Top of the Tech is back on track!
Learn from engineers with rapid career growth what it takes to speed up your career + read about amazing solopreneurship stories.
Top of the Tech took a small break, but we are back now.
Without further ado, let’s go! 🤓
The IndiePreneur
While I was on a break, Orel Zilberman, solopreneur/author got first revenue traction on his new tool WriteStack. Not only that, but he published exactly how he did it, what mistakes he made, and how you can avoid them.
His publication is a one-man entrepreneurship reality show, and you can not help but cheer for him when you read about his struggles and wins 💪🚀. Here are his latest posts; they are all freshly squeezed from the trenches of a tireless entrepreneur.
Why 99% of Indie Hackers Fail (And How I Finally Broke the Curse)
$0 to $400 MRR in Weeks – The Dumb Thing That Finally Worked
I Burned $70K Before I Learned This Profit Trick (Don’t Be Me)
He wins in this digest 🏅
Audience: Entrepreneurs
Value: Learn what not to do when building a product
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Engineer (IC9) On Working With Zuck, Carmack & Career Growth | Philip Su (1h 20 min podcast 3 min summary) + Work-Life Balance Slows Careers (E9 Engineer, ex-Meta) (10 min)
The Developing Dev + Path to Staff Engineer
Philip Su has been popping up in several publications lately.
In Ryan Peterman ‘s podcast, you get a lot of advice on career growth from someone who has been in the trenches for a long time.
In Sidwyn Koh ‘s newsletter, Philip shares some harsh truths on the costs of both work-life balance and fast career growth.
Rare gem this one 💎
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn from a Meta/OpenAI distinguished engineer
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
Social Capital: The Compound Interest of Your Engineering Career (7 min)
The Engineering Leader
In this article Rafa Páez talks about “social capital”. No matter how good you are at executing work yourself, you will reach a limit at a certain point. You realise your impact is bound by how many people you can rally around your efforts. Now, the ability to gather people around you for a cause is not a given. It’s not guaranteed even if the cause is super cool. It depends quite a lot on this thing called “social capital” that Rafa is describing.
To understand how to build your social capital and why it matters, read this article.
Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Learn how to boost your impact
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
The Rise of AI workflows (7 min)
The Engineering Leader
With the wide availability of AI tools, chaining those tools into workflows opens tremendous automation possibilities.
What you could never dream of doing with a classic “if/then/else” workflow is now available to build in a matter of hours with tools like n8n.
To emphasise the importance of reading about AI workflows, I will quote Rafa Páez - “Automate or be automated.”.
Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Learn about AI workflows
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
How to Manage your Time as an Engineer ⏱️ (10 min)
Hybrid Hacker
The Pomodoro time management technique was invented when an Italian student in the 1980s used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato to track his focused work intervals. Luca Rossi shares his experience with using the technique and some techniques that it enables.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how to manage your time/energy
ToT Rating: ⭐
Till soon! 👋
Thanks for featuring Philip's post!