Jason Swett

Creator of SaturnCI, author of Professional Rails Testing, host of the Code with Jason Podcast.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Professional Rails Testing is now available on Amazon!

https://t.co/peT8AnmkHw

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

@bradgessler @marccampbell Marc, I'd be happy to show that to you if you're interested.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

@adrianthedev Thanks! Hope you enjoy the stickers!

[signüll @signulll]

once public, anthropic & openai will have to take far more calculated risks in both models & products. & everything will take a lot longer to do.

talent shifts too. pre ipo you’re selling optionality on a moonshot but post ipo you’re selling liquid rsus with a perhaps capped multiple. that filters out the risk seeking slice, even if the median a player still shows up.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

https://t.co/A0BaJLkp6d

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Tickets to Renaissance Code are now on sale!

[DHH @dhh]

You can’t outwork the whole world. There’s always going to be someone somewhere willing to work as hard as you. Someone just as hungry. Or hungrier.

Assuming you can work harder and longer than someone else is giving yourself too much credit for your effort and not enough for theirs. Putting in 1,001 hours to someone else’s 1,000 isn’t going to tip the scale in your favor.

What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.

A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.

So how do people get ahead if it’s not about outworking everyone else?

People make it because they’re talented, they’re lucky, they’re in the right place at the right time, they know how to work with other people, they know how to sell an idea, they know what moves people, they can tell a story, they know which details matter and which don’t, they can see the big and small pictures in every situation, and they know how to do something with an opportunity. And for so many other reasons.

So get the outwork myth out of your head. Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.

[The Outwork Myth — It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, 2018]

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Tickets to Renaissance Code go on sale tomorrow!

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

Over-criticizing people is a vicious spiral.

You start criticizing people for their actions a lot, then they stop being proactive about anything.

Then you’re upset they aren’t proactive. Then they just start throwing bad ideas at you because you’re going to ask for whatever you want anyway.

Relationships and employees get destroyed in this cycle. Then people go onto new opportunities and thrive and people have no idea how things could be so different.

Because they forget that it all started from one person being overly critical.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Friends, I know a high-level Rails guy (20+ YOE, well-known Ruby community member) looking for his next role. If anyone is interested in a conversation, let me know and I can make an intro!

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

People don’t get burnt out doing things they love that are finding success.

People get burnt out working with low caliber teammates on things that don’t find success.

If you want people to stop burning out -

First B players

Or

Start winning more

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

@staysaasy *Fire* B players, right?

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

I hear GitHub Actions is down again. Great time to try SaturnCI.

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

It's super simple:

High talent + experienced: 10/10
High talent + inexperienced: 8/10
Middling talent + experienced: 4/10
Middling talent + inexperienced: 3/10

Absolutely crazy how companies continue to get this so catastrophically wrong.

[signüll @signulll]

the golden rule is that you should rarely if ever try to change anyone’s mind.

this is a fool’s errand cuz it rarely works, & even when it does the belief you installed is way weaker, the person becomes resentful, & everything dynamic from then on becomes borrowed instead of owned.

you can only gently probe until you understand why they arrived at that conclusion. then you must move on like it never happened. this is true for any type of relationship including professional but esp true in romantic dynamics.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Don't underestimate the value of not just keeping your code comprehensible, but making each code CHANGE comprehensible as well.

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

@js_craft_hq I have a disease

[Jason Swett @JasonSwett]

Tickets for my upcoming conference, Renaissance Code, go on sale June 1st.

[John Malone @john_malone]

Getting laid off shouldn't be shameful, but it is.

All I can say is this.

I was good enough to work at Microsoft for years. I was good enough to work other places like that before hand. No amount of personal skill or networking saved me from mass layoffs in April 2025.

The job search is always a grind; I never had too much trouble with it until autumn of 2025. A hundred or so applications resulted in 2 call backs.

2 call backs.

I've been programming at a pretty high level for twenty years. I've worked on stuff you might very well have used.

Didn't matter. HR bots don't care. They don't feel. They don't know shame. They cannot feel guilt.

The only aphorism that seems applicable here is simply this: "If something can end, it will end."

Stay frosty out there. Talk to real humans. Use AI like the garden hoe it is, but do not anthropomorphize it.

And if you are "writing" with AI, do not believe for a moment that smart people can't see through your charade.

[Uncle Bob Martin @unclebobmartin]

I am absolutely more productive using agents. I don't know the factor but it's large. However much of that productivity is spent tuning the agents and hardening the product. I'm guessing 30%-40%.

Some might consider that a waste; but I don't. The software I'm creating nowadays is vastly more robust than I'd ever been able to create manually.

I don't mean that the code is better. I mean the surrounding tests are vastly better. I have a higher degree of confidence than I ever had manually -- even when I used very disciplined TDD and Acceptance testing.

And then there's the ability to quickly reorganize the modules and the architecture while keeping those robust tests running. That is a tremendous boon.

[staysaasy @staysaasy]

One of the worst problems with B players is that they drag A players into the mud.

An A player asks a B player for something and the B player gets defensive, illogical, and aggressive.

The A player needs to get clarity on the issue, so they don’t just disengage. They push and at some point argue.

Then it gets escalated and the A players manager says “you shouldn’t have argued like that.”

WRONG.

You don’t blame a shooting victim for cursing. The person who is unreasonable and unproductive is at fault. If they drag someone else into their world of shit, it’s not the A players fault for getting dirty.

Companies miss this all the time.