Issue #339

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Issue #339
Pointer.io
Tuesday 2nd August issue is presented by PostHog


 
PostHog is the open-source product analytics suite you can self-host. Heatmaps, Recordings, Funnels, Feature Flags and more — all in a platform you can self-host and sync with your data warehouse!
 
#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: (1) Start with a "micro-yes:" e.g. “I’ve got a couple of ideas for how we could improve. Can I share them?” (2) State your data point: e.g. "we said we’d ship this change by midday, but it’s 4pm.” (3) Make your impact statement: e.g. “our support staff are getting inundated with tickets because we said that it would be fixed earlier.” (4) End on a question: e.g. “what are your thoughts?” As a rule of thumb, most feedback should be positive. 
#CareerAdvice #Management
 
tl;dr: (1) The work necessary for turning a rough sketch of an idea into a viable concept. (2) Time spent on planning the work. (3) Effort that goes into preparing the coding part of the development. (4) Time spent on writing the code. (5) Testing the software. (6) Documentation. And more. 
The Really Important Job Interview Questions Engineers Should Ask (But Don't)
- James Hawkins
#Leadership #Management #InterviewAdvice

tl;dr: "It's normal for candidates not to ask harder questions about our company, so they usually miss out on a chance to (1) de-risk our company's performance and (2) increase the chances they'll like working here." James gives several examples of interview questions candidates can ask about product-market fit, financial runway and more.

Promoted by PostHog
SQLite Internals: Pages & B-trees
- Ben Johnson
#SQLite

tl;dr: "Learning about the internals of our tools lets us feel comfortable with them and use them confidently. Hopefully low-level features like SQLite's PRAGMAs seem a little less opaque now." Ben guides us through SQLites internals through an "over-engineered" database that tracks sandwich he's consumed.
 
"Every big computing disaster has come from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place."

- Gordon Bell
 
You Don’t Need Microservices
- Matthew Spence
#Microservices #Architecture

tl;dr: "The monolith should remain the default choice for new, small, and medium-sized engineering teams. Microservices are still an option, but you should have compelling context-specific reasons to justify their use." 
Software Visualization - Challenge, Accepted
- Renato Kalman, Johan Wallin
#Management

tl;dr: "While capturing all of our software in one large diagram is technically possible, it would be very hard to understand and navigate. We need tools to look at our architecture at different abstraction levels in order to make good design decisions and evolve our software in a sustainable way. As part of our solution, we leverage a standardized software metadata model to create a common language for communicating software architecture."
Stop Aggregating Away The Signal In Your Data
- Zan Armstrong
#DataScience

tl;dr: "Aggregation is the standard best practice for analyzing time series data, but it can create problems by stripping away crucial context so that you’re not even aware of how much potential insight you’ve lost. In this article, I’ll start by discussing how aggregation can be problematic, before walking through three specific alternatives to aggregation with before / after examples."
Squash, Merge, or Rebase?
- Matt Rickard
#Git

tl;dr: "When version controlling your code with git, there are generally three choices when merging feature branches into main. Each has its quirks, so which one should you use?" Matt runs through when to use each, and his preference. 
Notable GitHub Repos
Engineering Ladders
A framework for Engineering Managers.
 
Gum
A tool for glamorous shell scripts.
 
Tabler
HTML Dashboard UI Kit.
 
Million
Virtual DOM into the future. 
 
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