2026-05-21 05:34:19
When AI started being adopted, the focus was on its capabilities and speed. Businesses wanted systems that could work independently across different areas. What they know now is that independent systems with unclear processes present a major operational risk. Now, they want to know how these systems are thinking, adapting, and making crucial decisions that affect their operations.
2026-05-21 05:10:15
Right now, I have six ideas open in my head.
\ RoastRocket just got its first users and is politely asking for more attention. Sync Motion and Brida IT are actually paying rent. OrangeTable is trying to become the default invoicing tool for Austrian solopreneurs who hate spreadsheets. Alpine42 is… doing whatever Alpine42 is doing this week. And Marvin is still roasting codebases like a depressed android who has seen too much and would like to see less.
\ My brain feels like it went through a blender set to "indie hacker."
\ This is not the glamorous startup story. This is the real one.
Everyone tells you to pick one idea and go all in. Focus. Ship. Scale.
\ What actually happens is this:
You build something. It gets some traction or at least doesn't die immediately. Then another idea appears. It looks interesting. You tell yourself you'll just spend a weekend on it. Then another one shows up because apparently you can't help yourself. Suddenly, you're not running a company — you're running a portfolio.
\ And the portfolio is slowly killing you.
\ I didn't plan to become a multi-project founder. It just… happened. One project at a time. Like a very slow, very expensive form of self-harm.
Here's the portfolio, ranked by how much they're currently destroying my focus:
RoastRocket: AI that brutally stress-tests startup ideas before you waste months building them. Five planets. Fifteen questions. One honest verdict. First users are in. They're either impressed or deeply offended. Both are fine.
\ Sync Motion + brida it-solutions.: Industrial software for factories that actually makes money. OT/IT integration, monitoring, the kind of work that pays invoices instead of creating them. This is the responsible adult in the room.
\ OrangeTable: All-in-one office software for Austrian one-person businesses. Invoices, quotes, reminders, receipts. Basically, the tool I wish existed when I was drowning in admin work. Still early, but the direction feels right.
\ alpine42: My current AI systems experiment. I am the founder and the AI Systems Engineer, which is a fancy way of saying I'm building something and hoping it eventually makes sense to other people. Status: ambitious and slightly chaotic.
\ RoastedByMarvin: The depressed android persona that roasts code and architecture because apparently that's what I do for fun now. Brain the size of a planet. Roasting your code anyway.
\ Six projects. One brain. Zero chance of feeling on top of any of them at the same time.
The worst part isn't the work. It's the switching.
\ A typical day looks like this:
9:00 — Open RoastRocket support. Someone's idea just got absolutely destroyed by the AI, and they're mad about it. Fair.
9:47 — Suddenly remember I promised to fix an industrial protocol edge case in Sync Motion. Context switch. Brain makes unhappy noises.
10:15 — OrangeTable has a weird invoice calculation bug that only happens in Austria because, of course, it does. Switch again.
11:30 — Try to remember which project even has the feature I was supposed to ship this week. Open three different codebases. Close all of them. Open them again.
\ By 2 p.m., my brain has the consistency of warm yogurt.
\ This is the context switching tax. Every switch costs you 20-40 minutes of real productivity and some amount of your soul. Do this eight times a day, and you end up like me: functional, but only barely.
\ The worst moments are when you mix things up.
\ I once spent twenty minutes trying to remember why I had added a "roast" button to an industrial monitoring dashboard. I hadn't. I was in the wrong project. My brain had just… given up and started hallucinating features across codebases.
\ Another time, I replied to a RoastRocket user with industrial terminology. They were very confused. I was very tired.
\ This is the part nobody talks about when they say "just build in public" or "ship fast." They don't mention that your brain will eventually start leaking between projects like a poorly isolated container.
Probably not.
\ I like building things. I like solving different kinds of problems. I like the variety. But I would have built better mental guardrails earlier. I would have documented more aggressively from day one. And I probably would have killed one or two projects sooner than I did.
\ Or maybe not. It's hard to say when your brain is currently running on three different codebases at once.
If you're thinking about starting your first project: do it. Just know what you're signing up for.
\ If you're already running multiple projects and your brain feels like warm yogurt, you're not broken. You're just doing the indie hacker version of running a small conglomerate with no employees and no HR department.
\ The brain fry is real. The context switching tax is real. But so is the freedom to build whatever the hell you want, whenever you want, without asking anyone's permission.
