Lucille Hua

Observation: 9/10 SWE's quit at “reading the docs”. Cut through the BS with this easy trick: Take action and build. Writing code is 100x easier than the docs make it sound. “Reading the docs” gave me crazy imposter syndrome: -Git -WPF -Kafka -OAuth -Angular -GraphQL -RabbitMQ -Kubernetes In ALL cases, I conquered my fears by building. Except for WPF. I gave up on that. And Kafka, that's for another day. Forcing yourself to build/code/deploy melts analysis paralysis. Then you'll say "oh that was pretty easy". Trust me, we aren't building rockets. Practice AND Study build true mastery.

22

1 Comment

Interesting conversation for those just beginning their careers, in engineering or beyond. Thanks for sharing Andy Greenwell!

3

1 Comment

“There’s no jobs for Jr Software Engineers out there!” NOT TRUE…But there are some major issues in today’s hiring market. 1. MISALIGNED FOUNDATIONAL EXPERIENCE: The majority of aspiring SEs are either: Recent CS grads (less hands-on exp); OR, Bootcamp grads (less theory). Meanwhile...Most enterprise companies who hire a ton of SEs are looking for CS grads that ALSO have hands-on experience already. 2. MISALIGNED TECH STACKS: The majority of aspiring SEs are only experienced in NodeJS and/or Python. Meanwhile…Most of the companies who hire a ton of SEs are using Java or C# backends. Companies using NodeJS or Python backends are often smaller and can't hire as many SEs. That’s why our Enterprise Accelerator is making a difference. We identify diverse CS grads who are hungry, and we teach them the hands-on Java skills that companies are using in the real world over 3 months. Best of both worlds 😎 If you're interested in seeing some of this kind of talent--send me a DM and we'll get you connected. Want to join our next Enterprise Accelerator cohort? Stay tuned for the next webinar in early August.

77

7 Comments

Creating a strong GitHub profile with consistent contributions can catch potential employers' eye. However, some may not be aware that you can commit to a GitHub repository with past dates and improve your commit history by simply writing dummy things in a private text file that nobody sees.

20

Question for engineering leaders (managers, directors, VP's, etc): I'm curious about the current landscape of developer productivity analysis + management tools - things like LinearB and Jellyfish. Which tool, if any, are you using? Any opinions/pros/cons on the tool you're using (or the entire domain overall)?

12

Well said. The alarmism around AI replacing software engineers often overlooks the complexity of our role. While AI tools like Devin are impressive, they are assistants, not replacements. 𝟏. 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝟐. 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞, 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬-𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝟑. 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬. 𝟒. 𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥, 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧-𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. AI will definitely reshape our workflows, but it won't replace the need for skilled engineers. Instead, it may allow us to focus more on high-level problem-solving and innovation. Arvind Telharkar 👏

7

1 Comment

Reads of the week Engineering — Autotuner: How to Speed Up Your Rails App https://lnkd.in/gdeMVPiq Redis Licensing Changes and You: https://lnkd.in/gUkYWKhJ authenticate_by: Prevent timing-based enumeration of users: https://lnkd.in/gKgf4SRx Kueue is a cloud-native job queueing system for batch, HPC, AI/ML, and similar applications in a Kubernetes cluster: https://kueue.sigs.k8s.io/ NodeJS 22: Require() Support & WebSockets: https://lnkd.in/gw-8PPEJ Some Volumes Were Slow And We Figured Out Why: https://lnkd.in/gJ5GTxfi Repos — Versatile Instant Voice Cloing: https://lnkd.in/ghHq5fVC AI — Why AI is failing at giving good advice: https://lnkd.in/gEcTRT4P Snowflake releases a flagship generative AI model of its own: https://lnkd.in/g68fGa7e Developing rapidly with Generative AI: https://lnkd.in/ggGt-Uj6 Nice Reads — IBM to Acquire HashiCorp, Inc. Creating a Comprehensive End-to-End Hybrid Cloud Platform: https://lnkd.in/gkr6eTRW Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant’s operations: https://lnkd.in/gasqzWuu

6

Want to know more about How Figma's Databases Team Lived to Tell the Scale? Still skeptical of why we built horizontal sharding on RDS instead of <insert-cooler-database-technology>? Wondering if you should copy what we did? Check out out my new podcast with Software Engineering Daily as we dive deep on spicy stories that didn't make the blog post from surviving my first Figma Config conference to debating which database technology comes out on top. https://lnkd.in/gFfh7C-A

150

9 Comments

We like writing engineering content Our engineers are at the center of what we build and our accountants experience. We're defining what AI-native looks like for accounting. We like writing engineering content because we want engineers who join us to know how we think about problems. This week, our very own Matthew Duong wrote a piece on Single Sign-On (SSO), breaking down the essentials and actionable tips (link in the comments) For founders, improving the login process and making it easier to access your platform means a simpler experience. For enterprises, it means reducing the number of passwords users need to remember, reducing the risk of security breaches. Shout out to Amer Taleb who joined us recently and took our content game to a new level. We have a lot more coming soon: new product features, employee spotlights, and our view of the AI Accounting space. Happy Friday from everyone at Truewind!

