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fozon A Conversation with Michael Lopp, Pinterest’s Head of Engineering

His book "Managing Humans" is one of the best resources I've found for managing an engineering team.

fozon Management things I learned at Imgur

When 1-1s become the weekly status report, your manager has failed you. Your manager should know what's up because he is around, uses the team's tools, and asks questions.

You should definitely take charge of 1-1s. Maybe try bringing a list of non-status related issues and hand them over. The problems you see, ideas you have, off-topic things. Make it clear to your boss that things aren't working.

fozon Management things I learned at Imgur

As a manager, 1-1s should not just be considered status reports. They are a way for you to build trust and communication with your staff, and to give them a chance to talk about anything: problems, work on personal development, or feedback about you as their manager.

1-1s are probably your most valuable tool. Often, you will discover problems and info you would have otherwise not known - "our lead developer seems depressed and was talking about quitting", "did you hear about that other project that started? It's in direct conflict with our plans...", "there's a conference coming up, we should present at it", and so forth.

An effective manager should, in my opinion, spend 50% or more of his time with his team. Working on the same topics, talking to them, helping to plan, fixing problems, finding resources, and doing 1-1s. It's no surprise that teams with the most problems often have a manager who is just not around enough.

For new managers, I always suggest the following resources as a great starting point:

- "Team Geek": http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018025.do - "Managing Humans": http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi... - Manager Tools podcast: https://www.manager-tools.com

fozon PilOS – A Stand-Alone Operating System

I first read the name as "Pile of %&!#". Definitely consider a rename. It looks like a fascinating project, and the use of Lisp/Prolog is really interesting.

fozon Add bytecode cache to Ruby

Or, as I've seen a few times, you have circular references in your rails asset includes.

fozon Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One (2014)

Maybe a _perceived_ productivity gain, but yes, having more real estate is nicer. And when it's gone, you notice it. Using a single smaller screen is just different behaviour. More cycling apps, window management, and hotkey usage.

fozon Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One (2014)

For me the constant side-to-side, combined with mouse usage was the problem. Trying to re-orient my field of vision (I wear glasses with a strong prescription as well). Looking down or straight ahead has never caused me problems.

I should also point out that on the train, I have a table where I sit (not in my lap, that sucks). I also try to use a stand-up desk more for all-day laptop usage.

fozon Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One (2014)

I used two 24"-27" monitors for several years to do web development, but then I stopped. There was a definitely advantage to having an entire web page visible while I was working on CSS. It was also great to compare full code windows side-by-side (like when refactoring).

The problem for me was neck and shoulder strain. Constantly turning to the left or right always gave me problems. My posture degraded as I naturally moved farther back from the keyboard to take things in.

I dropped the second monitor a few years ago. My physical problems have gone away. I enjoy looking straight ahead now, and as others have mentioned, using a laptop on the train to code no longer feels limiting.

fozon How a drug dealer’s IP was found out by package tracking

> Bates was arrested and taken to the Rockland Police Department, where he was interviewed. He waived his Miranda Rights ...

> ... He also consented to a search of his laptop and iPhone and gave officers the passwords to his e-mail and Skype accounts.

Poor guy. I think he should have talked to a lawyer first before doing all of that.

fozon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

My favorites:

https://labnotes.org/ - fantastic, weekly summary on design, frontend, architecture, business, and some humor.

http://rubyweekly.com/ - a roundup of announcements, new gems, talks and more

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/tag/linkdump/ - monthly list of links related to science, hardware hacking, geekery

http://randsinrepose.com/ - a few posts a month, great advice and thinking about tech and team management.

http://consumeconsume.com/ - funny pictures of irony and shock, which always give me great material for tech presentations

For RSS->email I use IFTTT

fozon Breaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans

There was a great RadioLab episode [1] that followed Denise Herzing during one of her tests. Also in the same episode they discussed the controversial co-habitation communication research done by Margaret Howe in the 1960s. A really fascinating episode for anyone interested in this topic.

