Friday 15th November’s issue is presented by QA Wolf |
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If slow QA processes and flaky tests are a bottleneck for your engineering team, you need QA Wolf. |
Their AI-native platform, backed by full-time QA engineers, enables their team to create tests 5x faster than anyone else. New tests are created in minutes and existing tests are updated almost instantaneously. |
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🛒 Also available through AWS, GCP, and Azure marketplaces. |
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— Wes Kao |
tl;dr: In this week’s post, we’ll cover examples of finesse in the workplace. (1) Identify when to ask for forgiveness vs permission. (2) Acknowledge that perception matters. (3) Know what you can get away with. (4) Don’t be too literal. (5) Know when to be discreet. (6) Never bet against incentives. |
CareerAdvice |
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— Francisco Trindade |
tl;dr: Instead, when helping ICs transition to management, I have focused on introducing the basics of engineering management. That’s because the basics will: (1) Provide the manager a structure to apply to their role initially, creating more stability and space for them to learn. (2) Create stability in the team, avoiding initial problems and crises that could destabilize and complicate the manager’s role. (3) Provide guidelines and principles the manager can apply to everyday situations, improving their chance of success. |
Leadership Management |
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— Nishant Shukla |
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tl;dr: Golden Datasets have long been a reliable method for measuring AI prompt performance. But as AI innovation moves fast, companies need a more agile, flexible, and cost-effective solution to stay ahead of their competition. Enter random sampling of AI prompt performance—a cutting-edge approach that adapts to real-world data and drives scalable performance for QA Wolf customers. Stay ahead of the curve—watch the webinar now. |
Promoted by QA Wolf |
Data |
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— Candost Dagdeviren |
tl;dr: “Setting expectations for software engineers is tricky for all managers. Every company has different needs and a different structure, tech stack, and culture. Whenever someone joins a team, one of the manager’s challenges is aligning the organization’s expectations with those of the new joiner. As there’s no universal guidance on this subject, I set out to find a simple definition that would help managers frame the fundamental things they expect from software engineers.” |
Leadership Management |
“Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” | | | | – Howard Schultz |
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— Hazel Bachrach |
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tl;dr: “I want to try to catalog the bits that I wish someone had just told me before working with a Postgres database. Hopefully, this makes things easier for the next person going on a journey similar to mine. Note that many of these things may also apply to other SQL database management systems (DBMSs) or other databases more generally, but I’m not as familiar with others so I’m not sure what does and does not apply.” |
PostgreSQL |
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— Brian Morrison |
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tl;dr: Integrate Clerk with Neon Authorize to enforce Row-Level Security (RLS) in Postgres using JWTs. This setup enhances security by securing database queries based on user identity. For team leads, it simplifies security management and reduces risk, allowing teams to focus on development. |
Promoted by Clerk |
Data Security |
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— Leonardo Creed |
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tl;dr: “It’s true that LLMs are revolutionary, and while I work with LLMs daily, there are so many other things that are fascinatingly progressing. I go over some topics below and provide a host of links for each topic for those interested in learning more. I see these topics as trends that are only growing as time goes on.” |
Trends |
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— Werner Vogels |
tl;dr: “And while each of these docs has a different purpose, the rationale remains the same. Writing forces the author to be clear, precise, and detailed. To string sentences together, take a position, and support that position with data. It places the burden on the author to avoid anything confusing or that could be misinterpreted by the reader. It’s hard work. I’ve never seen someone get it right the first time. It takes collecting feedback and revising and then revising again. But a good idea backed by a crisp doc has proven it can produce wonderful products – it’s something we’ve seen over-and-over again from 1-click buying and Amazon Prime to the launch of AWS and Kindle.” |
AWS |
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— Andrew Halberstadt |
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tl;dr: “There are many standout features, but if I had to distill it down, I’d say Jujutsu is good because it is equal parts simple and powerful. Simple both in terms of the UI (which is stellar), but also in terms of cognitive load (the ability to keep track of your changes). Powerful because of the fantastic history re-writing and conflict resolution capabilities.” |
UsefulTool |
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Notable Reading |
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They send out weekly deep dives on the latest tech around databases, authentication, testing, AI and much more. |
Learn about the exact strategies, technologies and APIs that companies are using to launch, iterate quickly and scale up. |
Subscriber For Free! |
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Most Popular From Last Issue |
5 Frameworks To Master Communication And Influence As An Engineer - Jordan Cutler, Wes Kao |
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Notable Links |
CrewAI: Framework for orchestrating role-playing, autonomous AI agents. |
Khoj: Your AI second brain. |
LibSQL: OS open fork of SQLite. |
Prefect: Workflow orchestration framework for building data pipelines. |
Spin: OS tool for building & running serverless apps. |
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How did you like this issue of Pointer? 1 = Didn't enjoy it all // 5 = Really enjoyed it | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
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