\ Some days, that feels worth it.
Most days, it just feels like a lot.
\ Either way, the projects keep going. And so do I.
\ Mostly.
2026-05-21 04:00:50
A career encompasses an individual's journey through learning, work, and other aspects of life, particularly in their professional development. Strategic career planning is vital for achieving professional goals and personal fulfillment.
Scale AI needs your help training AI models.
The ultimate guide on how to manage young PMs in your team. Includes Dos and Don’ts, examples and modus operandi using which I wish I was led/managed early on when I started as a PM. Also, young PMs could takeaway lessons from here on what to expect and ask from your managers.
If you’re coming out of your education (whether that is self taught, a university degree, or bootcamp), it’s important to know that your expectations for your career in the tech workforce may not align with actual industry practice and culture.
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Want to advance your software development career? Read our article to find out how to find a software engineer mentor and how to benefit from them.
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I became a software engineer in 3 months and I believe you can too. The secret that helped me succeed is showing up every day and doing the work.
Every Programmer wants to grow in their career, but it’s not easy, and if you don’t pay attention to your job, you will likely stay in the same
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product management, or software architecture.
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For those seeking a fulfilling career path with meaningful impact, the field of fraud prevention offers immense potential.
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Coding Ninja Says: Accelerate your career by solving leetcode analysis paralysis with additional career advice
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Yet another story of how an ordinary guy from the middle of nowhere in Russia managed to get multiple FAANG offers. This time, in Europe.
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These are 39 beginner programming courses to get you started on your coding journey!
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Combat Impostor Syndrome as a developer. Understand it, identify signs, and learn strategies to manage self-doubt while stepping into senior roles.
Getting into the field of software development is a smart career move. Many employers are looking for developers and often struggle to fill these roles. Not only that but salaries and benefits are extremely competitive in our tech-centric world.
Silicon Valley is dead for Software Developers.
Ikigai (生き甲斐) is a Japanese concept that means your reason for being. ‘Iki’ in Japanese means ‘life,’ and ‘gai’ describes value or worth.
As designers it’s easy to get annoyed with developers. Perhaps they can’t get the alignment of a button right; or that feature you deemed critical to your UX is just too far down the backlog for your comfort.
Bin Nguyen, CEO of Chiheisen Technology](https://hackernoon.com/i-live-on-the-internet-interview-with-bin-nguyen-ceo-of-chiheisen-technology)
Is Big Tech all it’s cracked up to be? Are the stereotypes true? How the heck can someone get into these big companies?
More people are coming to Web3 to set up shop and work. But, we need better Web3 education to make this easier, and reflect the ideals of the space.
A client emailed me a while back and asked what advice I’d give to someone just starting out on their career.
My experience from speaking at a career event for Millennials.
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The idea of a good career path or a career trajectory is deeply embedded in our beliefs about how work should be. While it would be amazing if this was a reality that people could count on, I believe that it is a product of a unique moment in history.
Hi there!
Software engineers seem to be in demand, but there are a lot of contradictory threads and information out there. Articles have even come out that question whether you really want to actually be a software engineer or whether you want to actually use your software engineering skills to create your own systems.
Essential skills for DevOps Engineer to boost your career with no stress
Working at Fortinet is a unique experience. Its one that can grow your career and pay you well, if you know what your getting into.
Let me give you a simple roadmap to know where you are, and where you should go next. So here are 4 essential skills to become a frontend developer in 6 months.
In this article, Karyna Prykhodko, a Junior Delivery Manager at Innovecs, shared secrets and useful advices to rapid career growth.
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From technology and innovation to economies, the world has been experiencing a plethora of changes in recent times. Business, as usual, is no more an alternative for any industry. The traditional careers may or may not have their way into the future. With these rapid transitions, there are a lot of new career options that may rule the future.
If you are reading these tips on how to switch your job to IT, then below you will find some golden tips which I wish I had got at the start of my career back t
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Wow, someone pinch me! One year of The HackerNoon Podcast already?!
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Software engineering is an in-demand skill with lots of job opportunities. As more people enter the field, tempted by big salaries and the promise of job security, it is increasingly important to make sure that your resume stands out for those top-tier jobs. Here are a few tweaks you can make to your resume so that it ends up at the top of every hiring manager’s pile.
