Eugene Polonsky

While there are certainly individual variations in skill and experience when discussing modern software development the story is much more nuanced than pure individual effort.  * software development is a team sport -- individual performance is heavily impacted by the system in which they are asked to operate in.  * we pair skill and experience to this model of understanding performance by expecting people to be able to influence and adapt in direct proportion to their seniority, aka the more senior you are the more responsible you are for the outcomes of your work, the less senior you are the more your manager and management chain are responsible.  * humans want to succeed, we're social animals who derive purpose from demonstrating skill, and working collectively. All of which is to say there is no way you have over 1000 people underperforming at your company without senior leadership deeply implicated in.  If nearly 10% of your company is failing, versus just having the market move against you, you need to fire the CEO.

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I once asked a lead engineer on Angular: Which is better: Angular or React? His response: "Both require good engineering to be effective." So, my developer friends, consider this a reminder that "frameworks" like Diátaxis are fine, but they still require good engineering--such as UX, information architecture, style, maintenance processes, and so on--to create great documentation experiences for your customers. Alas, the framework alone isn't enough.

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"Over 25% of all new code at Google is now generated by AI", according to CEO Sundar Pichai in today's earnings call. But is this shift aimed at speeding up the development of complex software, or simply cutting engineering costs? One potential indicator will be if Google reduces headcount by 25% while boosting revenue per employee. Here are some details behind this productivity metric in Google's own research page . Majority of this '25% code' is in the area of code completion, not in code creation. "LLM-based inline code completion is the most popular application of AI applied to software development..." Watch the video to understand further on this metric.

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What does it feel like to be an engineering manager at Amazon: Since the RTO announcement it became popular to write shit about Amazon, but it's still one of the best companies around the world. A few weeks ago, Gilad Naor shared with the 'Leading Developers' readers 3 lessons from his time as an engineering manager at Amazon. Here is the first one, read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dHBxv2Ha 𝟭. 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺𝘀 My first meeting at Amazon was baffling. I entered a room with about a dozen Software Development Managers (SDMs) and Product Managers (PMs). Everyone sat in silence and looked at their laptops or the printed papers they had before them. It was my second day at Amazon, and I picked up one of the extra sheets and started reading. After those first ten awkward minutes, everyone finished reading and the meeting began. Why do Amazon meetings always start this way? This is a specific example of how Amazon approaches problem-solving. It is the "Good Intentions Don't Matter" approach. In a famous internal video, Jeff Bezos talks about why good intentions are irrelevant. When things don't work, it does not matter what people wanted. All that matters is fixing the problems with mechanisms. For example, many busy managers come to meetings without first reading the prep material. They all intended to read the 6-Pager before the meeting. They just got sidetracked by the latest emergency. Scolding the managers won't solve the problem. A mechanism will. This is why all Amazon meetings start with a study period. The remaining meeting time is then spent on high-quality decision-making. Meta solves the same problem by creating cultural norms. I can't count the number of times that I heard a senior leader cut off the presenter: "Stop, assume that everyone here already read the slides. Let's get to the point." This is a culture-first approach. I have seen this work well in some teams, and not work at all in other teams. At Amazon, the solution is part of the company's "operating system". ------------------------- Anton here - by now everyone is familiar with the 6-pager concept, but that "operating system" thinking can be used almost anywhere. Think about something annoying that your developers do, and how can you solve it. For example, I remember being annoyed that people don’t update the Jira tickets. Finally, after requesting multiple times, now we just take 20 seconds from the standup to update them.

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At the risk of starting a flame war: what's the benefit of using Gradle over Maven? Almost every Gradle project I've downloaded fails to start without tinkering, whereas Maven projects generally just work. Gradle also doesn't seem to support the latest Java. What am I missing?

