Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Writing Archive

Favorites

Work Sample Tests: A Framework for Good Work Sample Tests: Eight Rules for Fair Tests November 17th, 2021
"Where did we get lucky?" February 4th, 2020
You have two jobs November 1st, 2017
Psychological safety in the InfoSec industry April 18th, 2016
I refuse to tolerate assholes May 19th, 2011
How the news breaks November 8th, 2006

2025

Working in Between Public and Private October 18th, 2025
Two Scenario Threat Modeling August 8th, 2025
Comfort Scores: A risk mitigation tool for pre-trip briefings August 4th, 2025
What if We Thought About Risk Decisions Differently? July 22nd, 2025
Ultralight Heresies July 21st, 2025
Potential causes of accidents in outdoor pursuits (the Meyer/Williamson matrix) June 17th, 2025
Changing Directions June 3rd, 2025
How to report a security issue in an open source project March 27th, 2025
Beware tech career advice from old heads March 13th, 2025
Thinking About Risk: Sidebar #4: Quantitative Risk Revisited January 28th, 2025
Thinking About Risk: Sidebar #3: Two Flavors of Medium Risk January 17th, 2025
Thinking About Risk: Sidebar #2: The Swiss Cheese Model January 16th, 2025
Thinking About Risk: Sidebar #1: "Exposure" January 15th, 2025

2024

Thinking About Risk: Mitigation December 10th, 2024
Thinking About Risk: An introduction to thinking about risk December 4th, 2024
Free digital security checkups for people/organizations concerned about the incoming US government November 11th, 2024
Why you should run for the DSF Board, and my goals for the DSF in 2025 October 18th, 2024
If we had $1,000,000… October 8th, 2024
Ethical Applications of AI to Public Sector Problems October 1st, 2024
All I Need to Know About Engineering Leadership I Learned From Leave No Trace July 12th, 2024
Paying More for Media June 11th, 2024
Why I'm Not Writing a Productivity Series April 4th, 2024
Mentorship, coaching, sponsorship: three different — and equally important — tools for developing talent April 1st, 2024
Discussing Open Source funding and sustainability on the Sustain podcast March 29th, 2024
Talking about Django's history and future on Django Chat March 20th, 2024
So you've been reorg'd... March 12th, 2024
Estimating Software Projects: Breaking Down Tasks March 11th, 2024
Paying people to work on open source is good actually February 16th, 2024
Tracking Engineering Time February 7th, 2024
Philanthropy Update January 10th, 2024
My Diverse Hiring Playbook January 4th, 2024

2023

Managing Technical Debt December 20th, 2023
Making Decisions: First decide how to decide: “one weird trick” for easier decisions December 5th, 2023
Making Decisions: RFC processes are a poor fit for most organizations December 1st, 2023
Professionalism: No Yelling November 21st, 2023
Performance Is Contextual November 20th, 2023
How to Build Trust November 16th, 2023
Does someone need to be a good manager to give good management advice? November 16th, 2023
Seniority and self-management: you don't have to do this alone October 4th, 2023
RTO vs WFH: my default recommendations for remote vs colocated teams September 29th, 2023
Team size isn't a measure of success September 11th, 2023
Mailbag: Should you give candidates feedback on their interview performance? August 25th, 2023
Do I need a consultant, contractor or employee? August 24th, 2023
Hire for Floors, not Ceilings August 16th, 2023
Giving It All Away: My Philanthropic Plan May 15th, 2023
Follow-ups to "Incompetent but Nice" March 31st, 2023
Incompetent but Nice March 28th, 2023

