tl;dr:“These days, most new grad software engineers belong to GenZ, having been born between 1997 and 2012... strap in as we dive into responses from the latest generation of tech talent, and find out what young professionals really think about modern workplaces and their more “experienced” colleagues!”
tl;dr:Gergely covers the following from Will Larson’s book: (1) Deciding whether to pursue an executive role. (2) Why each executive job search is unique, and how that will shape your process. (3) Finding executive roles externally and internally. (4) Navigating the often chaotic executive interview process. (5) Negotiating an executive contract. (6) Deciding whether to accept an executive offer once you have it.
tl;dr:"Bluesky is built by around 10 engineers, and has amassed 5 million users since publicly launching in February this year. A deep dive into novel design decisions, moving off AWS, and more."
tl;dr:When you ask ChatGPT a question, several steps happen: (1) Input: We take your text from the text input. (2) Tokenization: We chunk it into tokens. A token roughly maps to a couple of unicode characters. You can think of it as a word. (3) Create embeddings: We turn each token into a vector of numbers. These are called embeddings. (4) Multiply embeddings by model weights: We then multiply these embeddings by hundreds of billions of model weights. (5) Sample a prediction.
tl;dr:An interview with Evan Morikawa, who led the OpenAI Applied Engineering team as ChatGPT launched and scaled. Evan reveals the five engineering challenges along with lessons learned. Challenges are: (1) KV Cache & GPU RAM. (2) Optimizing batch size. (3) Finding the right metrics to measure. (4) Finding GPUs wherever they are. (5) Inability to autoscale.
tl;dr:In this issue, Abi outlines the developer productivity metrics used at 17 tech companies, such as Amplitude, Etsy, DoorDash. He then dives deep into several companoes of varying size, notably Google & LinkedIn, Peloton, scaleups and smaller companies. Abi’s advice on how to choose your metrics: start with the problem you want to solve. Is it shipping frictionless, retaining developers by keeping them happy and satisfied, raising the quality of software shipped, or something else? Then work backwards from there.
tl;dr:"Holiday season is just around the corner, meaning it’s time to think about gifts – which can be a non-trivial challenge in itself. With so many choices, what are the best presents for people working in tech?" Gergely put together a list covering: (1) Books and creative thinking. (2) Gadgets and tinkering. (3) Wellbeing. (4) Office equipment. (5) Decor. (6) Toys for adults. (7) Board games. (8) Non-tech gifts.
tl;dr:“Bootstrapped companies tends to get little coverage across the media. This can be by design, as many of these companies prefer to fly under the radar, and focus on building a sustainable, profitable business, and don’t seek a bigger profile.” Gergely profiles five companies, discussing: (1) Taking the leap to bootstrap a company. (2) Tech stack and engineering approaches. (3) Growing the company. (4) The contrast to working at a large company. (5) What works.
tl;dr:Willem, who Gergely met at Uber, share his experience and insights working as a developer, transitioning between startups and big tech companies. Willem recalls the "rapid skill development" and "direct influence" at startups, juxtaposed with the financial uncertainties and heightened stress. Big tech provided a platform for deep domain expertise, financial perks, and expansive networking, albeit with potential bureaucratic hurdles and diluted individual impact. “Doing work that results in a great performance review is not always the same work that best helps the company. And this can create pretty twisted, political situations.”
tl;dr:Microsoft's approach to Quality Assurance (QA), focusing on the Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) role. The SDET role was designed for engineers who focused on writing automated tests and maintaining testing systems. "An SDET is a developer who works in a test team and not a development team." This role was retired around 2014, as Microsoft moved towards a more integrated approach where all software engineers became responsible for testing their code.