Albertus Angga Raharja

🛠️ frontend @speechifyai (best Chrome Extension 2023)
🇮🇩 previously Indonesia founding eng @stripe
✨ built Flutter Layout Explorer @google

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

"You always own the option of having no opinion" - Marcus Aurelius

Social media are filled with so much noise nowadays, and in these times, I constantly get reminded of this quote.

I like this quote. It helps me stay focused on my work: coding, building stuff, and writing.

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@cnakazawa @geteviapp I always do xhigh and turn on /fast nowadays

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@cnakazawa Huge! Congratulations Christoph!

[Tuomas Artman @artman]

Only start up if you have no other choice.

Six years ago, when I returned to Finland from San Francisco, I started working out of Maria 01, the largest startup hub in the Nordics.

Coming from the intense Bay Area scene, I was surprised by how relaxed everyone was. These companies had little to no funding, or maybe a couple years of runway at best. But every Monday, people would show up around 10, spend ages chatting about their weekends over coffee, and head out early for lunch. By 5 p.m., I'd be the only one left in the office.

At first, I figured it was culture shock. Finland is known for its strong work-life balance. Shorter hours, plenty of vacation, and a focus on well-being rather than grinding yourself down. But the more I thought about it, the more it puzzled me: Why weren't these teams working harder? They were on the edge, with limited resources and time. Shouldn't that trigger a survival mode of late nights and total focus?

Looking back at co-founding Linear, the difference was stark. In those first years, I was working nonstop. Not because I was pushing myself through willpower, but because I loved every part of it. Working on the underlying tech stack and sync engine, it was all I wanted to do. There wasn't anything else I'd rather spend my time on. Weekends just blended into the work. I felt I was working on something big that would change the way software gets created if we ever succeeded, and that consumed all of my attention.

That level of focus wasn't the only reason we succeeded, nor can it be sustained. Team, timing, and luck all mattered too. But it was a big one. We pulled together a strong product through raw dedication in the early days when everything was make-or-break.

So yeah: only start up if you have no other choice, because you are fully drawn into it. Identifying a market opportunity or need isn't good enough. You need to feel like there's nothing else in the world you'd rather do. As Elon Musk put it, “If you need encouragement to start a company, don’t do it.” It's needs to be something that consumes you. If it doesn't, cards are stacked against you in a game that you're already loosing 9 out of 10 times with default odds.

[Christoph Nakazawa @cnakazawa]

I wrote about my LLM workflow, what could be better and thoughts for the future.

https://t.co/sEeB7dR0tQ

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

3 years+ of using Raycast and can't go back without it. 75k app launch mostly because I rely on Raycast to switch apps instantly though

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@girikuncoro Thank you for taking the time to document and share your learnings mas Giri, always a role model indeed 🫡 Best of luck with the next chapter and the move mas! Godspeed! 🚀

[Cliff Weitzman @cliffweitzman]

Repost or comment “Speechify” to get Voice Typing for free for 3 months

@SpeechifyAI has over 1 million five star reviews across platforms, and dozens of high quality features: Today, we are launching a feature I've been pushing for over 7 years and is finally going live to production (I've been using it internally for more than 4 years) Speechify Voice Typing in our Chrome Extension!

You can download the Speechify Chrome Extension, start talking casually, and let Speechify type for you across Google Docs, Gmail, and anywhere else you write. No matter how fast you type you can get a 2-4x lift in typing speed this way just click the button or keyboard shortcut.

It also polishes your writing for you.

We’re also launching the ability to Talk to Speechify super fast about any website!

Speechify is like your own personal assistant who has already read everything you see and can answer your questions as you talk.

You can ask Speechify for advice on how to respond to emails for work, to quiz you on a school reading, and to summarize key takeaways from an article without having to read the whole thing.

Over the last year, Speechify has evolved into your go-to Voice AI Assistant.

As an applied Al research lab that's the largest consumer Voice Al company in the Apple, Google Chrome, and Android App Stores, we’ve doubled down on more ways to be useful to our users.

Speechify now reads anything out loud to you, creates hyper-personalized podcasts perfectly tailored to you based on your prompts, docs, or recommendations, and now it can also type for you and answer your questions.

ChatGPT and Gemini are great. But we know that our users, and a large segment of the population, want Voice AI to be front-and-center in their user experience – not hidden behind an extra tab or an afterthought.

Speechify is building the voice operating system to meet their needs.

Voice typing & our Voice AI Assistant will soon be available on iOS/Android, our Mac App, Windows, and more.

We’ll also soon be adding additional Voice AI agentic workflows. Our vision is for Speechify to make a doctor's appointment and then follow up if they don't pick up for you or call a store and ask if they have a certain item in stock.

There are so many people working on Voice AI for customer support right now – Speechify is empowering everyone in the world to have their own Voice AI assistant on the other end who works for you.

❤️

#Speechify #VoiceAI #VoiceAgents #VoiceTyping #Dictation #AI

[Tibo @tibo_maker]

I’ve sold 2 startups for $8m & I now run a $6m+ arr company. people think that's success - but I'd disagree

the more I build, the more I realize the real game isn’t just building a great business, it’s building a fulfilling life

a life where I can wake up excited to work on things I actually enjoy, and where my calendar doesn’t decide if I’m happy or not

the moments that really matter most aren’t always on a dashboard, they’re also quiet walks with my wife, messy breakfasts with my kids and sometimes even late-night MarioKart sessions with friends

and don’t get me wrong, I still love what I build and I care deeply about my products & all the people who use them. I show up every day and give it everything I have

I still track the numbers every morning - they matter a lot - but they’re not the only scoreboard

because in the last few years, I’ve realized how much I was missing when I obsessed over just one part of my life

so I stopped chasing the “next big thing” and started optimizing for freedom, time, and energy - for the people and work I love

people call it a “lifestyle business” like it’s a small thing, but to me, it’s the version of success that actually feels sustainable - and real

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@AndriFuture 👋Thank you mas @AndriFuture ! Likewise, very impressed by all your insights and tweets in finance/investing. I think I discovered your profile from Reddit 😄

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

5 months into fatherhood, I get this deeply.