35

2 Comments

Excellent post. I always have some experienced like this. Focus on your own learning, whatever things coming to you. If you can embrace all the challenges properly you will always be relevant. I believe actual engineers are always focus on problem solvings nothing else. Because there will be lots of technology will be coming to replace you but actual engineering of solving engineering problems will always be relevant.😊

8

1 Comment

I've been working on scaling Reddit's re-ranking of queries in Solr using ML with the Learning to Rank plugin and we ran into some issues running it that I talk about in a new blog post "Bringing Learning to Rank to Reddit Search - Operating with Filter Queries"

30

1 Comment

I listened to an interesting podcast this morning about the emerging job title of "AI Engineer". This podcast resonated with me and I thought I should summarize some of my thoughts on the topic here. The Evolution of Tech Roles: From Webmaster to AI Engineer Job titles are constantly evolving. This evolution brings an important realization: as roles specialize, the perceived entry barriers become lower. The 90s Webmaster: In the early days of the Internet, there was one person who handled everything web-related and had the title "Webmaster". This magical person was expected to build, maintain, market, and optimize the company website. This role has since fragmented into specialized positions like front-end developer, back-end developer, UX designer, and various digital marketing specializations. The 2010s Data Scientist: In the early 2010s, a data scientist was described as someone who would do data analysis, realize a business opportunity, build a machine learning (ML) prototype, communicate the opportunity to leadership, then productionize their system and manage the new ML system. This role has now split into various positions such as data analyst, data scientist (focused more on statistics, visualization, and business communication), data engineer, machine learning (ML) engineer, and ML researcher. An ML researcher, Boris Meinardus, made a great video on these roles for those who want a more detailed take: https://lnkd.in/eGCRf5MW. The 2020s AI/ML Engineer: We're now witnessing a separation between the ML engineer, who builds and maintains more traditional ML systems requiring a deep understanding of mathematics, statistics, and ML algorithms, and the AI (LLM) engineer, who focuses on LLM-powered application development. To become an AI (LLM) engineer, you need to learn to use LLMs and their associated tools and paradigms: retrieval augmented generation (RAG), LLM tool chains (like LangChain), and associated technologies like vector databases. Consider the database analogy: Most developers use databases without fully understanding their inner workings or ever implementing B-trees. There are database experts, but for most developers, databases are useful black boxes. Similarly, to start in AI engineering, you don't need to unravel every layer of ML complexity. It's great if you have that knowledge, but it's not a prerequisite for building useful LLM applications. This shift opens doors for more developers to enter the AI field. Obviously if you want to develop the core LLMs and take an ML engineer job on a team in a company that builds foundational models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, etc.) then you do need the fine grained, detailed understanding of the underlying math and algorithmic inner workings. This would be the same if you wanted to do cutting edge database R&D. There is also another interesting post on this topic here: https://lnkd.in/eyPyaQ9S Thanks to: James Brady Adam Wiggins

102

6 Comments

System design isn't a cut-and-paste job. It's 90% about understanding the problem at hand. Here's how to scale smart: If you know you have a high read ratio vs. a low write ratio. • Separate those services so they can scale differently. For instance, in an e-commerce application, you might have a service for handling search queries (reads) and a separate service for updating product details (writes). • Improve performance at the storage level. You can set up 1 write DB, and 3 read replicas in a master-slave replication setup. The master handles all write operations, and the replicas handle read operations. • Add a cache layer. You can cache product details or repeated queries. This will reduce the load on the database by serving frequently accessed data from memory. Getting better business knowledge is the only way to have the right design. #systemdesign #softwaredeveloper

5

Pro Tip: Start your day with a really small ticket (~15 min of work). Something tiny like a refactor. It's a great way to "warm up" and get into the zone for bigger tasks. #softwareengineering

