Issue #247

20 August 2021


Issue #247
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Create Capacity Rather Than Capture It
- Will Larson
#Leadership #Management

tl;dr: "It’s more effective to capture existing capacity than create new capacity" in a large company. The opposite is true in startup & growth companies. In large companies: "If you need more headcount, convince leadership to require every team to send a volunteer to work on your project. If you’re missing a leader, oblige one on a peer team to move to yours." Hiring is slow and restrictive.
Writing For Distributed Teams
- Vicki Boykis
#Management #RemoteWork

tl;dr: Vicki only sent 11 emails last year. The reason is that Automattic - behind WordPress.com and Tumblr - use P2s for everything. These are effectively blog posts where you can tag co-workers and cross post to other P2s, Vicki shares an example. Despite the fact that the company still uses Slack, information isn't lost in the same way it is elsewhere.
Reddit Interview Problems: The Game Of Life
- Alex Golec
#Reddit #InterviewAdvice #Algorithms
 
tl;dr: Alex runs through an interview question at Reddit: "Suppose you have an M by N board of cells, where each cell is marked as "alive" or "dead." This arrangement of the board is called the "state," and our task is to compute the cells in the next board state according to a set of rules:" He runs through the solutions in this post.
#CSTheory #DataStructures
 
tl;dr: Ben's biggest takeaway is that there's "a significant difference between a data structure as an abstract mathematical concept (“a B⁺-Tree”) and concrete implementations (“SQLite’s database format”)." The optimizations to implementations "won’t improve the BigO characteristics of a data structure, but will have significant “real world” implications on performance & usability of a DB."
#Management #Leadership
 
tl;dr: TPM (Technical Program Manager) team at DoorDash drives complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives upheld by these principles. The TPM has a: (1) Strong leadership position in engineering. (2) Highly leveraged. (3) Empowered to fiercely prioritize the work they drive. (4) Consistently drives technical clarity. (5) Tackles difficult problems in a blameless culture. (6) Valued for its ability to bring order to chaos. 
 
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#CareerAdvice
 
tl;dr: Derek had too many pets, and each time he adopted one, he was "enamored with the potential." Over time, he realized that having many pets hurt them so he started to let them go - his pet project to start a business, plan to travel everywhere, dream to learn Chinese, etc... and slowly it allowed him to enjoy the freedom and feel less conflicted. 
A Supercharged Approach To Technology Transformation
- Paul Cheesbrough, Melody Hildebrandt
#Leadership
 
tl;dr: The deal between 21st Century Fox and Disney facilitated a "radically new set of technology capabilities" e.g. elimination of all data centers, migrating into an entirely elastic infrastructure, construction of a brand new 8K and 5G enabled video distribution. Here are valuable tips for anyone going through such transformation. 
- Michael Ablassmeier
#GitHub
 
tl;dr: "Using these simple tricks saves up to ~40 seconds in this example, depending on how many packages you install (for man-db) and if you install different packages in multiple stages, you might save even more time."
The Best VS Code Extensions For Remote Working
- Carlo Morrone
#UsefulTools
 
tl;dr: First 3 are: (1) Live Share boost your team’s productivity by pair-programming in real-time, straight from your editor (2) GitLive improves communication with real-time cross-IDE collaboration, merge conflict detection and video calls (3) GistPad makes it easier to brainstorm over a code snippet, work on and save a piece of code that will be reused. 
#OpenAI #IndustryNews
 
tl;dr: "Our AI system that translates natural language to code...  Codex can now interpret simple commands in natural language and execute them on the user’s behalf - making it possible to build a natural language interface to existing applications"
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