I don’t often share videos, but please do watch Design for spatial input and Apple’s other spatial design-related videos. They are truly eye-opening.
Software Engineering ⚙️
Design for spatial input
I’ve always believed that this combination of a two-dimensional screen, a mouse, and a keyboard won’t be the last user interface I will build for. This WWDC video gave me a glimpse of how that future UI may look.
Client Controlled Nullability - Decision Log
The drivers for this GraphQL proposal did a great job of summarizing and providing background on key decisions. I will keep this in my toolbox for large projects that may be long-running or involve many people. This should help save time and energy when a newcomer wants to reopen a resolved issue.
How To Get Buy-in for DevEx Initiatives
This article has many powerful ideas on how engineering should position their investments to their partners. I will list a few here:
“The single most impactful variable of whether you are trustworthy is your “self-orientation”—what others believe your motives to be.”
“remember that you are a member of the technical staff for the company first, and advocate for developer experience second”
“You have to translate what you’re saying into a language they can understand, which is typically finance. Money.”
People ❤️
Circle of concern v Circle of control
With my still-fresh eyes at work, I see a lot of improvements we can make, from how we write code to where we invest in developer experience to how we make decisions. But I am but one person with limited time and energy. I’d benefit from identifying what I can truly control and intensely focusing on them.
THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS
I usually prefer explicit decision-making processes because implicit processes benefit those in the known at the expense of those outside. The explicit process does not need to be democratic. But it needs to be clear who made what decisions and how so that we can hold those responsible accountable.
I worked at Google for -10 days
When I moved from Korea to the Bay Area to join Netflix, I couldn’t get my work visa for five months after I signed the offer. Thankfully, my manager waited for me, and the company was doing well enough that I could still have my job after that long delay. I was lucky, but I empathize with those whose dream opportunities fell through due to issues outside their control.
Business 💰
Unpaid social media moderators perform labor worth at least $3.4 million a year on Reddit alone
This study calculated the time moderators spent by tracking the actions they performed on Reddit and concluded that moderators collectively spent about 466 hours a day based on data from 2020. For context, there were about 52 million users and 21,500 moderators at the time of the study, and $3.4 million is 2.8% of Reddit’s 2019 revenue.
the "THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS" is such a good and insightful read. Thanks for linking it, I haven't read it in like 4 years but it's always great.