55

21 Comments

Today I am going to do something really unique (based on Hunter Walk's idea), I am putting Async up for sale publicly 🎙️ What's Async again? A Voice Memos platform that powers fully asynchronous work conversations Sometimes, things don't work out, and we move on. But we rarely read those stories here, and I am at a stage in my career where I want to be true to myself because I think I've done everything I could to make it work, and there's nothing to be ashamed of. So why not open-source an M&A process? 🎢 WHY I will not rewrite the story, but in a young startup, only one thing matters: People. It basically took us 18 months to launch the first V1 of Async vs the 6 months I had envisioned. We had raised for 24 months of runway, meaning we only had 6 months left after our (great) public beta launch to find Product Market Fit. Not enough. 🥗 WHAT ARE WE SELLING Send an async voice memo to anyone through a simple link anywhere (Gmail, Slack, Notion, etc.) or drop it on their personal URL (mine is async.com/ilan). The memo will be transcribed and summarized and have time stamp reactions, files, and more. > Incredible suite of apps for the Web, Mac, iOS, and Chrome (reply to your Gmail emails with voice notes). Our tech stack includes React, Node.js, Stripe, and Swift. > Brand and domains: we own the trademark and domain for Async and async.com. We also own asynchronous.com and audioletter.com. 👤 ICP > Coaches, Creators, and Consultants: Offering async consultations with clients, audiences, and fans. > Sales People: Send updates to your leads, prospects, and clients without requesting a call. > CEOs / C-Level: Update your team on objectives, progress, wins, async. > Investors: Perform due diligence, deal updates, and ref calls async. 🧠 IDEAL BUYERS Players with distribution power or considering us as an add-on to their offering. > Tools for Creators, Coaches, and Consultants: offer asynchronous consultations > Note Takers: add collaborative audio > Calendar, Project Management, and Mail apps: add asynchronous conversations to emails, tasks, and projects, replace meetings > Audio tech: add collaborative audio notes > Email Newsletters: Add Audioletters to your offering. 🫶 THE THANKS 🙌 Our users: You've kept us going all this time (and still are!), and we hope to keep Async alive for as long as possible ❤️ Dan: best co-founder I could dream of. Here for every battle, an execution machine, and simply an amazing friend. Forever in my heart. ❤️ Jeremy & Lucas: I've worked with many designers and engineers in my career. You're simply the best. You've won my heart and trust; thank you. 💵 To our investors: Thanks for bearing with us and believing in our vision and us. I will fight to make you proud until the very last breath. That's it, you know everything. If this rings a bell to you or one of your connections (tag them), please slide in my DMs and let's chat ❤️

319

85 Comments

I have been thinking about "Why, after 6 years, I'm over GraphQL" (https://lnkd.in/g_XDCvbQ). I faced many of the same issues with my GraphQL implementations but came to a different conclusion that led to Exograph (https://exograph.dev/). ❗ Problem: GraphQL authorization is a nightmare to implement. ✅ Solution: A declarative way to define entity or field-level authorization rules. In Exograph, you define authorization rules alongside your data definitions. This not only makes it easy to audit authz rules, but lets you lean on the engine to enforce them. ❗ Problem: GraphQL queries can ask for multiple resources in a single query, overwhelming the backend. ✅ Solution: Trusted documents, query depth limiting, and rate limiting. Exograph supports trusted documents/persisted queries and other mechanisms to control the load on your backend. ❗ Problem: GraphQL queries can overwhelm the parser. ✅ Solution: The same solution as above. You can control the load on your parser by using trusted documents and limiting query depth. ❗ Problem: GraphQL queries can lead to the N+1 problem. ✅ Solution: Defer data fetching to a query planner. The classic and dreaded N+1! Exograph uses a query planner to ensure that you never run into this. ❗ Problem: Balancing authorization and the N+1 problem can be tricky. ✅ Solution: Make authorization rules a part of the query planning process. By making authorization rules a part of the query planning process, Exograph ensures that you never fetch data the user is not authorized to see. ❗ Problem: GraphQL makes it quite hard to keep code modular. ✅ Solution: Reduce the amount of code by leaning on a declarative approach. More code, more problems! In Exograph, you write only a few hundred lines of code to define even complex data models. ❗ Problem: GraphQL makes balancing authorization, performance, and modularity tricky. ✅ Solution: Simplify implementing GraphQL through a declarative way to define data models and authorization rules. This is the core of Exograph: declarative data models and authorization rules. Read the full blog post at https://lnkd.in/gBwpXMHF

11

3 Comments

I started writing regularly about AI. If you're an innovators or product developer eager to apply the latest in AI, whether you're in a startup or a big company, consider checking https://lnkd.in/gGdW8PYe I won't teach you ML, but I share real-world insights from launching - and sometimes failing at - numerous ML features on a large scale.

55

2 Comments

Looking to set yourself apart from the status quo as a software engineer? Here are five habits I would practice in my first year as a software engineer to set myself up for success, without burning out: - Regular pair programming sessions or one-on-ones with someone who isn't my team lead or manager. - Conversations with external stakeholders, like sales, business development, etc. - Ask any question that comes to mind without a care of sounding dumb. - Spend more of my effort and time wrapping up the last 20% of a project. - Keep that beginner mindset, regardless of how well I know a topic. There's always multiple viewpoints. Take the initiative to start and watch your career take off. Anything else you'd add?

2

2 Comments