2022

Professionalism: You should maintain a transition file November 9th, 2022
Performance "Seasons" Are Useless — Use Anniversary Reviews Instead October 25th, 2022
The Intersection of Tenure and Seniority October 20th, 2022
Writing With Copilot October 14th, 2022
When Is Short Tenure a Red Flag? October 14th, 2022
Is this a parable about software development? October 13th, 2022
Role Title Terminology October 12th, 2022
Post-interview recommendations: a case against 'maybe' September 23rd, 2022
Quality Is Systemic September 9th, 2022
Taking notes in interviews August 12th, 2022
Panel interviews don't work July 8th, 2022
Checking References: What to do if a reference check goes wrong July 6th, 2022
Checking References: How to Check References June 24th, 2022
Checking References: Yes, You Should Check References June 22nd, 2022
DORA Metrics: the Right Answer to measuring engineering team performance June 17th, 2022
Making a Compelling Offer — in this economy? June 16th, 2022
Mailbag: Dealing With Misalignment While Hiring May 23rd, 2022
Professionalism: Honesty is a professional behavior May 19th, 2022
Professionalism: What is “professionalism” and why am I writing about it? April 12th, 2022
Is my advice too mercenary? April 11th, 2022
Your last one-on-one: what to do instead of an exit interview April 7th, 2022
Exit Interviews Are a Trap April 4th, 2022
That Wild Ask A Manager Story February 14th, 2022
I was on The Changelog February 14th, 2022
Developing a Values Interview Question January 31st, 2022
Book Review: Powerful (Patty McCord) January 18th, 2022
Year in Review: 2021 January 7th, 2022
Work Sample Tests: Wrap Up and Q&A January 6th, 2022

2021

Work Sample Tests: What doesn't work (and why) December 30th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: Labs & Simulation Environments December 24th, 2021
Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day December 20th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: ‘Reverse’ Code Review December 15th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: Bring Your Own Code December 7th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: Pair Programming November 30th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: Coding “Homework” November 23rd, 2021
Work Sample Tests: A Framework for Good Work Sample Tests: Eight Rules for Fair Tests November 17th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: The tradeoff between inclusivity and predictive value November 10th, 2021
Work Sample Tests: Introduction to Work Sample Tests November 9th, 2021
When you're a manager, your behavior is under a microscope October 26th, 2021
Dear Potheads, You Can Work for the U.S. Government, Maybe October 25th, 2021
Simple Product Management Tricks October 20th, 2021
What is your labor worth? Tech compensation in 2021 October 13th, 2021
Delegation: How to Delegate Meeting Attendance October 6th, 2021
Delegation: Briefing a Delegate September 27th, 2021
People- vs Results-Oriented Management: Both Work! September 22nd, 2021
Delegation: Delegate Outcomes, Not Methods July 21st, 2021
Delegation: Make Failure A (Safe) Option July 20th, 2021
Delegation: “Give Away Your Toys” July 19th, 2021
Delegation: What's delegation? July 19th, 2021
Probably Are Gonna Need It: Application Security Edition July 8th, 2021
Book Review: Team Topologies July 5th, 2021
The VPP/VPE Relationship June 16th, 2021
Estimating Software Projects: So you messed up. Now what? June 8th, 2021
Estimating Software Projects: The art of the SWAG June 2nd, 2021
Estimating Software Projects: My Software Estimation Technique May 25th, 2021
Estimating Software Projects: Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway. May 20th, 2021
2021 DBIR Highlights May 18th, 2021
Positive feedback is different from praise May 12th, 2021
The Mass Email Mistake May 10th, 2021
Three Feedback Models April 22nd, 2021
The Fundamental Purpose of Middle Management: Context Down, Information Up April 19th, 2021
Are You Stuck On Vision, Strategy, or Tactics? April 16th, 2021
Embrace the Grind April 7th, 2021
Mailbag: Adapting Interview Questions for Junior Candidates March 29th, 2021
“Fair” Doesn't Mean “Equal” March 28th, 2021
How managers should respond to defensiveness after feedback March 23rd, 2021
The Three Kinds of Organizational Power March 15th, 2021
How Long Does It Take to Hire Someone? March 11th, 2021
Coworking With a Friend to Write More March 9th, 2021
“Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?” March 8th, 2021
How to Give a Status Update To Executives March 5th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: Types of Interview Questions March 1st, 2021
Effective Organizations Value Autonomy February 26th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: Interview Question Series Wrap Up February 15th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: The Weakness Question February 12th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: “Tell Me About a Disagreement…” February 11th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion February 10th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: “Tell Me About a Project You Led…” February 9th, 2021
Unpacking Interview Questions: “Explain a Topic At Multiple Levels…” February 8th, 2021
SOCCR: the framework I use for decision briefs January 30th, 2021
How to gather consensus before a big decision January 18th, 2021
Hangar's Dumb Security Questionnaire January 15th, 2021
Why I'm excited to get a COVID vaccine January 13th, 2021
Articles for r2c: Bringing Security along on the CI/CD journey January 11th, 2021
Designing Engineering Organizations January 5th, 2021

