The Math of Why You Can't Focus at Work
Interruptions, recovery time, and task size: three numbers that determine if you'll get real work done. Interactive visualizations show the math behind bad days.
Off by One
Off by One is where Can Duruk writes about engineering, management, and engineering management.
Latest posts
Take-Home Exercises
How to design effective take-home exercises that assess both ability and interest, with practical guidelines on scope, payment, and AI-assisted work
Avoiding the Trailing Slash Tax on Github Pages and Astro
A deep dive into how GitHub Pages handles trailing slashes, the hidden redirect cost, and why every millisecond matters for user experience
Interactive Hiring Pipeline Calculator
Calculate how many candidates you need to reach out to make one hire based on your conversion rates.
Running 1:1s for Engineers
A practical, repeatable framework for running weekly engineering 1:1s using the People, Product, Process structure—with exact scripts, Notion setup, and tips for making them actually useful.
Measuring Engineering Productivity
A lightweight system for measuring engineering productivity that puts the overhead on managers, not engineers—using changelogs, standups, and visibility over surveillance
Paying the SOC2 Screenshot Tax
How Vanta turned SOC2 compliance into a $4B business and why startups are paying the screenshot tax instead of building products
Everything is content now
Reflecting on content creation, consumption, and what it means to work in an industry where I still don't fully understand what "content" is
Chuck Norris and Hacking Twitter
The 2020 Twitter hack exposed systemic security failures—and why companies need stricter regulations for protecting prominent accounts
Are job interviews a farce?
Why hiring decisions are chaotic and random at the individual level—and what both candidates and companies can do about it
The Zombie Apocalypse Scale
A thought experiment: measure how much of a "tech company" you are by how long you could run if all employees turned into zombies overnight
In defense of biometrics
Why biometric authentication is better than passwords—and how to think about the political implications of widespread biometric systems
Jokes. You invented bad jokes.
Why the "X, you invented X" Twitter joke misses the point—business model innovation matters more than technology innovation
Please Make Money.
Why the desire to turn profits keeps businesses focused—and why pretending you don't want to make money is worse than admitting you do
You should delete your tweets
Why ephemeral social media presence beats permanent archives—and how regularly deleting tweets can free you from past opinions
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Startup Options
Should you take equity or cash at an early-stage startup? Exploring the tradeoffs when growth capital makes liquidity a decade away
Instagram Is Too Big Not to Mess With
With the photo app's founders gone, Facebook is now positioned to change Instagram significantly and transform it into a growth funnel.
What was it like to work at Digg during Digg V4?
A first-hand account of working at Digg during the controversial V4 launch—the excitement, challenges, and lessons learned