For those in the United States, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. The world is suffering, but I found much to be grateful for: my family is healthy, we could afford to buy a house, I have enough experience to feel confident about navigating the tech downturn, and I had friends to spend Thanksgiving together. What were you thankful for?
Software Engineering ⚙️
Why Twitter had 7500 Employees, and Startups Crush Big Companies.
The maintenance work and product complexity make it difficult to move fast with an established product. I also believe the communication cost within and between teams lowers individual productivity.
Deno 1.28: Featuring 1.3 Million New Modules
Deno announced in September that it would enable all npm to interoperate with Deno within three months. And they did it. I am amazed that they hit this self-imposed deadline.
How Precision Time Protocol is being deployed at Meta
The detailed technical discussion went over my head. But I learned that a synchronized time could help solve data consistency challenges and that you need custom hardware to get the nano-second level precision.
Bug Blog: eSports Trade Issue
I saw many League of Legends matches disrupted by this issue, so I found this article extra interesting. It’s always cool to see an approach that worked initially breaks down as the scale changes.
People ❤️
The Principal Engineer’s Handbook
As I “moved up” in my career, it became harder to tell my capacity. This handbook defines an engagement model (Owner > Stakeholder > Supporter > Friend) and recommends owning no more than two initiatives. It’s a good rule of thumb to follow.
Business 💰
Disney mired in chaos as Bob Iger takes reins back from ‘novice’ CEO Chapek
I wasn’t aware of all the controversies around Disney parks. But I still wonder what choice an executive has under pressure to grow year after year but to milk more money from its most loyal customers. Regardless, it would suck to be pushed out of your job by the one who appointed you.
All Deviations Are Opted Out of AI Datasets
Generative AI models have used real humans’ work without permission. To help protect those humans’ copyrights, DeviantArt created new HTML directives (“noai” and “noimageai”) to signal that a given page or image is not for machine consumption, just like the “noindex” directive. The tricky part is that the training models need to respect those tags.
Interesting Finds 💡
I found the artwork in the thread pretty amusing. Do take a look!
youngk.im 