/Career Advice

What Is A Senior Software Engineer At Wise And Amazon?

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: Gergely delves into senior software engineer roles at Wise and Amazon. At Wise, senior engineers lead significant projects, contribute to feature planning, and require good communication and problem-solving skills. At Amazon, the equivalent role deals with ambiguity, leads projects, communicates technical ideas efficiently, and ensures that the team's success doesn't solely rely on them. While definitions of 'senior' vary across the two companies, clear expectations across companies include project leadership, problem-solving skills, and effective communication.

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A Few Words On Taking Notes

- Werner Vogels tl;dr: Werner, the CTO at Amazon, explores note-taking. He values the Cornell Method for its structure and analog approach: each notebook page has 4 sections: (1) Title. (2) Notes. (3) Keywords and questions. (4) Summary. Werner discusses potential AI enhancements and believes handwritten note-taking increases comprehension and retention.

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Emotions: A Code Book

- Kent Beck tl;dr: Kent shares a personal journey of understanding emotions using an established framework. He views emotions as envelopes containing important messages, encouraging readers to decode these messages instead of suppressing emotions, giving a "cheat sheet" that defines what kind of message each emotion brings, e.g., Fear as a call to focus, Anger as a call to enforce boundaries, and Guilt as a call to change. This self-understanding helps navigate life's challenges and fosters personal growth.

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Frameworks

- Mike Fisher tl;dr: The user shared three frameworks to understand growth phases of companies: Kent Beck's 3X (Explore, Expand, Extract), Wardley's PST (Pioneer, Settler, Town Planner), and Thiel's Zero to One. They found these useful for identifying their personal fit within a company's growth journey, thriving best in the scaling phase. Understanding one's optimal growth phase can guide career choices.

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Before You Try To Do Something, Make Sure You Can Do Nothing

- Raymond Chen tl;dr: Raymond advises starting software projects with a 'do-nothing' component to establish a good foundation. The step-by-step approach lets developers debug and validate at each stage, making problem-solving easier. He encourages incremental complexity to keep projects manageable and on track.

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Accidentally Load Bearing

- Jeff Kaufman tl;dr: Jeff uses the principle of Chesterton's Fence to emphasize that understanding the original and current roles of a system component is crucial before making changes. The author illustrates this through their experiences in home renovation and complex computer systems.

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Allergic To Waiting

- Thorsten Ball tl;dr: Thorsten believes programmers may be tolerating longer-than-necessary wait times due to a lack of understanding about what computers are capable of, what is a reasonable time for a given task, and how internet-based work might be skewing their perceptions of acceptable speeds. The author encourages developers to question and understand the cause of long wait times instead of passively accepting them, as many of these delays can be optimized or eliminated.

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Fresh Work 80/15/5

- Kent Beck tl;dr: “How do you balance risk, novelty, production, growth, short-term certainty, and long-term viability? I learned a simple rule that has been useful to me and is often cited by my students as a key lesson from coaching: (1) 80% of your time goes to low-risk / reasonable-reward work, (2) 15% of your time goes to related high-risk / high-reward work and (3) 5% of your time goes to satisfying your own curiosity with no thought of reward.

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New Study Finds An Unstructured 5-Minute Break Can Help Restore Attention

- Paul Ginns tl;dr: “Researchers found a 5-minute break from thinking is all you need to get your concentration back. There is no need for a walk along a river, or a lengthy video of bamboo forests swaying in the wind. A five-minute total break will do the trick.”

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Finding A Buddy When You’re A Team Of One

- Lara Hogan tl;dr: These steps can help mitigate isolation felt when working as a "team of one," fostering a more supportive and collaborative work culture: (1) Regular Check-ins. (2) Peer Groups. (3) Cross-team collaboration. (4) Training sessions and workshops. (5) Online Social Activities. (6) Mentorship Programs. Lara explains how to act on each.

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