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Exciting news from the entertainment world!    Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. Entertainment, a leading name in Bollywood content, has just announced a groundbreaking partnership with GMetri, an AI-powered immersive learning and game development company.    This collaboration marks a significant expansion of ShemarooVerse, Shemaroo’s innovative metaverse platform, into the realm of immersive AI gaming.   These two companies are teaming up to introduce IP-based games that leverage the power of artificial intelligence, bringing popular Bollywood films into the metaverse.    This venture allows fans to dive into immersive gaming experiences featuring iconic movies such as "Jab We Met," "Golmaal," "Disco Dancer," and "Amar Akbar Anthony," among others.    As the adoption of the metaverse continues to grow, more films are expected to join this exciting gaming realm.   By integrating AI and immersive technologies, Shemaroo and GMetri are setting a new standard for entertainment experiences in India.   Imagine stepping into the shoes of your favorite Bollywood characters, exploring their worlds, and being a part of the story – that’s the future ShemarooVerse is building.    Arghya Chakravarty, COO of Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd, expressed his excitement, saying, “I think our collaboration with GMetri represents an advancement in transforming audience interaction with our movies, and we are looking forward to developing innovations in the immersive entertainment and gaming space in India.”   As metaverse technology continues to evolve, the potential for immersive, AI-driven entertainment is limitless.    Shemaroo and GMetri are at the forefront of this revolution, creating a vibrant and engaging space for Bollywood fans worldwide.    This initiative not only enhances the viewer experience but also opens up new avenues for storytelling and interaction.   Thoughts? #meta #metaverse #ai #bolywood

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This is an excellent blog comparing the streaming ingest of row-level operation comparison among the LakeHouse formats. https://lnkd.in/dsCN66_5

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I’m looking for some brutal honesty. Maybe a bit of creativity as well. Too many people have told me what I want to hear, not what I need to hear. It’s time for me to be courageous and ask the internet what it thinks about some of the ideas I have. At Sutro, we have built an AI-powered platform that builds apps in minutes, from a single text prompt. We want to change our tagline to something that captures the speed, flexibility, and ease of building apps and tools on Sutro’s platform. Which tagline do you think best captures the essence of what we’ve built? Cast your reactions for which one you like best or comment below if you have any other ideas! - Build the software your team needs in minutes. (Like 👍) - The limitless tool for teams with limited resources. (Celebrate 👏) - Build enterprise apps in minutes. It’s easy with Sutro. (Insightful 💡) - Build custom apps and tools your team needs in minutes. (Love ❤️)

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Pub/Sub and queue look the same when you hear it for the first time.😱 Here is a simple explanation of what they are and the differences between them. In the illustration depicted below, 🔴 Messaging Queue: People come to the mall to shop. Before they check out, they must wait in the queue to complete the payment. Here, the mall is like a producer, producing people ( who have shopped and are ready to complete payment) who are sent to the queue to complete the payment. One by one, each person completes payment at the checkout counter. The checkout counter is like a consumer. As the queue grows ( more people join the line), more than one checkout ( one consumer ) is needed, and we will need to add more checkout counters ( more consumers). We have Producers, Queues, and Consumers. 🔴 Pub / Sub - Extending on the above example, after the checkout is completed, this customer data might be required by various services. For instance, in the image below, we have a real-time service that calculates how many people have completed the checkout. Hence, the checkout service has subscribed to receive this data. Likewise, marketing and inventory services might subscribe to receive this data. We have Producers, Topics, and Subscribers. 𝗣𝘂𝗯/𝘀𝘂𝗯:⏹️ The subscribers don’t have to reveal anything to the publishers. Messages are in the topic even after multiple subscribers consume it. Messages are sent to multiple subscribers simultaneously and asynchronously Message ordering and sending to various consumers is not guaranteed Producers and consumers have loose coupling 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘂𝗲: ⏹️ Queues need to reveal who they are sending messages to Producers would put the messages in the queue, storing them until one of the consumers consumes them Producers put the messages in the queue, typically sent using some ordering and sequentially to a single receiver Message ordering and sending to consumers is guaranteed Producers and consumers have some sort of relationship #engineering #systemdesign #interview #productdevelopment #eventdrivenarchitecture