2020

AI is catching up to the hype December 28th, 2020
Measuring Hiring Manager Effectiveness September 14th, 2020
Articles for r2c: Not all attacks are equal: understanding and preventing DoS in web applications September 11th, 2020
Training Interviewers September 8th, 2020
Articles for r2c: Preventing SQL Injection in Django May 15th, 2020
What accomplishments sound like on software engineering resumes May 8th, 2020
Layoffs are Coming March 13th, 2020
Django's new governance model March 12th, 2020
The Innovation/Execution Spectrum February 18th, 2020
"Where did we get lucky?" February 4th, 2020
Demos, Prototypes, and MVPs January 16th, 2020
📣 Now on Google Cloud Run January 5th, 2020

2019

My Python Development Environment: My Python Development Environment, 2020 Edition November 11th, 2019
My questions for prospective employers (Director/VP roles) April 23rd, 2019
IQ isn't enough to get hired April 3rd, 2019
Goals aren't enough; you have to talk about performance, too April 1st, 2019

2018

My interview kickoff script, annotated November 29th, 2018
Hire me to help you hire November 27th, 2018
A bit of smart security design from Tiller November 19th, 2018
2018 life update May 3rd, 2018
A reading list for new engineering managers May 2nd, 2018
The Moment April 2nd, 2018
My Python Development Environment: My Python Development Environment, 2018 Edition February 21st, 2018

2017

You have two jobs November 1st, 2017
Five stories about the California Wildfires you probably missed October 22nd, 2017
Don't include social engineering in penetration tests June 27th, 2017

2016

Getting started with pytest November 27th, 2016
Django Under the Hood 2016 Highlights November 22nd, 2016
So you want a new admin? May 26th, 2016
Ratchets & Levers May 19th, 2016
2016 DBIR Highlights April 27th, 2016
A reading list for InfoSec engineers April 20th, 2016
Psychological safety in the InfoSec industry April 18th, 2016

2015

How do you run distributed standups? June 4th, 2015
Shanley and my PyCon talk June 1st, 2015

2014

Uber and the Fourth Estate November 18th, 2014
Python Programmers Support the Ada Initiative September 23rd, 2014
Re: What Can Men Do? April 25th, 2014
The limits of "unlimited" vacation March 18th, 2014
Retiring as BDFLs January 13th, 2014

2013

Bagels December 2nd, 2013
To my friends in the Node community November 30th, 2013
On TRUCEConf November 9th, 2013
Personal lessons from XOXO September 22nd, 2013
Join me in supporting the Ada Initiative August 27th, 2013
Getting features into Django May 23rd, 2013
I've joined Heroku May 13th, 2013

2012

Auto-building Sphinx docs May 24th, 2012
Measuring the Django Community: The Django community in 2012 March 5th, 2012

2011

DIY supplies October 31st, 2011
Why conferences need a code of conduct August 4th, 2011
P.J. Eby on PyPI July 5th, 2011
Is there a market for paid Django apps? June 28th, 2011
A REST wankery question May 25th, 2011
I refuse to tolerate assholes May 19th, 2011
Work for me! April 25th, 2011
Help desk software? March 4th, 2011

2010

Configuration and architecture November 9th, 2010
CI is hard! November 8th, 2010
Office hours November 7th, 2010
Django classes: deployment, ecosystem November 4th, 2010
How to roast a chicken November 3rd, 2010
Django gotcha: concrete inheritance November 2nd, 2010
What's your favorite Django app? November 1st, 2010
"Web Scale" October 28th, 2010
Peter Norvig on programming languages October 18th, 2010
man tar August 3rd, 2010
Mark Shuttleworth on Tribalism July 31st, 2010
GvR on commit privileges July 26th, 2010
What to do when PyPI goes down July 20th, 2010
Backwards compatibility June 9th, 2010
util June 8th, 2010
Dynamic form generation February 28th, 2010
Early registration for my Advanced Django class ends soon February 16th, 2010
To hell with web standards February 12th, 2010

