This Tuesday (June 15), California will “open up…business as usual.” The state government won’t enforce mask mandates or capacity reductions. It will be such a relief after long 15 months. I only hope that this relief isn’t short-lived.
Software Engineering ⚙️
The Plan for React 18
React 18 is now in the works and looks like it will be released soonish (they say several months). I am glad that they plan to provide a backward-compatible upgrade path—that has been the best feature of React. Of the mentioned features in the announcement, I particularly look forward to startTransition.
Best Practices for Designing Federated GraphQL Schemas 🎞️
A good list of things to keep in mind when working with a federated GraphQL schema. I would emphasize that following the guidelines in practice is where the real work is, especially with this one “Prioritize client needs, but not just one client’s needs.” (at 13:25 mark).
People ❤️
How to Feel Progress
My anti-pattern at work is that I seek quick wins and get impatient with “slow” progress. Some types of meaningful work are possible with such an attitude, but most require persistence and long-term vision. This article made me realize that estimating the required effort and the timeline is key to moderate my impatience.
From Listening Tour to State of the Union
When I came up with a vision for how authorization should work at Netflix Studio, I learned that a vision doesn’t get created in a vacuum; I gathered information with ad-hoc 1:1s, surveys, and focus groups. Only after understanding different points of view across the org, was I able to create a compelling, meaningful vision. As mentioned in the article, one technique I found especially useful was asking whom else to talk to at the end of the 1:1s. This article suggests other helpful tactics, as well.
Tag-ups
Occasionally I find some topics not useful for team-wide meetings but aren’t well covered by 1:1 meetings. A tag-up is a project-specific meeting that gets the right set of people together regularly. I will turn some of my 1:1s into this format.
Business 💸
Y Combinator entrepreneurs say they were kicked out of the accelerator for criticizing its founders and slamming efforts to skip vaccine lines
Incidents like this slowly make me lose faith in the mainstream Silicon Valley startup scene. This isn’t the first time top VCs reacted poorly to criticisms. If you are that rich and powerful, you can’t pretend to be a victim of media and Twitter.
youngk.im 