Someone in my Virtual Coffee community asked about getting better at reviewing pull requests (PR) today, which prompted this post. Hopefully, you find something
First steps from freelancing to leading large projects. Tips on getting the most out of your first job. Application process, mentoring, career, soft skills.
For those looking to leap into the world of startups, here are the four essential mindsets that will make you a successful startup engineer.
Propose new names for software engineer levels using a transparent and standardized classification system
What if I told you, it’s possible to get the best of both worlds – to capture the advantages of working with a startup while mitigating the downsides?
How many of us have thought to ourselves “how cool would it be to become a game designer!” It might seem like a pipe dream at first, but with the right approach, it’s possible, even for someone in their 30s with a completely unrelated education or background.
Background
What is the role of a CTO in small to mid-stage companies? How do you get the job and how do you do well in the role?
Fight back against tech burnout. Learn to recognize the signs, take action, and put preventive strategies in place to thrive in the tech industry.
Becoming Consistent
Free coding resources allow you to try out professional tools and services. If you're a student, take this opportunity to get experienced!
As my list of side projects grew ever larger, the list of abandoned, semifinished projects did so too.
Programming mock interviews can be time consuming and intimidating - here's how to make sure you didn't just waste your time
Here I've compiled a list of personal favorite devs on YouTube. I've added a couple of lines on each channel too for reference. Enjoy!
Feeling dissatisfied with your career? We grow up with the lie that money makes everything right. And it doesn't. Here's why.
Weak interview skills are holding back 8 in 10 tech workers.
What to look for when hiring Product Managers. What Product Managers can do to stand out from the crowd.
Have you ever considered the vital role that good documentation plays in one’s career growth?
For more than thirty years now, the global IT sector has been growing. Rapid developments in a variety of technology fields have created whole new industries and revolutionized others. For those that became a part of the swelling ranks of IT workers, it's been a time of unprecedented career opportunities.
Master time management & prioritization as a senior developer. Learn strategies like the Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto Principle & more for success.
This is a brief list of benefits I already feel even as a newbie, in all areas of my life, which started developing because of learning to code. I believe it will only get better with more experience. Here they are in a short list, and then a few words about each.
I find the NFT niche way more fascinating than other areas, because it’s so volatile. it’s massively disruptive, unregulated, and undefined.
Every developer, designer or marketer thinks of getting a job at well-known and huge organizations like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or Netflix, but it’s very hard to reach these companies for the interview even if you have all the skills. Today I’m sharing ways to land interviews at these organizations.
Discover how these top five skills can lead to new career opportunities.
A good software engineer not only has good technical skills but also great soft skills. Having excellent soft skills will boost your career!
Bad managment can fire you at an instant if they can pay for it
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Demystify Big O Notation with a relatable guide! Bridge the gap between abstract & concrete thinking in algorithms. Let’s eliminate the confusion!
It's time we stopped fearing, complaining, and arguing about whiteboard coding interviews.
Landing a job at at Google, Apple and other similar companies in the world can seem like an impossible task. Read this guide you can land an interview in tech!
Learn why simplicity often wins, how microservices can mislead, and which practices truly boost team success.
If you’re interested in great rewards, a career with a heavy tilt toward stock-based compensation could be right for you, depending on your risk tolerance.
Being a CTO can be hard and frustrating, but also fun and satisfying. During my time in the last seven years as CTO, R&D manager, and software architect both at Walla!NEWS, Careerpage, and Appwrite, I have collected some insights that helped me do my jobs and achieve my company’s goals. For a long time, I have thought about sharing my ideas, and in this post, I will try my best to give away some of those insights based on my personal experiences.
It is common to think of compensation purely as salary – money you get paid for the work you do. But many people get compensated with more than just salary.
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Learn everything you need to know about Career Advice via these 383 free HackerNoon stories.
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Last year, I was a mentee at the Hyperledger Summer Internship program, hosted by Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation.Here, I share with you some of the processes. A trick for applying is to build up some skills and to investigate the topic of the internship beforehand, if possible. Showing enthusiasm, and a sense of mission also helps. After applying, I got to know my mentor, David Huseby. Dave explained what he expected from the now realized blockchain course:Enterprise Blockchain Technologies (https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/university-course).The program was nicely paced, with my course being delivered in four phases. You can check the progress here: https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/INTERN/Build+a+university+course+on+Hyperledger+Fabric+using+Hyperledger+Umbra
Hiring the right people is crucial to the success of your business.
