tl;dr in tech - Issue #103
Fresh Work 80/15/5
By: Kent Beck
tl;dr: “How do you balance risk, novelty, production, growth, short-term certainty, and long-term viability? I learned a simple rule that has been useful to me and is often cited by my students as a key lesson from coaching: (1) 80% of your time goes to low-risk / reasonable-reward work, (2) 15% of your time goes to related high-risk / high-reward work and (3) 5% of your time goes to satisfying your own curiosity with no thought of reward.
Interesting Learnings From Outages
By: Gergely Orosz
tl;dr: The article discusses the importance of investigating and learning from outages in the industry. It explores the different types of postmortems, including internal, customer-only, and public postmortems. The article dives into 3 case studies: (1) Adevinta experienced a significant impact due to a DNS outage, (2) GitHub experienced an outage due to a network configuration issue at their secondary site, (3) Reddit experienced an issue with a Kubernetes cluster upgrade gone wrong."
More Software Projects Need Defenses Of Design
By: Hillel Wayne
tl;dr: Hillel argues why a well-documented "Defense of Design" is an invaluable resource for understanding a project's history, design decisions, and constraints that shaped it. It provides insights into the thought process of the creators, developers, and maintainers, thus fostering a greater level of understanding and appreciation for the software.
Developer Workflow Tips No One Tells You About
By: Justin Joyce
tl;dr: “These are the tools, tips and advice I wish I had internalized when I was just starting out. Many of the details below are specific to macOS, but similar tips and tricks apply on other systems. I've broken it down very roughly into the following categories: (1) Computer setup. (2) Command-line-related things. (3) Technical but non-CS advice. (4) Potpourri.
New Study Finds An Unstructured 5-Minute Break Can Help Restore Attention
By: Paul Ginns
tl;dr: “Researchers found a 5-minute break from thinking is all you need to get your concentration back. There is no need for a walk along a river, or a lengthy video of bamboo forests swaying in the wind. A five-minute total break will do the trick.”
What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Building AI Apps
By: Vicki Boykis
tl;dr: Vicki shares her experience and pain points when building AI applications, highlighting several aspects often not discussed in conversations: (1) Slow iteration times, (2) Build times, (3) Docker images, and more.
On Becoming A VP Of Engineering: Doing The Job
By: Emily Nakashima
tl;dr: “I said at the beginning of this post that the most important thing I deliver is alignment. It’s not the hardest thing I have to deliver though: that is focus.“ Emily also discusses what a VP’s day to day looks like, unlearning, compensation, giving yourself more slack time, and more.
Briefly: The Value Of Meetings, And Some Alternatives
By: Kellan Elliott-McCrea
tl;dr: Shopify's meeting cost calculator stirs debate; are meetings wasted time or vital? Alternatives emerge such as Dropbox's "Core Collaboration Hours" and Frame.io's "Huddle Days", which foster spontaneous discussions, encouraging productive work and respecting individual work rhythms.
How Platform Teams Get Stuff Done
By: Pete Hodgson
tl;dr: “Platform teams have a unique reliance on other teams to ensure adoption of their platform - getting code changes into other teams' codebase is critical to their success. There are a variety of patterns for that cross-team collaboration, and selecting the right ones depends on both the phase of platform adoption