I managed my first incident in my first oncall rotation last week. Luckily, I was already used to the stressful incidents from my time at Square, so I could coordinate and communicate calmly. Nothing is as stressful as hundreds of thousands of merchants missing their sales.
Software Engineering ⚙️
Admiral Rickover’s ‘Paper Reactor’ memo
This old memo on nuclear reactors reminded me of the danger of preaching ideas on paper without knowing the on-the-ground reality. Even as I get used to the leadership aspect of a staff engineer role, I will stay close to our code.
An introduction to Wardley (Value Chain) Mapping
I’ve heard quite a bit about Wardley mapping from other senior engineers and finally took some time to read about it. It’s a way to represent a value chain across two axes, the proximity to the customers on the y-axis and the degree of uncertainties on the x-axis. Its goal is to understand the situation and then plan the next strategic moves.
Rich Harris on Svelte’s TS to JSDoc Conversion
Svelte, one of the rising web frameworks, has decided to move away from Typescript to Javascript with type annotations in JSDoc, which was against the trend. The creator of Svelte explained why, and it resonated with me: it’s easier to understand and debug Javascript written by humans and to contribute to the project as there is no build process.
Using @defer Directive with GraphQL Code Generator
It is exciting to see the defer directive gain tractions across the ecosystem. Seeing my favorite GraphQL code generator tool adopt the directive is more exciting.
People ❤️
Can AI help employers screen for honesty?
This article poses an interesting question:
[I]s it unfair for employers to use machines to help evaluate a person’s integrity? Or is it more fair than relying solely on the subjective judgment of humans?
To that, I propose: it’s wrong to judge a person’s character based on their non-verbal cues, which is culture-dependent. Instead, we should ask about their past experiences. Once we change the questions and prove that AI can predict a hired person’s future performance as well as a trained human interviewer, I don’t have a problem with AI interviewing us.
Layoffs push down scores on Glassdoor: this is how companies respond
This article helps you understand how Glassdoor’s review system operates. In short, remember that Glassdoor’s revenue comes from employers, not employees.
Business 💰
An apparently AI-generated hoax of an explosion at the Pentagon went viral online — and markets briefly dipped
This is the brave new world.