Feeling stuck in your job? This piece explores when to leave, how to plan your next move, and why your mindset is everything.
So many businesses make the same mistakes when they set out to develop or redevelop their websites. Overcome with the compelling need to do it all as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible, many companies take shortcuts which, sadly for them, ultimately costs them more in the long-run. Compromising on web design is one of those shortcuts that far too many individuals and businesses take, even though great web design ultimately leads to better performing websites and improved user experiences, as well as improved conversion rates. Well-designed websites create confidence that your business is trustworthy as well.
It’s a fact that software developers are in great demand these days, to say the least… The growing need for building more tech products vs. well-trained resources is out of balance.
Learn what are the best entry level IT jobs. I describe briefly what QA engineer, product owner, scrum master, UX/UI designer, CSM and technical writer do. It's
My name is Andrii Bondar. I'm a product designer working on the zkSync project, a layer 2 solution for scaling the Ethereum blockchain.
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Learn the path from a mid-level developer to a project leader: enhancing skills, leading a team, project execution, and fostering growth in a dynamic tech envir
Three of the most important learnings I had in my career so far going from Junior to Senior Software Engineer.
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Identity capital is the accumulation of our personal assets, in other words, a culmination of things that make us who we are.
Here are four basic ways to use technology to reinvent one's career during this tough pandemic. Pivot your career to make money online with freelancing and more
Ever since the pandemic began, and workforces went home for what turned out to be a long period of remote work (which has yet to fully end), we’ve been asking ourselves a lot of questions about the future of work. How are we adapting to this new environment? Do we need new skills? Will technology help us or hurt us over the long term? Is it OK to prioritise a healthier work-life balance when the world seems to be ending? What careers will be on the ascent when this is over, and which ones should be avoided?
When applying for a job, it’s good to have a demo project to present as an example of your work.
After eight years in software development, I decided it was time to contribute more to the developer community.
Hired released its 2022 State of Software Engineers, a report that analyzes key software engineering trends around demand, salaries, skills, and preferences.
Internships are held at the office of a company that already employs professionals in the field.
This week, Udacity (in partnership with Woolf) launched a fully accredited Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence.
Unleash your professional potential with ubiquitous language. Discover how mastering industry-standard communication elevates productivity and career growth.
If you care about your impact and take responsibility for the effect that your code/what you do has on your product/codebase, it will show itself in your PR’s
As many companies increase pay to attract new talent in an increasingly competitive Job market some workers are finding themselves left behind. What do they do?
People who know of my work in the Windows world sometimes ask me how I, a “real" programmer and former Microsoft MVP, could become so involved with Salesforce development. I thought I’d write a different kind of article highlighting one of the Salesforce platform features that I find compelling—and that makes Salesforce, for me, a serious platform for software development. Instead of the usual "dry" technical article, I present to you a story - a work of fiction (except for the technology, which is all true).
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What we're up to
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It’s January, and most of you have probably enjoyed a break from work
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ArtemisFlow is a local-first job tracker built for tech candidates. No accounts, no backend, and no external database.
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Following is a list of ten things that might sound so simple to many IT experts but weren’t so obvious at the start of their IT career.
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Baakt Launch
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image: Criterion Classified Ads / Media Innovation by Jota Julian Gutierrez
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Vitalik’s Time Machine Visit
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Last Wednesday I’ve joined an event called Mums in Tech, how to balance work & family — Webinar + Virtual Networking, which was held by Women In Tech and hosted by Remo.
Most people are not fortunate enough to have a good father, while some are lucky to have one. In my case, I am doubly fortunate as I have two fathers.
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2026-05-21 00:30:33
2023 was the year. The AI hype had begun. Writers were going to be out of a job in a matter of months, the world would probably end in a year, and I started using ChatGPT for coding tutorials. That involved running AI-generated code in my terminal to fix the crap the LLM had created until it worked.
When I got an engineer to sanity check the "final" draft, he asked without hesitation: Did AI do this? Two things gave it away, and both lodged themselves into my brain, which has since been telling me I should write about this.
The first tell: functional but bloated code. Would work just as well with a lot less. That sounded awfully similar to an editor's advice to a writer: don't take 50 words to say what you could have said in 5.
The second was more surprising: style. He told me that he can recognise a dev he knows from their code. Similarly, you can tell a writer or a brand from their writing style.
