Six months ago, I was on the other side of a technical interview for the first time. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned so far. Here are three quick ways to take luck out of the equation and signal your competencies to the interviewer.

Software engineer John Carmack, co-founder of Id Software, worked 10-hour days, 6 days a week throughout his career. Some engineers think this is reasonable. Others will say it leads to burnout. My take? Longer hours are fine when it’s on your terms, you’re gaining something valuable, and your life circumstances allow it.

When you interview for a new role, often you’ll get asked: What makes you want to leave your current one? Answering politely is a good professional decision. This is a blog post and not an interview, so I don’t have to be polite.

Communication can occur via meetings (sync), instant messaging/email (async), google docs/confluence (collaboration), Jira (work trackers). However, the communication is only effective if it’s relevant to the recipient.