My time melted away last week. Even Friday, which is typically light on meetings, had 6 hours of consecutive meetings. I did say that I liked annual planning, but I can’t wait to get it over with. I hope your Q4 is less busy than mine.

Software Engineering ⚙️

“Best Practice” is not a reason to do something

We, software engineers, are paid for our judgment and its results. Consider how defensible your decision will be when things go wrong.

A Guide to GraphQL Rate Limiting & Security

Even though the article focuses on GraphQL Rate Limiting, I learned a few things applicable to my team, such as assigning higher costs to mutations and limiting the number of concurrent requests.

People ❤️

Understanding The Trust Equation

This article adds two new facets of trust I haven’t considered: intimacy and self-orientation. Intimacy is “the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something,” and self-orientation is whether a person primarily focuses on themself. I now see how intimacy impacts my perception of others, whether at work or in my personal life.

Building Clocks: the mindset for operational autonomy

I looked back at how I work after reading this article. I feel that I’ve been telling the time (e.g., checking metrics by myself and asking for updates through D.M.s) when I should have put processes in place.

Are M.B.A.s to Blame for Wage Stagnation?

An MIT MBA professor found that “managers with a business degree reduce their employees’ wages.” The study doesn’t answer why, but I suspect that the polarization between managers and workers of background, education, and experience has made it easier for managers to take away from the workers.

Business 💰

The creator economy: a power law

Several interesting points in this analysis of the creator economy:

“Most views and eyeballs accrue to a relatively small set of professional creators.”
“For creators focusing on longer-form video (e.g. Youtube, Twitch), in-platform ads are the key revenue driver, …for those focusing on feed-based platforms (Instagram, Tiktok etc.), the holy grail is direct monetisation of the audience – via affiliate marketing, premium subscriptions, paid content, and merchandise.”

Interesting Finds 💡

How K-Pop Apps Create the Illusion of Private Messaging with Celebrities

As a casual K-Pop fan, I got upset about the K-Pop industry’s blatant tactics to milk dedicated fans, like guilt-tripping fans for ending their subscriptions.