Something I have to keep reminding people of: “Once you reach a certain level, all problems are solved by people. There is no such thing as a purely technical problem.”
The nice part of working on open source is I can finally share some of the amazing work my team has been doing. Here’s some forthcoming Suricata contributions by Sascha and Frank with more on the way.
After having been locked out of my Instagram account for months because of wrongful reports, I have just gotten back access to the account for a week or so and I already get the first people reporting me again.
So the Instagram handle that I thought I had lost was returned to me suddenly last week (thanks to a friend). Not sure whether I’ll get to keep it this time round, but let’s try.
Once we expect leadership to come from everybody at work, engineers don’t have to switch to management anymore to be able to lead and be rewarded for it.
The government has made it clear that its main purpose is not to save lives or protect the vulnerable. It exists to ensure that assets never depreciate and that wealth is never redistributed downward. Capital has never seemed so fictitious.
“I am successful if I’m saying the right “No”s to my manager. If the ICs that report to my manager end up feeling like “I told you so”or “We knew this was a bad idea”and that wasn’t surfaced for a discussion, that’s on me.”
Something to remember when embarking on a journey to improve large and complex systems of humans and technology: small changes can make big a difference and afterwards nobody will really remember how bad things were.
Looking at some Discord first organizations this describes how they could play out and how much potential is there if you want to put some effort in it.
“The technology is not the hard part. It’s already invented, but we have to pay ourselves to install it fast. So, again, that’s an economic question, and it doesn’t work in capitalism. We have the means right now to arrange for everybody alive today to have adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education, and healthcare, within the biosphere’s carrying capacity.”
Most of my discussions with data scientists have revolved around exactly this point (usually to serious pushback): that they need to be end-to-end to deliver value in an organization.
You may find yourself suddenly leading a project as an IC and if that is the case, please take this guide by Gergely Orosz with you. It will prove very helpful.
A funny German interview with Ben Hammersley on the surface about laziness and productivity but what is a much more current strand to pull on is the ability to systematize large parts of our quotidian life and work.
An uncannily thorough treatment of why DARPA works and how you might go about replicating it. Maybe people at the European policy level should read this instead of trying all these initiatives where everything good dies in a committee.
Foul things fled, fierce things tame; discord turned to harmony! For how could there be greed where all had enough? How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where poverty had vanished? Who should crouch where all were freemen; who oppress where all were peers?
Fuck Manhattan. This (Jackson Heights) is the real New York: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/27/arts/design/jackson-heights-queens-virtual-walk-tour.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Talking with people about their career and professional development options is one of my active areas of improvement at the moment. If I’m generous I’d say I’m at level 2.
I love the examples in this bit about great engineering cultures: teamwork as default, quality is personal, results driven meetings & retrospectives are fun
I thought I knew how big a deal TikTok was a year ago already but I feel sorry for not diving in back then because it is much bigger a deal than I had thought.
“The second thing is that there’s almost no watchable esport for a normal person. The real issue is that no one has actually made [an esport] that people like to play, that is fun to play, that is also remotely tolerable to watch for a normal person. They’re all baffling. I dare anyone to turn on Overwatch in front of a person and even explain what’s going on to them. The closest we’ve gotten [to something watchable] is Rocket League, because it’s just soccer.”
The JIRA team does not use JIRA and of course why would they if anybody gave them the choice. Also, JIRA is often not used for software engineering anymore but it fits the bill for large scale workflows and compliance trails.
There are the leaders that — like samurai — embrace death. They see their role as protecting and empowering the people below them who do the real work and it’s an honor to serve the team’s interests even if things do not go well for them personally.
I have my first name as my user name in a bunch of places. I’ve had my Twitter account (Twitter.com/alper) for a very long time but my Instagram account (Instagram.com/alper) got a lot more attention after Instagram got really big. A couple of weeks ago I lost that account.
I thought this was a great interview with Kim Stanley Robinson but it turns out the Corona virus has not rewritten our imaginations enough, not enough at all.
The opinions of ‘Uncle Bob’ have always been harmful both when it comes to code as well as non-code. It’s a bit shameful for us as an industry that it took so long for people to wisen up to this.
The types of resistance available to women are particularly interesting: They themselves understand their daily tasks — the upkeep of their homes and the care of their families — as a form of steadfast resistance.
Crucially, at street scale, on-street parking is not allowed, which opens up the streetscape for people, on foot and on bike, for conversation and activities, and yes, for moving goods and people around but as a secondary ‘enabling’ activity to the life of the street itself.
Remember that in any organisation, people make decisions — decisions are about trade-offs, and decisions can be influenced, overturned, and changed. More importantly, organisations evolve— the way decisions were made yesterday might not be the way they get made tomorrow!