And here I am now, finally yielding to the voice in my head and writing about the similarities between coding and writing.
No, I'm no developer, and if I even hinted that dabbling in Python and AI made me one, engineers would make me a punchline in a code comment, I'm sure.
But I've spent enough time around those specimens, what they do, and how they think and work to be able to tell them, "You know, we're not so different, you and I."
So, here's how coding and content writing are more similar than you might think.
Writing is rewriting. Every writer knows this. Developers know it too, only they call it refactoring: rewriting code to do the same thing, only clearer, leaner, fit for someone else to read without wanting to lie down.
From what I could tell, even at my dabbling level, the pattern was the same. First gear: get the thing to work, through whatever ungainly combination of guesswork and Discord would have you. Second gear: make it something you wouldn't be embarrassed to show anyone. The code ran. It just looked like a crime scene.
Every writer recognises this immediately. You get the draft out — inelegant, a little desperate, structurally held together by good intentions and incorrectly used em dashes — and then you go back and make it presentable to the outside world. The first pass is for your eyes only. The second pass is for everyone else.
The moment you finish a draft, you become the editor of your own work. Now your job is to read what you put together as though you're the audience looking at the "final" output.
Developers call this debugging. The project that ran perfectly in your head has met reality and has opinions about it. Now you're auditing rather than building. The skill that got you to the end is not the skill you need now. You need colder eyes, a shorter fuse, and the willingness to find the thing that's wrong even when finding it means admitting you put it there.
Both professions share the specific humiliation of this moment. You read it back. You run it. And it doesn't do what you were so certain it did, which raises the obvious question of what, exactly, you thought you were doing for the past three hours.
Future You is a stranger with strong opinions, bewildered and faintly accusatory, demanding to know what Past You was thinking.
Code comments exist because the logic that felt obvious at midnight Tuesday is a cold case by Thursday morning. The comment isn't for the compiler (the compiler doesn't care, has never cared, and is emotionally unavailable); it's for the human who opens the file later and needs to understand not just what the code does but why it does it this way. What was the constraint? What was the alternative? Why did you reject it?
Good prose does the same thing differently. The transition that reorients the reader before a hard turn. The sentence that briefly restates where we are before the argument moves. None of it is technically required for the piece to function. A sufficiently determined reader will get there without it. But removing it is, in both cases, the act of someone who has confused clever with clear, and is expecting everyone else to do the work of the distinction.
The comment and the transition are both saying the same thing: I was here, I knew what I was doing, and I thought about you.
The path to bad writing is paved with good intentions. You're writing about one thing — a focused, well-behaved thing that knows its purpose and stays in its lane — and then you notice something adjacent and interesting, and you think: just a paragraph. Several paragraphs later, you've produced a piece that is about four things, none of them comprehensive, with a reader who finishes it uncertain what they were supposed to take away and faintly annoyed about it.
Developers call this scope creep. The feature that was supposed to be a login page and is now, through a series of individually defensible decisions, also a notification system, a dashboard redesign, and an open question about the database schema. Each addition made sense in isolation. Collectively, they've produced something impressive in ambition and baffling in purpose.
The fix for both coders and writers is the same: the conversation (with your editor, your tech lead, or just the more honest part of yourself) about what this thing is actually for. Then cutting everything that serves something adjacent instead. In software, this is sometimes called defining the MVP. In writing, there's no equivalent euphemism. It's just called murdering your darlings, which is less professional-sounding but considerably more accurate about what it feels like.
In the beginning, there was essay_FINAL.doc. And it was good. And then there were changes. And thus was born essay_FINAL_v2.doc, and essay_FINAL_real.doc, and the desperate document known as essay_THIS_ONE_USE_THIS_ONE.doc, sitting in a folder alongside its seventeen siblings.
Writers have been solving the problem of what if I delete something I shouldn't through filename chaos since word processors arrived. Git is what that folder always wanted to be: a ledger of every decision, annotated, recoverable, branchable. It's a way of saying: here's what it was, here's what's changed, and here's why, in a form another person can follow and, if necessary, reverse. The commit message is, in its small way, a piece of editorial reasoning. Restructured the argument. Removed the section that was working against us. Put back the comma.
A linter is a small automated pedant that runs through your code, flagging the inconsistent brackets, the magic numbers, the variable declared in a moment of optimism and subsequently abandoned without ceremony. It has no feelings about this. It flags the violation, notes the line number, and moves on. It will be there again tomorrow.
