Young Reacts #222
I am excited to share that I am starting my new role as a staff engineer at The Trade Desk in April. I am excited about the role for several reasons, but here is the big one.
When I started my career, I didn’t think much about the domain/industry I was in. I assumed that my team could fill me in when necessary and that the domain knowledge was easy to pick up. So I changed my roles without considering their domains. I moved from data analytics to social media to content producing to e-commerce.
Only when I reached the senior level did I realize that my lack of domain knowledge held me back. Some of my high-performing peers, based on their understanding of the domain, had a vision of how their teams should evolve and were able to hold their teams and partners accountable for business success.
Following their examples, I wanted to build my expertise in an exciting and essential area. And I chose online advertising because it powers most of the consumer internet and continues to evolve due to changing regulations and new media platforms. So I expect this industry will continue to have many opportunities in this industry.
Software Engineering ⚙️
Kill Your Personas
When I thought about accessibility, I only considered those with permanent disabilities. So I often deprioritized accessibility for my products. This article taught me that there are temporary and situational factors, too, and that accessible tools help many more people than those with permanent disabilities.
You Don’t Need a Build Step
Since Deno doesn’t have years of legacy software to support, they challenge the status quo in the ecosystem, which helps me to solidify my mental model. This article taught me to categorize different build steps into two: those that improve the dev experience (compiling, bundling) and those that will enhance user experience (minifying, code-splitting).
How Skyscanner Embedded a Team Metrics Culture for Continuous Improvement
When you roll out new initiatives like team metrics, it’s crucial to take time to win the team’s hearts and minds, which will take much longer than the rollout itself.
Hyundai Promises To Keep Buttons in Cars Because Touchscreen Controls Are Dangerous
This isn’t about software engineering but it is still an excellent example that a high-tech solution isn’t always better.
People ❤️
The End of Front-End Development
I agree with the author that front-end engineers’ jobs are not at risk. Our jobs are just changing, but that has always been the case. We won’t be able to keep our jobs ten years later by using the same tools and methodologies. We should improve our problem-solving and prioritization and pick up the necessary skills (prompt engineering, IDEs with AI) along the way.
Managers Exploit Loyal Workers Over Less Committed Colleagues
I have an allergic reaction to the word “loyalty.” As we’ve seen from the tech layoffs, no company is loyal to its employees, and employees shouldn’t be expected to be so, either. This research that loyal workers get asked to do more free work is another reason why loyalty isn’t a good trait. Both as a manager and an employee, I much prefer the concept of an alliance.
Business 💰
Fingerprint Pro: The device identity platform for high-scale applications
Fingerprinting is a technique to identify individual machines without identifiers like cookies or device UUIDs. Instead, it uses a combination of information on the hardware, the operating system, and the browser. You can see it working on the linked website. Unlike cookies, the scary part is that one cannot opt out of fingerprinting.