"Every Software Engineer is an Economist" is now out at avishek.net/2023/01/22/eve
Several rough edges, but I had to hit "Publish" at some point :-)
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Ranjan Sakalley
@rnjn
good for nothing. engineer. x- vedantu/gojek/thoughtworks. newsletter 
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(this is the best ever scene on TV, btw, don't @ me)
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you know, all of us, at least once in our life, need the Doctor to take us to the museum and have Bill Nighy tell us who we are and what we've done (no matter how tiny we are and even if we've done nothing)
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#book
The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin β
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the conclusion to the Broken Earth saga. A fitting end; very intense and full of themes so relevant today - global warming, racism, feminism and so much more. Magnificent art. The best series of this century for me. Will read again.
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If you measure a higher number of people reporting to a person as a sign of bigger responsibility, you will always be overstaffed.
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This 10x Engineer trope was perhaps designed to hide the (1/10)x Manager
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Any way i can switch off this smartness and see a dumb catalog with a search?
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These days, choosing what to watch on Netflix feels like taking a psychometric test
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fakers dont ask questions
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3. school curricula today remain as inconsequential to product engineering as they were 2 decades back ( even CS). most of what a person with even 1-2 yrs of experience has learnt about product engineering is on the job.
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3 things from discussions with people on this -
1. college selection happens at least 4 years before you meet a candidate, evidence of smarts is even more stale
2. this has created a new caste system where people from good colleges look down upon others
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When hiring someone to be part of a software engineering team, college and degree (tech, MBA, design) etc has value for a very short period of time, perhaps a year or so.
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I say all this with personal experience, after working in this industry for 2 decades, the best programmers and managers who i worked with, many are somewhat famous CTOs/CEOs now, they donβt have fancy degrees, some donβt even have a degree. This filtering is borderline idiotic.
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This is so easy to fix, just ask your HR team to delete things like βB tech from reputed collegeβ etc, and you will have access to some of the most talented programmers and product managers and designers. Do it today.
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Unfortunately so many dogmatic companies and HR teams today continue to post job descriptions that filter people out for degrees and colleges. Even when they want someone with 16 years of experience (which is another problem). Itβs like nobody is thinking, nobody wants to change.
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In other words, it doesnβt matter where you learnt your programming or differential equations or basics of branding from, what matters is if you know the right tools and when and how to use them.
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Every project you do, every job youβve had and what youβve done there provides more information about you and is a better fitment predictor than a degree you achieved a couple of years or a decade back
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Beyond a couple of years, what matters more is the kind of work you have done and the decisions you have made, and how you make them, sometimes under pressure
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When hiring someone to be part of a software engineering team, college and degree (tech, MBA, design) etc has value for a very short period of time, perhaps a year or so.
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The MP Ranji Trophy cricket team is unbeaten for the last 11 test matches (10 wins, 1 draw), beating Gujarat today. Including the last year's Ranji final. What a privilege to witness what so many from the state dreamt for more than the last 50 years. #cricket
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Everyone postmortems a downtime. Nobody postmortems a night out and a weekend of involuntary work. Why? Two hints -
1. Who has to improve?
2. How much time will it take to fix the problem?
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Nobody owes you critical feedback. So if someone tells you how you can improve, better appreciate that they are invested in you, for whatever reason.
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#book
The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin β
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Really liked reading this book, and will perhaps read it again. A great journey in a boat, a wizard and a prince, dragons and the immortal greed, metaphors that live true today as they were in the 60s. And dragons.
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Perseverance
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usual caveats: this is a coarse razor; people switch from one quad to another depending on what they are doing and where they are (location, time of life), there are more axes that can be plotted, but I find these useful for my understanding, a close third is "Finisher"
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homework: try to plot your past and present leaders and see if it can help answer questions you may have about why some people get promoted while others couldn't, and why some companies run faster than others, where some processes come from.
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Quad 4 - capable but insecure leader, driven by others' opinion, works hard to avoid the taint of failure, never takes decisions without finding people to blame, complaints about team easily, never worried about customer or product or team, easily swayed by confident people
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Quad 3 - quintessential nephew, promoted because of relationships, afraid of embarrassing their benefactors hence never make any decisions without finding people they can blame for failures before even starting, promotes people who cannot shame them, coverer of asses
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Quad 2 - incapable but confident leader, drives by charisma, never goes to details, promotes charismatic people or martyrs, hogs credit due to others, starts many things, drops many balls, hides failures behind past or future glory (never the present), show-er
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Quad 1 - capable, confident leader - detail oriented, focused on outcomes and quality, makes reversible decisions quickly not worrying about failing, learns from failures quickly, asks the best of everyone and promotes capable people, do-er
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The Capability vs Confidence Matrix - useful to predict or retrospect on how different types of "leaders" build and affect team and company cultures.
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#book
Dead Lions by Mick Herron β
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great characters, Jackson Lamb has very quickly becoming a favourite. slightly less of him in this book, hence the rating. decent holiday read, won't make you any smarter.
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For most companies, Speed of execution is inversely proportional to cost of failure.
And the very few who break this rule, find them and join in.
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ΰ€¨ΰ€Ύ ΰ€°ΰ€Ήΰ₯ΰ€ΰ€Ύ ΰ€¬ΰ€Ύΰ€ΰ€Έ ΰ€¨ΰ€Ύ ΰ€¬ΰ€ΰ₯ΰ€ΰ₯ ΰ€¬ΰ€Ύΰ€ΰ€Έΰ₯ΰ€°ΰ₯
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prayers were invented when parents realised that hours of cajoling seems to work sometimes, when sending kids to school every morning.
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14. The Tombs of Atuan (U. le Guin) β
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15. The Obelisk Gate (N.K. Jemisin) β
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16. A Murder of Quality (J. le Carre) β
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17. Slow Horses (M. Herron) β
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10. The Word for World Is Forest (U. le Guin) β
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11. My fried Maigret (G. Simenon) β
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12. A Wizard of Earthsea (U. le Guin) β
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13. The Night at the Crossroads (G. Simenon) β
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6. Trillion Dollar Coach (E Schmidt) β
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(apotheosis more, less value)
7. Artificial Condition (M. Wells) β
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8. Rogue Protocol (M. Wells) β
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9. Meditations (M. Aurelius) β
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(tired of this stuff)
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Books read in 2022
1. The courage to be disliked β
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(boring pretentious crap)
2. All Systems Red (M. Wells) β
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3. A Memory Called Empire (A. Martine) β
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4. A Desolation Called Peace (A. Martine) β
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5. The Fifth Season (N.K. Jemisin) β
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Last book of the year read
Slow Horses by Mick Herron β
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Decent plot. First time in years, ROFL reading a book. a laugh riot every time Jackson Lamb is on. What more, the TV series is amazing too, and Gary Oldman plays Lamb like only he can (not Spall but better).
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This website has too many ads now. How do i block?
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