I used to organize a monthly meetup for startup managers when I was in Seoul. I loved meeting new people, getting to know how they approached their roles, and exchanging ideas in a safe environment. I enjoyed it every time and now miss it dearly. That is why I planned to organize a similar event this year.

So for the first time, I organized a small gathering with people managers in South Bay this week. The turnout wasn’t large (4 in total), but I felt that it was a good start. The group was small enough to have in-depth discussions. I learned how certain teams at Epic Games, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and LinkedIn are organized, and was nudged to read about inwards, outwards, and holistics. I am planning to turn this into a regular event now.

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

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People ❤

High Output Management for (Non-managing) Tech Leads

High Output Management remains to be my favorite business book. One key lesson from the book is that a manager’s output equals the output of the organization under their supervision or influence. I’ve been thinking that the same applies to other types of leaders, such as senior engineers or tech leads, just as this article says.

Data-gather first, manage up second.

I have been disappointed by many managers before for their seeming lack of interest in my development. But this article made me regret not having more candid conversations about their motivations and priorities.

Software Engineering 🌐

The Dev.to Feed Algorithm

I remember my old days at a startup where we tweaked our feed algorithm just a tiny bit to improve our numbers. There wasn’t much science to it. We had a lot of magic numbers, which made me wonder if others did it much better. Dev.to, a developer community, has its code open-sourced, which shows how it generates feeds for its users.

Staggered Animations with CSS Custom Properties

I am still not used to CSS custom properties that their smart usages always amaze me. I would have never thought to use the custom properties to create staggered animations.

Business 💸

Quadratic Payments: A Primer

Whether money is speech or not, the current political systems suffer from elitism and, as a reaction, populism. Quadratic payment, where your nth vote costs you n, is an experiment to reflect people’s preferences more accurately.