Jonathan Cai

Featured posts. The rest of the posts live in archive.

Unintuitive Tips for Engineering Internships

Apr 6, 2021 | 4 min read

There’s so much pressure for undergrad computer science students to land an internship. So there’s a lot of advice on how to get them. Optimize your resume. Get...

Happiness

Mountain Climbers and Fishermen

Nov 4, 2020 | 3 min read

For those who haven’t read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it’s about a father and a son who travel across the US on...

We should be working on this, now

Nov 4, 2020 | 2 min read

Last year I took a course at Rice called Ethics and Accountability in Computer Science. As you might guess, it was a discussion-based class covering the intersection between sociology/philosophy...

Career

4 Years of Job Search in Numbers

Oct 28, 2020 | 5 min read

I was inspired by this Reddit post about visualizing the internship search. So as I graduate next semester, I thought it would be cool to look back on the data...

How to not give a fuck

Aug 26, 2020 | 4 min read

I’m 21 as of 3 weeks ago. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve spent a huge chunk of my life (especially during my late teens)...

Philosophy

Feeling lost

Aug 20, 2020 | 2 min read

I’ve been having a series of what I would call “quarter-life crises” these past few months. It’s felt pretty shitty. And this is only after getting the job...

Quick thoughts. Too short for an article, too long for a tweet.

Thoughts

Assume you're going to win

Aug 23, 2021 | 1 min read

Read an awesome blog post from swyx about meta-creators, which really got me thinking. With the proliferation of tech twitter, comes a whole host of distractions that engineer/builder/founder...

Thoughts

Stop reinventing the wheel

Aug 19, 2021 | 1 min read

Just migrated my blog to Ghost. I held off for a long time, because the asshole, DIY, egotistic developer in me would never let myself use something I didn't build...