should treat candidates, what benefits they should offer, and how they should run their interviews. I...
February 11, 2025·7 min read<br>Tech Hiring Bubble Bursts<br>I wasn’t around in the 90s, but people who were say it was incredible. If you could code, you were set. Talent was rare. There were almost everywhere. In the 2000s and early 201...
September 17, 2025·12 min read<br>Climbing No More<br>Engineers have been reaching a common ceiling in their careers for decades. The pattern goes like this: an individual contributor gets promoted to a senior software engineer, an...
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