A house style guide does the same job by other means. Serial comma. Sentence-case headlines. Spell out numbers under ten. No passive voice unless you're prepared to defend it. Both exist because individuals left to their own devices produce output that, accumulated at scale, looks like it was written by a committee conducting a disagreement across several time zones.
The difference is that the linter operates without ego involvement. The style guide must be enforced by a human being, which introduces the full complexity of human nature into what should be a clean, mechanical process. The developer who names variables in whatever convention feels natural that day, and the writer who punctuates by instinct, are making the same error: treating a shared decision as a personal one. Both are working in a codebase, a publication, that other people have to live in too.
And yet convention and voice are not the same thing. The developer, my engineer friend, recognised from their code wasn't violating the style guide; they were working within it and still legible as themselves. The writer whose brand you clock from the first sentence isn't ignoring house style; they've internalised it and kept something underneath. A linter flattens. A style guide, applied well, sets a floor rather than a ceiling.
A function should do one thing. A sentence should carry one idea. Both fail identically when asked to do more than they should: the sentence that requires three readings, the function that is somehow managing database calls and formatting a document and sending a notification simultaneously, in apparent defiance of every principle of good design, because at the time it seemed easier to just add one more line.
The instinct that separates good practitioners in both fields is the same: can I break this apart? When something feels unwieldy, the diagnosis is usually right: it's carrying weight it wasn't designed for. Split it. And then name the pieces, which is where both crafts live or die. A well-named function tells you immediately what it does and nothing else. A well-constructed sentence does the same.
It's not 2023 anymore, so obviously I have to say something about how AI writing tools and coding assistants fit in here, don't I? Yeah, they produce first drafts quickly, fluently, and at a surface quality that can pass for the finished article if you don't give a shit. They're also extremely reliable at making the errors that humans make when moving fast without thinking: scope that sprawls, logic that almost holds, structures that look correct at first glance and collapse under scrutiny. The output is confident in the way that first drafts are confident: it doesn't know yet what it doesn't know.
What this has done practically is make editing and debugging (the diagnostic, evaluative, second-gear skills) the core competency of both professions in a way they never quite were before. The writer who can generate content fast is no longer scarce. The writer who can read it back, locate exactly what's wrong, and fix it with enough precision to explain the fix — who can, in other words, debug the draft — is a different and rarer thing. The developer who can prompt a model into producing code is easy to find. The one who understands it well enough to refactor it into something another human can maintain is highly sought after.
Both groups have been handed the same new job: quality control on machine output.
Both coding and writing are acts of judgment that use skill as their instrument. The judgment is what takes years. The judgment is what resists automation, what cannot be prompted into existence, what requires someone who has read enough collapsed arguments and traced enough broken logic to know that the thing isn't right yet.
And the judgment, in the end, is the same. The question underneath all of it: does this do what it needs to do, in the clearest possible way, with nothing it doesn't need?
That means the developer who thinks writing is soft, and the writer who thinks code is impenetrable, are both wrong about the same thing.
The wall between the engineering room and the content marketing room was always thinner than it looked. Hopefully, it's thin enough for us to hear each other trying to solve the same problems.
\
2026-05-21 00:26:20
A while ago we did something that sounded absurd when explained in a single sentence. We bought spray paint, walked onto neglected streets, and painted around potholes that had been ignored for months. From the outside, it probably looked like an odd mix of street art and public frustration. But underneath the paint there was a very simple idea: if reporting a problem through the official channels was failing, maybe the problem itself needed a better interface.
At the time, we were not thinking about activism theory or civic systems. We were trying to solve a very practical issue that everyone around us had accepted as normal. Drivers swerved around the holes every day. People complained about them. Everybody knew they existed.
Nothing changed.
Only later did we realize that what started as a small experiment contained a larger lesson.
As programmers, we see versions of this problem constantly.
A bug exists. Users report it. Someone creates a ticket. The ticket enters a system. The system acknowledges that the problem exists and assigns a number to it. Days pass. Then weeks pass. Eventually people stop asking about it because they unconsciously adapt to the bug. They start using workarounds. They avoid certain buttons. They refresh pages twice. They learn that a particular feature "just behaves like that."
The dangerous part is that the existence of a workaround often reduces pressure to actually fix the underlying issue.
Cities sometimes operate in exactly the same way.
