Psychology

A critical bug crashed our production system at 2 AM. Slack notifications went out to the entire engineering team-thirty developers. Nobody responded. Not for 45 minutes. Everyone saw the alerts. Everyone assumed someone else would handle it. After all, with thirty people notified, surely someone more senior, more experienced, or more available would jump in. When I finally woke up and fixed it, I found out that seventeen people had been awake and seen the alert. Each one thought, “Someone else will get this.” ...

I landed my dream job at a top tech company. Six figures. Stock options. Free lunch. The works. I spent two years grinding LeetCode problems, perfecting my resume, practicing system design interviews. I was convinced that once I got this job, I’d finally be happy. For about three weeks after I got the offer, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t stop smiling. I told everyone. I posted on LinkedIn (yes, really). This was it. I’d made it. ...

I spent six months building a SaaS product that nobody wanted. The code was beautiful. The architecture was solid. I’d invested countless nights and weekends. I’d turned down freelance work to focus on it. I’d told everyone it was going to be “the one.” And the market response was… crickets. Any rational person would’ve shut it down and moved on. Instead, I spent another six months trying to “make it work.” I pivoted. I added features. I changed the pricing. I rewrote the landing page seventeen times. ...

I used to think Tailwind CSS was terrible. Not because I’d used it extensively. I’d tried it for maybe an hour, felt uncomfortable, and decided it was “just inline styles with extra steps.” Then I spent the next six months seeing only evidence that confirmed my belief: Blog posts criticizing Tailwind? Bookmarked and shared. Tweets praising Tailwind? Scrolled past or found reasons to dismiss them. Projects struggling with Tailwind? “See, I knew it was problematic!” Projects thriving with Tailwind? “They would’ve been fine with CSS modules.” I wasn’t evaluating Tailwind objectively. I was collecting ammunition to defend a conclusion I’d already made. ...