/Management

The Rotation Program That Keeps This Startup’s Engineers Learning — And Not Leaving

- Krista Moroder tl;dr: Over the past several years, Moroder has helped formalize the rotation program at Checkr, and she’s scored some pretty brag-worthy retention stats as a result. “Two years ago, non-regrettable attrition was zero, and the year after that, it was 2% — because one person left. Across the board, my team is extremely tenured right now,” says Moroder. “For staff engineers and above, about 60% of them have been here six years or longer.

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What Is Device Fingerprinting And How Does It Work?

- Zack Proser tl;dr: “Every time a device connects to your server, it broadcasts a wealth of information through its browser. Some of these signals are obvious, while others are subtle technical artifacts of how browsers and hardware work together.” Zack breaks down what servers can see and how to mitigate bad actors. 

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My Approach To Building Large Technical Projects

- Mitchell Hashimoto tl;dr: “I've learned that when I break down my large tasks in chunks that result in seeing tangible forward progress, I tend to finish my work and retain my excitement throughout the project. People are all motivated and driven in different ways, so this may not work for you, but as a broad generalization I've not found an engineer who doesn't get excited by a good demo. And the goal is to always give yourself a good demo.”

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The Quest To Understand Metric Movements

tl;dr: “At Pinterest, we have built different quantitative models to understand why metrics move the way they do. This blog outlines the three pragmatic approaches that form the basis of the root-cause analysis (RCA) platform at Pinterest. As you will see, all three approaches try to narrow down the search space for root causes in different ways.”

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Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

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Exploring For Strategy

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) The goals of the exploration phase of strategy creation. (2) When to explore and when it makes sense to stop exploring. (3) How to explore a topic, including discussion of the most common mechanisms: mining for internal precedent, reading industry papers and books, and leveraging your external network. (4) Why avoiding judgment is an essential part of exploration. 

featured in #590

Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

featured in #590

The Million Dollar Question: Build / Maintain Or Buy

- Ramita Rajaa tl;dr: This classic debate takes on a new meaning for transactional messaging infrastructure. When there are hundreds of APIs to integrate on a regular basis, security and reliability at stake, and costs to consider, should you build/maintain or buy? Take a look at this in-depth review analyzing the pros and cons of each side. 

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How I Give The Right Amount Of Context (In Any Situation)

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Giving the right amount of context helps teams move faster. Too much context? Your manager can’t tell what’s important. They’ll need to wade through details, trying to sort information into a pile of what’s important vs what to ignore. Too little context? Your manager has to follow up and pull information out of you that you should have mentioned proactively. There is such a thing as being too concise.”

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Why Is OAuth Still Hard In 2025?

- Robin Guldener tl;dr: After implementing OAuth for 50+ popular APIs like Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Slack, we concluded that OAuth in 2025 is comparable to JavaScript browser APIs in 2008. Why is OAuth still a pain in the butt in 2025? We break it down in this article.

featured in #589