During the QA session after my talk (which feels so long ago since I also moved on Friday), I was asked what I find the most exciting/stimulating for my career lately. After some thoughts, I realized the preparation for the talk was that. I never spoke in front of hundreds of people. I never gave a non-technical talk. I never gave a talk over Zoom. There were so many firsts for me, and I am proud of myself. I didn’t know that I could talk about my career, or anything really, coherently for 20 minutes. Now I know!

I especially want to thank my wife Eunyoung, for her support and patience to listen to me over and over for the last month. 🥰

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Software Engineering ⚙️

A Better Code Review – Gilad Peleg

Code reviews have become a standard engineering practice. But not everyone agrees on the why. I believe that they are a way to spread knowledge. They are too late in the process to change the design meaningfully and too unreliable to catch bugs. Based on that belief, I should surface those important pieces better. Why do you do code reviews?

Why we decided against GraphQL for local state management – OkCupid

The OkCupid team explains why they don’t find Apollo’s local state management is not yet ready. While I think the cons are mostly Apollo client’s issues, the article can be helpful if you want to understand pros and cons of using the Apollo client for local state management. For the record, I think the Apollo client is too heavy-handed, and React state and reducer hooks can meet most of my needs.

Headless Recorder (previously Puppeteer Recorder) – Checkly

At my team, writing an automated e2e test takes a lot of effort. So much so that I get scared just thinking about writing it. The exposed API for our internal framework is so granular that I have to manually add “wait” statements for a dropdown to open after a click. We chose our internal framework over Cypress for consistency, but I still want a helper extension like Headless Recorder.

People ❤️

Stephen Wan: Staff Engineer at Samsara – Stephen Wan

Here is another Staff Engineer interview. These interviews give me a peek into not only the works but the lives of the engineers, and I love that very much. I also appreciate that Wan calls out having an organizational history as one of the reasons he became a staff engineer. It has put my current work in a longer-term perspective.

The Management Flywheel – Camille Fournier

The lesson applies even if we are not a manager. I understand that it is tempting to do something big to prove ourselves after joining new teams. But that is precisely the wrong move to make. We need to start small, learn more, and build momentum.

Business 💸

Google to Increase Push for Apps to Give Cut of In-App Purchases – Bloomberg

Amidst anti-trust scrutinies, Google seeks to standardize Android app payments around Google Play. I first found the move surprising. But I’ve learned that the larger developers got exemptions from the policy, which doesn’t look good from a regulatory perspective.

2020 Bundles – Ben Thompson

A concise overview of how different subscription bundles fit with the corporate strategies: Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Microsoft Xbox All Access, and Apple One.