2009

Fixing PostgreSQL's default encoding on Ubuntu 9.10 December 12th, 2009
Writing Great Documentation: You need an editor November 12th, 2009
Writing Great Documentation: Technical style November 11th, 2009
Writing Great Documentation: What to write November 10th, 2009
My travel kit November 9th, 2009
Measuring the Django Community: The Django community in 2009 November 6th, 2009
Thank you, Rails November 5th, 2009
On commit bits November 4th, 2009
Lessons from Rackspace's downtime November 3rd, 2009
The power of "no" November 2nd, 2009
SEO scumbags October 29th, 2009
QFT October 20th, 2009
Job opportunity: engineer at Whiskey Media October 13th, 2009
* is Unix October 7th, 2009
Python is Unix October 6th, 2009
Django Master Class, October 16 September 18th, 2009
Contributor License Agreements September 17th, 2009
Snakes on the Web September 4th, 2009
Reminder: Django Training August 7th, 2009
Django Training July 20th, 2009
Twenty questions about the GPL July 13th, 2009
Django internals: authentication July 13th, 2009
Professionalism July 4th, 2009
SVN usability June 30th, 2009
Looking for a Django developer? June 10th, 2009
More buildout notes April 20th, 2009
Developing Django apps with zc.buildout April 15th, 2009
Nobody expects Python packaging! April 13th, 2009
Hooray for standards April 9th, 2009
Python implementation details March 26th, 2009
It's time for a change March 4th, 2009
FAQ: Untrusted users and HTML February 24th, 2009
The taste of shame and humiliation February 2nd, 2009
Why I'm excited about Python 3 January 22nd, 2009
Descriptivists and Prescriptivists January 13th, 2009
What is django.contrib? January 8th, 2009

2008

"Syntactic Sugar" November 22nd, 2008
Typography: Rhythm & Proportion November 21st, 2008
Minimalism November 18th, 2008
REST worst practices November 14th, 2008
PyCon Braindump March 19th, 2008
Help OSI March 18th, 2008
Sailing on… February 21st, 2008
A picture is worth a thousand words January 30th, 2008
Shameless self-promotion January 29th, 2008

2007

Django Book Update November 13th, 2007
Of the Web October 19th, 2007
CouchDB first impressions October 18th, 2007
The sorry state of database journalism September 12th, 2007
My "personal security" plan August 31st, 2007
Seasoning Templates July 19th, 2007
Die, Marker Felt, Die! July 16th, 2007
Dear Adobe July 2nd, 2007
Some guesses about the future May 31st, 2007
Django projects May 22nd, 2007
Django Internships at the Journal-World May 2nd, 2007
Measuring the Django Community: Circles of Django (2007) March 22nd, 2007
You vs. the Real World March 12th, 2007
Jimbo's Number March 6th, 2007
Ripped by Engadget March 5th, 2007
Five things I hate about Python March 4th, 2007
Overheard at PyCon February 23rd, 2007
I don't care whose is bigger February 19th, 2007
Fried Chicken January 29th, 2007

2006

How the news breaks November 8th, 2006
Wanted: kick-ass sysadmin September 18th, 2006
Pronouncement August 22nd, 2006
Post-OSCONum part 1: try not to suck July 28th, 2006
"Show-stoppers" July 20th, 2006
Digg dugg July 17th, 2006
Bad dog! July 10th, 2006
Improved text image view June 30th, 2006
Django OSCON shirts June 27th, 2006
Django propaganda May 3rd, 2006
A complete waste of time April 21st, 2006
Django meetup in Palo Alto April 12th, 2006
Merquery March 29th, 2006
Quiet Enjoyment March 23rd, 2006
Free server? Probably not March 22nd, 2006
Free servers? March 2nd, 2006
Django stuff at Pycon March 2nd, 2006
WWBD February 17th, 2006
Template + Cache = Crazy Delicious January 31st, 2006
Why you should use Django January 27th, 2006
Strike averted January 13th, 2006
Done January 4th, 2006

2005

Dojo gets a manual December 23rd, 2005
Django, meet Dojo December 19th, 2005
Have more… December 14th, 2005
Django performance tips December 12th, 2005
Hiring, part II December 8th, 2005
We're hiring! December 7th, 2005
Lightpd on Ubuntu December 5th, 2005
What can Django learn from Rails? December 5th, 2005
allofmp3.com RSS feed September 22nd, 2005
Private Dancer? September 9th, 2005
A note to web designers August 26th, 2005
A quick comparison August 22nd, 2005
Sera's Pancakes August 21st, 2005
Django and Rails August 16th, 2005
Reboot August 15th, 2005