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Pub/Sub and queue look the same when you hear it for the first time.😱 Here is a simple explanation of what they are and the differences between them. In the illustration depicted below, 🔴 Messaging Queue: People come to the mall to shop. Before they check out, they must wait in the queue to complete the payment. Here, the mall is like a producer, producing people ( who have shopped and are ready to complete payment) who are sent to the queue to complete the payment. One by one, each person completes payment at the checkout counter. The checkout counter is like a consumer. As the queue grows ( more people join the line), more than one checkout ( one consumer ) is needed, and we will need to add more checkout counters ( more consumers). We have Producers, Queues, and Consumers. 🔴 Pub / Sub - Extending on the above example, after the checkout is completed, this customer data might be required by various services. For instance, in the image below, we have a real-time service that calculates how many people have completed the checkout. Hence, the checkout service has subscribed to receive this data. Likewise, marketing and inventory services might subscribe to receive this data. We have Producers, Topics, and Subscribers. 𝗣𝘂𝗯/𝘀𝘂𝗯:⏹️ The subscribers don’t have to reveal anything to the publishers. Messages are in the topic even after multiple subscribers consume it. Messages are sent to multiple subscribers simultaneously and asynchronously Message ordering and sending to various consumers is not guaranteed Producers and consumers have loose coupling 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘂𝗲: ⏹️ Queues need to reveal who they are sending messages to Producers would put the messages in the queue, storing them until one of the consumers consumes them Producers put the messages in the queue, typically sent using some ordering and sequentially to a single receiver Message ordering and sending to consumers is guaranteed Producers and consumers have some sort of relationship #engineering #systemdesign #interview #productdevelopment #eventdrivenarchitecture

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Stop playing Tetris with your teams and projects. Investing heavily in meticulous planning to try and achieve the fantasy outcome of multiple teams, schedules, budgets, people, and projects aligning perfectly to meet your overly ambitious and tightly packed agenda is doomed to fail. The odds of that succeeding are slim-to-none yet, it's what we default to when there's so much we want to do. Do more by doing less! 1) Reduce WIP: Work on less things in parallel, not more. 2) Prioritize: Work on only the thing(s) that will deliver the most value the soonest. Will this guarantee success? No. But, the odds of success are orders of magnitude higher than trying to plan for a perfect game of Tetris. John Cutler's latest installment of The Beautiful Mess, "The Failure Threshold" explains this beautifully. How many of you have been in the following situation (pulled from his post): "If George and Ina each allocate 50% time to Project Thunder, and then Lenny does 10% time combined with moving the two open reqs to Team Apollo and hiring those roles in the next two months, we should—if we sort of combine Project Thunder and Project Inferno—be able to finish Thunder, Inferno, and chip away at Homestead so that when The Hex Pistols are done with the event streaming re-architecture and Project Kafka-esque, assuming Xenia approves the design document, we should be able to hit the deadline for Project Sycamore as promised in the 2023 annual plan."

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My team and I built an AI agent that helps us debug our production issues. And now we're sharing some code for you to build your own 👩‍💻 I’ve talked to quite a few engineering teams that want to launch an agent for engineering teams to investigate and fix production issues faster. Because there’s no great reference architecture, template, or guide, it took me months of trial and error to get to a point I’m happy with. Now, my colleague Eric Abruzzese has written down several pro tips and steps on how to build an AI agent so you can learn from (and avoid) our mistakes. So what took us months could take you a few hours to do (if not less). In our 3-part series, we cover: 1. How to set up an application in Chainlit 2. How to connect your application to an LLM (in this case, gpt-4o) 3. How to make your Agent faster and add real-time “typing” (similar to ChatGPT) 4. How to give your Agent a personality and specialization 5. How to give your Agent the ability to search a collection of files 6. How to integrate your Agent with external tools (in this case, PagerDuty) Check out part 1 of the guide on our site (link in comments), and keep an eye out for part 2 coming soon (if you want a sneak peek, drop a comment and I'll send you the private Notion page 🕵️).