1. http://www.radiolab.org/story/hello/

fozon Rare Video Captures Sperm Whale in Deep Sea

I loved this video not so much for the whale, but because of the audio commentary from the scientists. It's so inspiring to listen to a really great team react to something like that. They clearly work brilliantly together, and with humor.

fozon Virginia Police Caught Assaulting Teens, Video Deletion Fails

I also watched the video. If you are legal to drive a car and you are stopped, and refuse to do what the police tells you to do, you can be arrested. There's no law that I know which says police are not allowed to arrest occupants in a car without parental consent.

I think the behaviour of the police was way over the top, but the way the kids acted was not smart, and I wouldn't be surprised if the police actions turn out to be legal. You can't just refuse, it's never going to end well. The only option is to comply. If the police are out of bounds, the challenge has to come later, in court, not on the road.

fozon The daily stand-up is an anti-pattern

Technical teams often have a team lead, who can be the line manager for the developers. This person is part of the team, and can help identify problems and fix them. I think this works better than managers who are not involved in the daily work of developers.

fozon A standard for building APIs in JSON

I used to rave about how RESTful APIs with JSON were so much better than SOAP and other RPC style interfaces, because the responses were so simple and easy to parse.

This holds true for small projects, but as soon as you are working within a large, complex system that involves multiple teams, the benefits of using standards pays off.

I struggled in the past working on projects with companies that had built dozens of loosely-defined APIs, built with the good design intentions in mind, but suffered later from incomplete or inconsistent implementations. The app codebase became much fatter, in an attempt to abstract away those differences into a consistent mental model.

When complexity and communication reaches a certain threshold, it makes sense to invest in standardizing the APIs and responses. I've seen the payoff and am convinced: client libraries and frontend implementations get much simpler, documentation becomes easier, and discussions about how to make changes or design new APIs all but go away.

On the other hand, for small teams and simple services, using a standard like this is probably overkill, unless everyone involved is used to doing APIs this way.

fozon The Terrible Technical Interview

I hope you would promote your contributions when applying for a job, it definitely makes a difference. Looking at a public profile is not everything, you're right.

fozon The Terrible Technical Interview

There are plenty of 30+ developers with families in our organization, and all of them have projects, hacks, or ideas of their own. I would argue that this is part of the culture we have. If someone comes to an interview and can't show any past code at all, that's a worrying sign.

On the other hand, we've also hired people that have not much happening with their public github profile. We still ask to see code they might have worked on (job-related). If they can't show that, we try to have them pair with us on something simple. We have hired people in this situation, but I'm sure we've missed others that may have worked out.

If a young Carmack came through our interview process, I'm pretty sure our team would recognize his talents when asking him to go through someone else's code.

fozon The Terrible Technical Interview

In my organization, we start by looking at what the candidate has actually done. We ask for a github profile, and any side projects they might have worked on. If the CV and body of work look interesting, we go on to a phone screen - general questions, clarifying points on the CV, explaining the job, answering questions.

For the on-site interview, we ask candidates to bring their laptop. We advise them to use a typical, comfortable development environment. We've seen candidates struggle with the latest Ubuntu, installed that morning to impress us. So we don't want that.

During the hands-on interviews, we ask to see a side project, or any code they are mostly responsible for, and familiar with. We ask them to explain code, maybe change something, refactor a test, etc.

What we don't tell candidates is that this part of the interview is also about how they use their tools. It's important to see how good they are with their editor, command-line tools, can they type well, do they get easily distracted, and so on.

One of the most effective interviews we do is for project planning. A problem is explained in detail and the candidate is asked to design a solution. Not in code, but to talk it through in detail, drawing or writing docs/stories if needed. This phase helps show us how they break down a project, ask questions, negotiate features, and look for opportunities to reduce complexity. Bonus points for making a pen-and-paper wireframe or throwaway prototype.

What we refuse to do is the "puzzle" problems, whiteboard code (which makes no sense), or tricky technical questions. We instead want to find people that use best practices, don't re-invent the wheel, tackle problems pragmatically, and are good with their tools.

