When people think about saving for their first home, the focus is always on the down payment. While a sizeable down payment is a worthwhile goal, by itself it isn’t a great indicator of home ownership readiness. There are two related metrics you should be tracking when deciding if you can afford to buy a home: emergency fund size and the rate at which you can refill your emergency fund.

What are the best indicators of a developer’s ability to contribute meaningful work to your organization?

Write code assuming it will be read while you're still in earshot.

Too often code is written with little empathy towards those who will follow us and need to understand, modify and replace it. After the functional priorities (correct, stable, testable, etc.) your highest priority should be writing readable code that is easy to understand. Let’s look at a simple example.