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Amazon-to-Google-to-Amazon #a2g2a thought of the day: interesting to see how RTO (Return-to-Office) outcomes are entirely different for the two companies. In my post today, I don't really want to go down the path of debating whether RTO is "good" or "bad". There's very emotional and valid opinions on both sides, and it affects people's personal lives in real ways. Please be respectful. Whether you agree with the policy or not, for it to actually work it does need *critical mass*. Both companies have essentially the same RTO policy (3 days/week expectation), but there's significant differences is in how the message was delivered and enforced - and the outcome. Google’s 3-days-per-week was mostly a “pretty-please, would-you, if-you-don't-mind” with no actual enforcement (but some vague threats). So most people ignored it. They still do. Leadership got frustrated and the message got less polite over time, but nothing really changed. Even as of 3 weeks ago, when I was still a Google employee, the buildings were fairly empty. That made being physically in the office significantly less useful, other than enjoying the perks of free food and massages by myself (and occasionally with 1 or 2 coworkers). Amazon’s 3-days-per-week came with actual enforcement. Amazon used badge reader data to track when people were actually coming to the office, with consequences. It does feel a bit draconian, but you can’t argue with the effectiveness of saying “we have a policy that we believe is business-critical and we’ll enforce it or else.” I appreciate that when I come to the office, I can find my coworkers there and we can have f2f meetings. There’s critical mass for RTO to actually be effective. Amazon has picked a lane. Personally, I have not figured out how to truly be productive and happy working remotely in the last 4 years. I respect and appreciate the fact that some people have, but I haven’t. I do like the option to stay home a day or two, skipping my long commute, working from a lounge chair in my backyard on a sunny day. But there’s nothing like the energy in the room of a good group meeting, or the chemistry of a face-to-face 1:1, or the enthusiasm of two engineers standing in front of a physical whiteboard drawing boxes and arrows with markers brainstorming about the future. Or the bonding of sharing a meal or a walk between buildings with a coworker. I feel energized when I’m physically in the office. It literally charges my batteries. I’ve been coming to the office 4x/week and loving it. 

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Anthropic's latest Claude AI model is taking human-AI interaction to a whole new level! 🖥️🤖 The new Claude 3.5 Sonnet can now use computers just like a human would - by looking at the screen, moving the cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text. This is a major leap forward in AI capabilities. Key features: Operates based on screenshots, emulating human computer use Can perform complex multi-step tasks across different applications Self-corrects and retries when encountering obstacles2 Accessible via API for developers to build with Why it's game-changing: This opens up incredible possibilities for AI assistance in data entry, form filling, software testing, and automating repetitive computer tasks13. Imagine having an AI assistant that can seamlessly work alongside you, handling tedious computer work while you focus on higher-level tasks. While still in beta, this technology demonstrates how AI is rapidly advancing toward more human-like interaction with digital interfaces. As it develops further, it could revolutionize how we work with computers and boost productivity across industries. The future of human-AI collaboration just got a lot more exciting! What do you think about this new capability? #AIInnovation #FutureOfWork Here is a video about it: https://lnkd.in/gh8aNYEu

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The fast way to impress your boss, or get fired fast: use these words in your emails or meetings :-) : h/t T.K. Rengarajan https://lnkd.in/gJWMSG6Z

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🌶🌶🌶 Hot take… Old problem: if we put more devs on the project, we can deliver it sooner. Same thinking, new manifestation: we can hire more overseas devs for less total money to produce the same result as our US staff. Flaw in that thinking: product development is not an assembly line. Devs are not “interchangeable”. Software is as much an art as it is science. It’s a team sport. The people on your team matters. #tech #staffing #management #hiring #jobs #layoffs #software #startup #teamleadership

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Proud to share the latest blog post from my stunning team at Netflix! 🎉 Varun Khaitan, Hugo Marques, Esmir Mesic Launching over a thousand titles globally each month is no small feat. But how do we ensure each story reaches the right audience? Beyond system metrics like error rates or CPU utilization, we focus on what truly matters: metrics tied to a title's success. Checkout how we’re building observability systems to take full accountability for every title and delight our members worldwide. https://lnkd.in/gCkgdJ3G #NetflixTech #Innovation #Engineering

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