Issue #354

27 September 2022


Issue #354
Pointer.io
Tuesday 27th September's issue is presented by Teleport

Teleport is the easiest, most secure way to access all your infrastructure. The open-source Teleport Access Plane consolidates connectivity, authentication, authorization, and audit into a single platform.

Get Started At Goteleport.com

#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: "Researchers identified 11 factors impacting developers’ assessment of a good workday. The factors were organized into three high-level factors, (1) value creation, (2) efficient use of time, and (3) sentiment." This post covers each of these factors in more depth. 
My Energy Is A Linear Function, Until It Isn't
- James Stanier
#CareerAdvice #Productivity

tl;dr: Monday to Wednesday are high energy, productive days for James, but Thursday is an inflection point where he's tiring. James discusses how he's trying to rectify this: (1) Purposefully trying to work 10% slower. (2) Being stricter with notifications so there's less context switching. (3) Limiting checking messages to within working hours. (4) Deferring non-essential requests and tasks into the following week. (5) Pomodoro technique.

How Passwordless Works
- Alan Parra
#Management #Security

tl;dr: This blog post by Teleport explains how passwordless can be implemented using modern technologies such as WebAuthn, while at the same time providing a better user experience and security than the traditional password-based approach.

Promoted by Teleport
The Hierarchy Is Bullshit (And Bad For Business)
- Charity Majors
#Leadership #Management #CareerAdvice

tl;dr: "It took two decades, an IPO and a vicious case of burnout before she allowed herself to admit how much she hated her work, and how desperately she envied (guess who??) the software engineers she worked alongside. Turns out, all she ever really wanted to do was write code every day. And now, to her dismay, it felt too late. Why did it take Molly so long to realize what made her happy? I personally blame the fucking hierarchy."

“The perfect kind of architecture decision is the one which never has to be made.”

― Robert C. Martin

 
Scaling Git’s Garbage Collection
- Taylor Blau
#Git #GarbageCollection

tl;dr: The process for permanently removing unreachable objects from a repository’s history has a history of causing problems within GitHub, especially in busy repositories or ones with lots of objects. In this post, we’ll talk about what those problems were, why we had them, the tools we built to address them, and some interesting ways we’ve built on top of them. 

How To Solve The Sudoku Puzzle With Programming
- Hillel Wayne
#DeepDive

tl;dr: "Sudoku is an example of a constraint problem. Most “solving sudoku” tutorials use either backtracking or constraint propagation. These same techniques apply to all constraint problems, and since such problems are so widespread, it doesn’t make sense to custom build an algorithm for every single one. Rather, we want general-purpose constraint solvers we can apply to arbitrary problems."

What It Took To Scale Spotify’s Marketing Efforts
- James La Broy
#Architecture #Spotify

tl;dr: "More recently, we wanted to run more campaigns throughout the year, perhaps during different holidays like Halloween or Easter. Rather than having one centralised team configuring campaigns across multiple markets, we wanted to create distributed teams local to each individual market responsible for tailoring campaigns to their respective audiences." James discusses the changes that enabled this to happen. 
#BookRecommendation
 
tl;dr: "So here are the 7 most interesting books that I can genuinely recommend to make you a better Software Engineer." (1) Algorithms to Live By. (2) Digital Minimalism. (3) Deep Work. (4) Remote — Office not Required. And more. 
 
Notable GitHub Repos
Dub
An OS link shortener SaaS with built-in analytics + free custom domains.

 
Milvus
Vector database for scalable similarity search and AI applications.

 
Desktop
Simple collaboration from your desktop.

 
Penpot
The OS design & prototyping platform.

 
How did you like this issue of Pointer?
1 = Didn't enjoy it all // 5 = Really enjoyed it

1     2     3     4     5

 
Pointer.io
Pointer is emailed twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays @ 9am EST.

Unsubscribe // Sponsorship // Archives