I'm not underrepresented anymore. Y'all are over-represented. Not going to use a negative to describe my existence. I'm Bryan, and I'm supposed to be here.
The only reason we are in the current predicament is because a certain population want to preserve a rule that allowed them to have power, while in the minority, during slavery. There is a simple fix for all of this, if our legislature wanted to take action.
My favorite ways to consume books ranked in order:
1) Audible - It sticks better when read to me
2) Physical book - When the content is not suitable for audio or if there is no audio
10) E-Book - It'll do in a pinch, but it's not tactile, so my mind wanders
Is anyone doing weekly content as diverse and consistent as TGIK (thank goodness it’s Kubernetes) in the data processing or ml/ai space? Not looking for surface level stuff.
The conversation about RTO is always around how *I* am better at home, not how *we* build together. Not advocating for anything in particular, but most of the reasons sound self-centered.
If someone presents a problem for you to solve, and they give you two options, there is always a third option: try to reframe the problem to allow for the opportunity for a better solution.
I’ve approached LLMs in the IDE like shovels. A shovel doesn’t dig holes for you. It’s more efficient to use a shovel than your hands. A shovel is even better when you learn to lift with your legs rather than your back. We need to teach people to lift with their legs.
I love that AI makes developers 30-40% faster. This means quicker iteration on hard problems since we rarely do the right thing the first couple times around.
You want to a problem fixed? It needs an explicit assignment by volunteering or delegation. Unowned problems or problems held by a committee don't get fixed.
What do senior engineers do?
1. Help prevent bad things from happening
2. Help things happen faster.
3. Help more good things happen, and make those good things better.
Everything else is details and situation-specific (cribbed from a co-worker)
When building software, you have a huge choice to make: do you focus on adding all the features that your customers ask for or do you focus on making software that is accessible and easy to use? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, but is closer to the latter.
I read a lot more research papers now that I can pass them to a LLM to ask questions and more importantly… generate real code from the algorithms. Papers contain so much good information, but they are often dense and my attention is fleeting.
~87% of the world's adults are literate, which is up from ~67% in 1976. Literacy is transforming. It isn't only about the ability to read and write, but moving to a world where we learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Y’all love the trolley problem, but never ask why people are tied to the track in the first place. You can’t solve problems by only looking at surface level issues.
Coordination makes things slow and bad. You saw it when your company grew. You saw it when your distributed system grew. How do we make orgs and people faster? Remove coordination. Make space for autonomy. Stop sharing so much unneeded information.