The potholes on our streets had already been reported. Complaints had been made. Citizens had written online posts. Drivers cursed at them every day. People discussed them with neighbors and probably sent emails to the municipality.
The issue had entered the system.
The problem was not missing information.
The problem was that the issue had become normalized.
From the perspective of the system, the potholes had become low-priority bugs.
This is where we accidentally stumbled into something interesting.
We were not trying to repair roads ourselves, and we were not pretending to replace the work of local institutions. We simply changed how the issue appeared to everyone around it.
Think about a software dashboard that displays hundreds of warnings in gray text. Most people will ignore it because the information blends into the background. Now imagine that one issue suddenly starts flashing red, moves to the top of the screen, and starts generating notifications.
The underlying problem has not changed.
Only its visibility has changed.
That was essentially our experiment.
The potholes were still potholes. We simply painted around them and turned them from invisible road damage into something impossible to overlook.
Suddenly drivers slowed down. Pedestrians noticed them. People took photographs. Local media became interested. Social media did what social media always does and amplified something visually strange.
The problem had escaped the database and entered the public feed.
That distinction matters more than we usually think.
Institutions are very good at processing complaints because complaints are expected. Complaints are predictable inputs. They are categorized, prioritized, and stored. Systems are designed to absorb them.
Stories behave differently.
Stories spread horizontally instead of vertically. A ticket goes to a department. A story goes everywhere.
What started as painted circles around potholes became a public question:
Why did citizens feel they had to do this in the first place?
That question turned out to be harder to ignore than the potholes themselves.
Many people assume that the issue is a lack of public frustration.
Usually it is not.
People are already frustrated. There is no shortage of complaints or anger. Open any social network and you can find an endless supply.
Attention is the scarce resource.
Systems become very good at filtering noise. They learn how to process routine complaints. But unusual things create friction. Unusual things force reactions.
That is exactly what happened.
The paint did not fix roads.
The paint changed visibility.
Visibility changed behavior.
Behavior created pressure.
Pressure created action.
The interesting thing is that the experiment did not stay local.
We started somewhere small. There was no master plan and no grand strategy. There was just a practical attempt to solve a practical problem.
Then similar things started appearing elsewhere.
\
In Sofia, people started using the same logic. The details differed, but the mechanism was familiar. Problems that had quietly lived in the background suddenly became visible. They became photographable. They became shareable. They became difficult to ignore.
That is usually how useful ideas spread.
They do not spread because of perfect planning.
They spread because someone sees a working pattern and copies it.
Programmers already have a word for that.
Forking.
Open source communities understand this instinct perfectly.
Nobody asks for permission to reuse a useful idea. Somebody publishes code. Another person improves it. A third person adapts it to a different environment. Eventually something larger emerges from many smaller contributions.
Maybe civic action should work more like open source software.
Instead of assuming that change only comes from governments or institutions, people could publish small experiments. Somebody fixes one neighborhood problem. Somebody else adapts the approach for another city. Others improve the process.
Not every experiment succeeds.
But failed experiments are useful too because they produce information.
One of the strangest bugs in many societies is the belief that ordinary people cannot change anything around them.
You hear it all the time:
"Nothing will happen."
"Why bother?"
"Things have always been like this."
"You cannot fight the system."
Most people saying these things are not malicious. Many are repeating lessons learned through disappointment.
But the problem with this mindset is that it behaves like dead code.
It sits there consuming resources while preventing anything useful from executing.
If everybody accepts that logic, inaction becomes self-reinforcing.
No commits.
No pull requests.
No fixes.
Just permanent maintenance mode.
So here is my suggestion.
Try things.
Not necessarily with potholes and spray paint, although that worked surprisingly well for us.
Find a local problem that everyone has accepted as normal and ask whether it should really be normal.
Treat it like debugging.
Observe the system.
Find where it fails.
Change one variable.
Run a small experiment.
Make the issue visible.
People will tell you not to bother.
Do it anyway.
People will explain why it cannot work.
Do it anyway.
People will tell you that somebody else should solve it.
Do it anyway.
Because sometimes all a broken system needs is a strange input that nobody expected.
Sometimes the difference between a forgotten problem and a solved problem is simply that somebody decided to stop treating it as background noise.
Ship the weird experiment.
Publish the civic pull request.
Someone else might fork it and improve it later.
2026-05-21 00:05:01
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