Tech Productivity Issue #334 (A Pyramid-Shaped Career)

Issue #334 (A Pyramid-Shaped Career) 07/07/25

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A few months back, a Hacker News reader asks: What did you learn too late in your tech career? An excellent question that got a decent amount of responses, but didn't exactly get a ton of upvotes. Nonetheless, there are some interesting thoughts here that those just starting out in tech will benefit from.

Some of the comments that caught my eye:

That ultimately, the industry wants engineers to manage the business, instead of managing software
Document everything religiously
You need to make sure management knows your value
Async-communication does not replace real-time communication
You're as disposable as any other worker drone, so plan accordingly

These are just snippets of more comprehensive explanations, so be sure to check out the full thread if you want to dig deeper on some of this.

Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!

Tools & Apps

Lunacal — An appointment-booking calendar app with enterprise-grade capabilities but that's intuitive and accessible to everyone.

MagicQuit — A Mac app that automatically closes apps when you don't use them anymore, enabling you to enjoy a cleaner macOS desktop, more free memory, and enhanced battery life.

Refind — Brain food, delivered daily. Every day the team at Refind analyzes thousands of articles and sends you only the best, tailored to your interests. Loved by 540,000+ curious minds. sponsor

Clipboard History Pro — A browser extension that tracks your complete clipboard history and also offers a powerful text expander that works with Chromium browser and Firefox.

OatMind — A minimalist note-taking app for Windows and Mac that offers a private, offline, and hassle-free solution that's built for clarity, calm, and productivity.

LaSuite Docs — An open source and secure alternative to tools like Google Docs, Notion, or Confluence, offering a collaborative note taking, wiki, and documentation for knowledge building and sharing.

Bindr — An all-in-one platform that simplifies project management for teams via an intuitive UI, with features like calendar, workspace, chat, an AI assistant, and more.

Articles & Resources

Effort vs. Value Curves — "I am more concerned about the effort/time to impact curve because that (to me) more accurately represents product development. Instead of prioritizing features, you prioritize a focus area over time, and features are a subset of that decision."

A Pyramid-shaped Career — Is it a detriment to your career to start off with a high-status role? The author believes developing and growing in pyramid form is better in the long run.

Optimizing Personal Productivity with AI: A Leader’s Guide — If you haven't yet looked into ways you can become more efficient by incorporating AI tools and concepts, this might be a great place to start.

Start Building Job-Ready Tech Skills Today — Learn AI skills for any industry and get hands-on experience using the latest tools in tech. Tech Productivity readers can get 15% off a year of Codecademy Pro when you use code SKILLUP15. sponsor

7 Phrases I Use to Make Giving Feedback Easier for Myself — If you're in a position where giving feedback is a regular thing, these phrases might help you present in a more diplomatic or constructive manner.

How Do Interruptions Impact Different Software Engineering Activities? — Some interruptions are worse than others, depending on the task being performed. This post looks at some of the research in this area and how performance is affected by different tasks.

This Work-Life Balance Study Reveals 3 Major Problems: Here’s What We Need to Ask — From 2020, this article was published just before the pandemic started. It's interesting to see some of the research in this area before the work-from-home boom began.

Suggestions?

Have a suggestion for a productivity-related tool, article, or other resource? Send me a direct message via X or chat via Bluesky and I’ll consider including it in a future issue.

Stay productive!

Louis
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