I am surprised to see more and more startups (mostly AI ones) equate an "extreme performance culture" with "we stay very late in the office, work on weekends, and many of us live where we work."
Speaking of myself, I have done mediocre work when working nonstop for a long time..
An example of when something sounds too good to be true it probably is:
“A platform where you can generate AI-powered, production ready apps.”
Lots of vibe coding platforms make this claim: but none can actually deliver on it. It’s because of a mix of things (cont’d):
What is the most important attribute of a great software architect?
That they can change their mindset and think about how the software they build will be used from the point of view of the user - may that be developers using this service or API, or actual users using the software.
From John Ousterhout, author of A Philosophy of Software Design, professor at Stanford, creator of the Tcl programming language:
“Let’s follow up in 10000 meetings and micromanage every step of an engineer and ask them to spare most of their time producing demos for leadership, instead of putting 2-3 good engineers on the problem and see if there is a viable solution to the problem.”
A warning what happens when a tech company prioritizes OKRs (eg "ship the new app in Q2 2024") and hitting artificial goals is what everyone optimizes for. And stops:
- Listening to customers
- Doing proper QA testing
- Holding a new release until it is ready for prod
Honestly one of the main reason I’ve switched my default search from Google (use Kagi for general search, Perplexity for research).
Google makes sponsored results blend in, and those results are often misleading. It takes effort to decide if G/the advertiser is tricking me
@SergioRocks Daniel Vacanti's forecast prediction using monte carlo simulation on teams past data. Worked so well that i was no longer asked for estimates (turns out it wasnt business needs, just negotiating timelines using provided estimates without cutting scope)
One of the most detailed blogs I have read in a while, discussing the internals of OS scheduling. Tony goes into the weeds of how io, processes and threads work. Uses C to explore async io and talks about different concepts.
Check it out
https://t.co/P26YNjLmoP
Please read this and share widely.
A LinkedIn post from a person named Sumeet has been sent to me multiple times. I have also been tagged on this post many times. I think it's important for me to share my concerns here as well, because it's the right thing to do and unfortunately I am the only person who has been very vocal about this and will probably be the only one still.
In the post, Sumeet tells the real life incident involving his father. An otherwise healthy man, he took a herbal dietary supplement at the advise of one Dr. Gupta who is probably a franchisee of the Sky Herbal Life Company.
He was given two products - Sky Herbal Life Fat Burner and Sky Herbal Life Keto - both marketed for weight loss.
Sumeet's father took these products as advised for just 4 days. From the 5th day onwards, he started to lose appetite and on the 10th day after start of symptoms, he was dead. Just gone. Imagine. A much loved healthy senior person will be missing from the life of everyone in that family. Imagine the void. In fact, it's terrifyingly unimaginable.
That said, I am sorry to say that this was not surprising. See the products Sumeet's father took. Read the ingredients. Two of them stand out. Both are WELL DOCUMENTED and both in fact have WARNINGS from the medical science community as well as health regulatory bodies from scientifically progressive societies, as severe liver toxic agents that can lead to the fatal condition the man suffered from - Acute Liver Failure.
Green tea extracts (not green tea) and Garcinia cambogia (malabar tamarind) are highly liver toxic compounds that can injure the liver so badly that they can kill. The person dies of multiple organ failure. This man was on two products that contained both. It's criminal. He was murdered by that "Dr. Gupta" who sold these products to him.
Studies have shown that epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) in green tea extracts and hydroxycitric acid in Garcinia are toxic compounds in isolation, and worse when they are together - like seen in this product.
Please see here. This has been known since decades. Why are our people not aware of this? Why is the health regulatory body not telling the public this, or putting up warnings or banning these shitty products off the shelf?
https://t.co/TONBEuJFjA
https://t.co/gmqA40GFac
https://t.co/f80x1fe6AW
These products do not help you lose weight. They are in fact common causes for severe liver injury and liver failure. And no doctor will tell you this because they fear the industry and are happy with a 9 to 5 clinical job. I have no fear. And I don't have anything to sell, other than these warnings. Please heed. Some doctors may even try to sell this death to you. Beware of such practitioners who prescribe/promote herbal supplements.
How many more avoidable deaths would you want to witness, to understand that herbal and dietary supplements industry is dangerous sham and it serves no real benefits for health or clinical well being.
Sky Herbal Life needs to be sued, taken taken court and made to pay. Dr. Gupta must be in jail...
...in a better world. Not current India.
Reject herbal supplements.
You'll be richer by it.
Money-wise and lives.
What on earth does a CEO do?
The best articulations of this I found came from @wolfejosh, @bznotes, @fredwilson
Here is my version inspired by theirs.
5 jobs of a CEO: Direction, Dollars, Diamonds, Decibels, Delivery
Companies that self-label as a "family" are a trap.
You have a family already.
What you need is a company where you:
- Earn a good salary
- Learn new skills
- Don't burn out
1/ Are you stuck in the efficiency trap?
Tom DeMarco's book "Slack" reveals the secret to thriving in a rapidly changing world
It's not what you think! Let's dive into how slack can transform your life🧵👇
What are activities outside of building software that senior+ / staff & above could take part in to improve their organization?
Here are a few. What else have you observed being 'strategic' ones that could have gains on the mid-term or on the long run?
New article on developing microservices in Unison. It'll knock your socks off and set fire to your shoes. 🔥
No hassle of packaging, deploying, and managing communication between services. You can deploy a service in seconds. Join the waitlist!
https://t.co/e9vQcCe4Vb
Wow. @substack experimented with pricing, reducing it by 1 cent, so e.g. instead of $10/month, do $9.99/month.
The result?
A significant decrease for the pricing ending with .99. Which goes against conventional pricing wisdom!!
Why it's worth running experiments!
Slack in software teams is: letting people do the work they can’t justify.
This makes development more predictable, production more resilient to problems, and the whole company resilient to changing expectations in the world.
https://t.co/5HttJupHci
"What gets measured gets managed - even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so." - attributed to Drucker, but probably not :) 5/8