I am giving my first big conference talk in front of 450 people (!) tomorrow about how curiosity and courage led me to create a more significant impact in my current role. Unfortunately, the talk will be in Korean, so I won’t share the slides or the live recording here. But I hope to share my lessons here after the presentation.
Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash
Software Engineering ⚙️
Moment.js Project Status – Moment.js
Moment.js, the de-facto standard Javascript library to handle time and timezones, has announced its active development, thanks to newer libraries like Luxon and the new Temporal proposal. I first used this library in my first job eight years ago, and still use it in my current role. Kudos to the Moment.js team to have shepherded the project to this point 🎉
If you are interested in learning more about the issue with “Date” in Javascript, read this.
Fluid Framework – Microsoft
Fluid Framework is “a collection of client libraries for distributing and synchronizing shared state” without a customized server application.
Tools like Google Docs, MURAL, and Figma have raised the bar for all collaborative applications. The business users expect real-time collaboration inside their tools now. I bet my team will have to implement something similar soon.
Speedy Neural Networks for Smart Auto-Cropping of Images – Twitter
People found yet another example of biased algorithms, this time on Twitter itself. The algorithm above seemingly prioritizes white people over black people when cropping images for the feed.
People ❤️
Things To Know About Engineering Levels – Charity Majors
Charity is on fire with her writing lately. This blog post is another gem. It scratches the exact area I’ve been wondering: how to get to that next level. Two takeaways for me: first, “not every opportunity exists at every company at every time.” Second, more practically, don’t join a startup without much high-level work to do, or a company already with enough staff/principal engineers.
Meeting everyone on a new team – Anna Shipman
Anna, a Technical Director at FT.com, recollects her introductory 1:1s with her 50-person organization. The article is very detailed and makes an intriguing read.
But I was a bit taken back because, even when her people explicitly told her that they enjoyed building relationships with her, she chose not to make the 1:1s recurring. I am used to and expect regular quarterly reviews with my skip-level managers. I suppose everyone has their preference.
Business 💸
ByteDance picks Oracle as partner to try to save TikTok U.S – Reuters
It is old news that Oracle, not Microsoft, will buy TikTok in the U.S. I am not sure what Oracle will buy exactly yet, given the Chinese sanction against the export of recommendation algorithms. In the meantime, the U.S. government bans TikTok and WeChat.
TLDR Stock options – LTSE Tools Team
This interactive tool provides a reality check on the value of the stock options you get from your prospective employers. The real challenge is to figure out where the employers fall on the curve, given that they likely won’t provide any information that might turn you away.
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