I used to think having everything figured out—career, finances, plans—was the prerequisite for becoming a parent. Then she arrived, and none of that mattered as much as just being there.

She redefined purpose for me. Nothing compares

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

I was someone who through my 20s wasn't even sure if I wanted kids. Work was my passion and I enjoyed it deeply. I filled up two passports. I did well financially. And yet, it's incomparable to the joy and purpose having children has given me. Like, not even close. Its crazy.

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@tibudiyanto Thank you shifu! still recall your words of encouragement and all of our convos last year, that really gave me strength. Hope you & your family are doing well there🫡

[Darren Shepherd @ibuildthecloud]

It's probably just my feed, but I see a lot of talk about getting married and having kids. Looking back at my life, career vs kids. There is no competition, family is the best. I was raised to basically get married young and have kids. Growing up (in CA) that was not generally accepted and people thought it was strange and often had critical views towards it. All I can say now is that I'm so happy I got married and had kids in my twenties. I recognize everyone is different. But if you can, I recommend it. Of course marriage is hard. Of course kids are hard. And it's expensive. But if you can find someone you love, be truly dedicated to each other, and put everything in it, the rewards are so great. Like anything good, it's hard work.

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@cnakazawa oh my God, this is so epic & hilarious haha
thanks for making my day Christoph

[Mustafa Ali @mustafa01ali]

👨🏻‍💻We needed a way to efficiently ship 100s of important, but non-critical screens in the @Shopify app. But Webviews are slow, janky, and have terrible UX. So, we made them fast, look native, and feel native.

We first made them 6x faster by preloading, caching, and pooling 🏎️.

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@cnakazawa 100% agree on squash but slightly disagree with the rebase vs merge.

The "show changes since your last review" options on GitHub would break if people use rebase and force pushed to their branch.

As a code reviewer, I would always find this a bit annoying

[swyx @swyx]

"it's not perfect but it's good enough"

the art of great engineering decisions is accepting, even -proposing- compromise because it fits the user/business context

many "great" engineers i have seen become "engineering totalitarians", unwilling to accept anything but the most correct solution. They are expensive in more ways than one.

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@ivanleomk bro, superb naming skill I'd say for indomee 🔥🔥🔥
🫡🫡🫡

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

Finally got the chance to chat with @zakiego since he joined Speechify a few months ago! (We’re in completely different orgs, so it’s long overdue!)

Did you know that @zakiego is actually a Sociology major who self-studied programming and computer science? 🤯

Our conversation reaffirmed my belief that #LearnInPublic and #BuildInPublic are the fastest ways to grow as a software engineer.

Thanks for the inspiring chat and thoughtful questions, mas @zakiego! Can’t wait for our next catch-up! 🚀

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

It was such a pleasure meeting you!

I wanted to chat more and maybe grab a selfie, but it was clear the crowd couldn’t resist flocking to you. Hopefully, we’ll cross paths again in the future—I’ll make sure to catch you for a proper conversation next time!

Thanks for everything you do! You are such a big inspiration to us all especially people who also come from frontend background!

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

Attending the invite-only OpenAI DevDay in Singapore was exhilarating! 🚀

Here are the highlights & takeaways from the event, which deepened my passion for AI engineering:

Highlights:
• Finally met @swyx in real life—his talk on Engineering AI Agents was phenomenal! swyx has been a role model for me through his incredible works on advocating #LearnInPublic, The Coding Career Handbook, and Latent Space, the #1 AI Engineering Newsletter.

• Caught up with @thorwebdev's —we used to work together at Stripe to build the Flutter SDK for Stripe. His demo on https://t.co/PhuT5B5qVV (AI-powered pglite via WASM) was a standout moment. I’m excited to use it to explore and design schemas for my next project!

• Despite my role as a product engineer at a text-to-speech startup, meeting so many brilliant minds in AI such as @ivanleomk made me realize gaps in my AI knowledge. This inspired me to revisit theoretical CS, AI/ML fundamentals, and dive even deeper into the field.

Key Takeaways:
• AI is at a transformative stage where tasks once requiring full research teams can now be done with APIs and creativity.

• LLMs, memory, planning, and tools are converging to create powerful, context-aware AI agents.

• Real-time APIs are enabling multimodal applications that blend speech, text, vision, and function calling to solve complex use cases.

On Customization:
• RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and vision fine-tuning are making applications more precise.

• JSON schemas + strict API calls ensure reliable outputs, opening up possibilities in automation and decision-making.

Behind the Scenes:
• Learned about optimizing LLM inference—balancing GPU/CPU utilization, token masking, and precomputed indices to improve performance.

Foundational models are empowering individuals and small teams to build impactful applications at scale.

It's an incredible time to be a software engineer!

Huge thanks again to @thorwebdev that referred me to @romainhuet for making this opportunity possible! Your support shaped an unforgettable experience. 🙏

Here’s to building meaningful projects that shape the future! 🌟

[Albertus Angga Raharja @albertusdev]

@ivanleomk @OpenAI @GovTechSG @gabrielchua @Calclavia @jetnew_sg @LimYiFan Wow, congratulations!! Really seems like an OP team! 🚀🚀