Yadi

Over years I have studied several subjects in depth by taking online courses, I'm curious to know what do others do or recommend after finishing a course?

For example a course on machine learning, or rather a harder subject let's say Algebraic topology: where do you usually go to clarify topics within the subject that you're in doubt with?

After looking at the recent [Who is Hiring?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17902901), I was wondering if there is a recommended personal approach to applying for multiple positions during the same time.

It seems like a chaotic and counter-intuitive process to apply for 4-5 companies simultaneously, but most do recommend this approach. Got any tips?

The question here comes from my concern of how some startups can actually survive with high technical debt with customers? Wouldn't that lead to their failure as a product/service sooner or later?

I work as a web architect contracting with startups on smaller complicated pieces of technologies. These days lots of startups I talk with have a very high technical debt in their product(s) and most of them don't seem to care.

My first advice to them is that things like that can kill a product, but I've had some strange feedback after passing on that advice.

So I wonder if technical debt does actually have pitfalls along the way? (Bootstrapping yeah I agree, but not when you have 8 engineers on the team)

Earlier this year someone asked me on Quora:

"What tech talks should every software engineer watch?"

So I thought I would share a list of talks that I've enjoyed watching on the way on HN as well:

"Kevin Slavin shows how modern algorithms determine stock prices, espionage tactics, even the movies you watch."

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world?language=en#

Dynamic Languages Wizards Series - Panel on Language Design (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E

Writing Software by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M

Jim Weirich: Adventures in Functional Programming

https://vimeo.com/45140590

Lessons of Scale at Facebook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCHiNEw73AU

How We've Scaled Dropbox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE4gwstWhmc

Facebook and memcached

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH7wkvcf0ys

The Myth of the Genius Programmer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ

Challenges Chances In Polyglot Programming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUr_JTNKAFo&feature=youtu.be

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw

Jeremy Edberg - Scalable Cloud Architectures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCAO9moDucI

An overview of HTTP/2 with Daniel Sommermann

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxQIRl6Qic

The list I have is pretty long, but these talks have great insights on the topics related to talk in practice or let's say real world implementations.

My question is more towards engineers here.

Sometimes the simplest inquiry while being in the zone can be distracting. I'm wondering what are some of those questions you get asked as an engineer during work?

For example, some usual questions are:

1- Is the website down, why it's not loading?

2- Can you do this change to the text on the site right now?

Looking for more similar questions.