A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. In an information-rich wo
After startups raise money, their next biggest problem becomeshiring. It turns out it’s both reallyhard and really important to hire good people; in fact, it’s probably the mostimportant thing a found
Exponential Value at Linear Cost What a deal! Binary search is kind a of a magical thing. With each additional search step, the size of the haystack we can search doubles. In other words, the value of
Mozart, the great and enduring musical genius, doesn’t conform to our stereotypical notion of a musical prodigy. Did he practice for hours per day? Nope. Was he well intentioned with his plans? Also n
There’s an oceanic push and pull to the trends within the design industry. Or, in design terms, there’s a constant cycle of copy-paste ideology . Recently, I’ve noticed a new stylistic trend that’s be
When I worked as a copywriter at a dog-toy-slash-tech company, we used Airtable and Basecamp to organize our workflows. At my next job, the marketers made us learn Asana (“same as Airtable but much be
The compositionality of language: https://youtu.be/ZWP6Sv2_8c8 This is a video lecture about Frege's groundbreaking 1892 paper 'On Sense and Reference', which is sometimes translated from the original
About the author: Jean Hsu is the writer of Tech and Tea , a startup VP of Engineering, leadership coach, and mom of two. When someone is described as being “really successful,” people usually mean a
I want to use this article to organize much of the career advice I’ve given in the past, plus shed light on future topics. Here you’ll find five primary rules that I believe will unlock your career. A
Upsert is an operation that ➊ inserts new records into the database and ➋ updates existing ones. Let's see how it works in different DBMS. The examples are interactive, so you can read and practice. W
Walter Isaacson's new book about Elon Musk is a fine biography, but an even better business book. And like all the best business books, it's not merely an instruction manual, but an inspirational guid
10 min read · Jul 23, 2016 -- I’ve been programming in Object Oriented languages for decades. The first OO language I used was C++ and then Smalltalk and finally .NET and Java. I was gung-ho to levera
Here is a fun prioritization exercise. Some have described it as a Jedi mind trick. It is very simple but it plays with people’s head in a good way. It draws heavily from Joshua Arnold's work on cost
The Church of Complexity There is a pretty well-known sketch in which an engineer is explaining to the project manager how an overly complicated maze of microservices works in order to get a user’s bi
When was the last time you were about to click a button on a website, only to have the page shift—causing you to click the wrong button instead? Or the last time you rage-quit a page that took too lon
Past a certain point, web applications outgrow a single server deployment.Companies either want to increase their availability, scalability, or both! Todo this, they deploy their application across mu
The consultancy giant has devised a methodology it claims measures software developer productivity. They only measure activity, not productivity from a business perspective. And measuring activity com
4 min read · Jul 23, 2016 Here is a simple model that frames product development as an effort to trigger a change in user behavior. It is accessible and not too jargon-laden. It can be used to describ
You’re faced with a software bug, there are two routes you can take: Google for a fix -> apply it and verify it’s working -> move on Google for a fix -> apply it -> Scratch your head for some time bec
11 June 2023 · 39,355 views· Updated 22 July 2023 development long-read management newsletter startups Table of Contents I’m a big fan of documentation. I think it’s my favorite boring thing to do aft
Originally published September 2011. Folks don’t talk much about dimensions of refactoring, but moving code up & down the call stack is a different beast than making changes across a bunch of similar
Welcome back. Have you thought about subscribing? It's free. seths.blog/subscribe If the ferry is leaving in fifteen minutes, do you drive faster than normal to get to the dock on time? If someone is
I like the idea of the reverse obituary : Write down what you want your obituary to say, then figure out how to live up to it. Everyone’s will be different, but I suspect most people would want their
A theme in my practice is the leader who's seeking to increase employee motivation. In this context it's important to bear in mind the work of Frederick Herzberg, a 20th century psychologist who had a
Table of Contents In the software development realm, asking questions isn't just a right—it's a downright necessity. Let's cut the crap and dive straight in: if you're not asking questions, you're doi
Ah, the world! Oh, the world! —“Moby-Dick.” David Gruber began his almost impossibly varied career studying bluestriped grunt fish off the coast of Belize. He was an undergraduate, and his job was to
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. See More → Scientists have invented a device that can continuously generate electricity fr
On algorithms 📜 Is your complex O(n) algorithm faster than the trivial O(n 2 )? Theoretical complexity matters, but know your expected value of “n”. The linear algorithm may be slower than the quadrat
Burnout is no joke. According to Deloitte , roughly 77% of people have experienced burnout in their current roles, with the top driver being a lack of support and recognition from leadership. The real
The great thing about measuring developer productivity is that you can quickly identify the bad programmers. I want to tell you about the worst programmer I know, and why I fought to keep him in the t
Sherlock Holmes says in the book, The Study of Scarlet : I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes
The success of an internal platform is defined by how many teams adopt it. This means that a platform team's success hangs on their ability to collaborate with other teams, and specifically to get cod
A project is a promise. It’s about coordinating unknowable future events to deliver something of value. Showing up on time for a meeting is a project (airlines! traffic! weather!) and so is building a
Introduction This article is written by Shivani Berry , founder and CEO of Ascend , which offers online leadership programs to empower women from top companies with the skills and community to advance
AI-assistance tools will inevitably change the way engineers work; in some cases, they already have. In the right hands, they can be used to create efficiencies and troubleshoot problems. But, an inex
What is the most uninformative statement that people are inclined to make? My nominee would be “I love to travel.” This tells you very little about a person, because nearly everyone likes to travel; a
The diversity, equity, and inclusion industry exploded in 2020 and 2021, but it is undergoing a reckoning of late, and not just in states controlled by Republicans, where officials are dismantling DEI
A trick to learning a complicated topic is realizing how many complex details are a cousin of something simple. John Reed writes in his book Succeeding : When you first start to study a field, it seem
Credit... By Tony Cenicola/the New York Times Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples left their city lives behind to raise mollusks. Credit... By Tony Cenicola/the New York Times By Heather Senison, a
This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I cover the latest research and perspectives on developer productivity. This week I read Which Factors Influence Practitioners' Usage of Build Auto