Key themes in my work

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How to

Practical blog posts I often find myself sharing with teammates

How to: Shared decision making: You won’t always make decisions alone. Use this framework to structure group decision making meetings.
How to: Give better feedback with the SBI-framework: You’ll need to give feedback to peers. Use this framework to structure your feedback and make it more effective.
How to: Speed up your code: Slow code is part of the job. Use this framework to make your code faster.
How to: Figure out what to do: Sometimes you just won’t know what to do next. Use this framework to figure out what to do.
How to: Report a screw-up without losing trust: Inevitably you will screw up. What you say matters. Say the right thing.

How do we build great (machine learning and software) systems?

Summary of a Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout: Practical tips about software design that also apply to system design ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal favourite)
Key concepts for scaling systems: The 4 most important techniques for scaling software systems
What a Slinky Can Teach Us About System Design: System behaviour is latent within the structure of the system
The Blind Men and the Elephant: A system is more than the sum of its parts
Sweat the Small Stuff: Because complexity is incremental, it makes sense to sweat the small stuff
A Beginner’s guide to domain-driven design boiled down to one image: What I think captures the core essence of domain-driven design.
Key design principles for dealing with (human) error: Building systems with humans in mind
Unlocking the Secret to Never-ending Clean Dishes: Advice on where to intervene in systems
System bottlenecks explained with water pipes: Always try to optimize the system bottleneck for maximum impact
Depending on things make them harder to change: A real world example showing how dependencies drive system complexity

How do we write great software?

Summary of a Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout: The most important and practical tips from my favourite book about software design ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal favourite)
Book notes: A philosophy of software design: Bullet note summary of the same book
The Magic Secrets of System Design
A tale of two values: What is more important: something that works or something that we can change?
How to scale up your code: Tips and tricks for scaling
Your argparse is not the interface of your application: Anything (also the CLI) should be able to drive your program
Writing better code using interfaces: Interfaces allow you to decouple from implementation details
Three examples of theory building: Putting theory central instead of code (Naur, 1985)

Testing:

Optimization:

Reducing our stored model state by 80% using bit manipulation magic in Python: Storing integers with reduced precision for fun and profit
How to speed up your code: List of general techniques to speed up (your code)

I make small tutorials on how to do things on AWS sometimes:

How do we learn and get better at learning?

How do we build a great product?

What is a startup?: Notes on a Paul Graham essay
Transform waste: Ideation framework for startup ideas
You can always kill the feature: It is OK to kill your darlings
Why are instagram, facebook, and twitter so damn addicting?: How big tech got us hooked
The Juiciness of Slay The Spire: Juice and game design
Why I Can’t Remember Locking My Door: The Case for Better Design: Feedback is a design problem
All problems are timely: Our problems often have a very specific time-window in which they appear
Good design flows from the 7 stages of action: Good product design flows from the 7 stages of action

How do we build teams that feel safe and do great work?

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What makes a company great? How do we build great companies?

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