Over time, this approach seems to work well. However, we also discovered that we have to re-train and test our own interviewers. Without that step, the process can change unexpectedly, become inconsistent, or unfair. Don't just assume your staff is interviewing well - take time to check it out and help them get better.

fozon The new MacBook

Maybe at 2 pounds, the laptop is so light that maybe magsafe is not effective any more.

fozon TuneMyGC: Optimal MRI Ruby 2.1+ Garbage Collection

To clarify my down-voted comment a bit: I think part of the problem is that GC tuning has become kind of a black art. It's hard to find documentation and advice to get good results. Tuning services like MySQL, Apache, Nginx is pretty straightforward; there's documentation, guides, tools and plenty of clear ways to monitor it. In my search for Ruby VM tuning, I've found only very technical guides or blog posts that involve a lot of steps, and are not focused on real-world experience.

That being said, I'd like to try this service, the guys behind it seem to really know what they are doing.

fozon TuneMyGC: Optimal MRI Ruby 2.1+ Garbage Collection

It makes me think that there's something wrong with the Ruby VM when someone has to offer a service like this. The Ruby community should expect great performance out-of-the-box, and the VM should tune itself, automatically.

fozon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2015)

local.ch - web developer - Zürich, Switzerland

We're looking for bright hackers in the EU that have good skills and a strong understanding of product development.

The official phonebook of Switzerland, and one of the most popular platforms for connecting businesses and users. Releasing new features quickly to market: restaurant bookings, turnkey website creation, social integrations, weather, maps, and more.

We have a strong team of agile developers that use Rails, Javascript, node.js, RESTful APIs, and data-driven decisions to pull it all together.

Job Posting: http://local-ch.github.io/frontend-web-developer.html

About our engineering and culture: http://local-ch.github.io/

fozon “This change deletes the C implementations of the Go compiler and assembler”

Github handles it well, but our browsers don't. It would be nice if they loaded large diffs progressively, as you scroll.

fozon Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless

I'd be curious to know what brands or models are considered safe by these agencies.

fozon Google Maps Engine to be discontinued in January 2016, not accepting new users

Wow, my development team had planned to use this service last year for a product launch that (thankfully) got delayed. Contrary to what people might think about the safety of using big companies as providers, the truth is that going live with a new Google service is a real risk.

fozon Gotham 7.5K: A Rare High Altitude Night Flight Above NYC

Street lamps in NYC are mostly the old-school sodium lights still, which give the eerie yellow hue to the smaller side streets. I with that when they switch to LEDs that they keep that would keep that color (but they wont).

fozon Why I’m Giving Up My Passport

I'm an American citizen living and working in Switzerland for the last 8 years. When my daughter turned 5, I took her to our local bank to open a savings account for her. The people at the bank turned pale when they realized I was an American. They explained to me that they would have to do a giant pile of paperwork and due to the trouble, they could not open an account. My wife (who's Swiss) had to go to the bank to do it for me. I've had this experience several times, and only hold one account here. It's not like I'm a tax-dodging rich person, I'm an average programmer earning a modest wage. Meanwhile, I know Americans who live here and have quite a lot of money, and manage to move it around and not pay much tax at all. It makes me really want to give up my passport, too.

fozon NYC Rat Map

Absolutely not true. The NYC Health Department handles calls directly from residents, and long-time city residents know that they need to call if they want the city to do anything to help.

fozon NYC Rat Map

I lived in the Lower East Side for 11 years, on Ludlow Street, from 1995-2006. It was common to see rats on the street at night, and one evening while walking home, a rat ran towards me and jumped. It landed on my leg, scurried up and jumped off.

But nothing quite as frightening as finding three rats one evening zipping around in my kitchen, ripping apart ketchup packets. Or the time my downstairs neighbors had an angry rat trapped in their kitchen (which was disposed of with a hockey stick).

I called the NYC Health Department hotline maybe 5-6 times. At that time, calling the number led to a voice mail menu, and the first options was "if you would like to report a rat infestation, press 1". This is no joke, some buildings were really and truly infested.

The city did nothing but to place poison rat traps on the streets. Only once did someone respond and come to our building, he just suggested that we fill up all known holes in our building with steel wool. The local hardware store had bulk packages of the stuff for sale, a popular item.

Our Chinese landlord solved the problem by calling a neighborhood expert. He brought his gigantic cat, who lived downstairs in the basement for several weeks. After that, we had no more rat problems for a long time.

fozon Quantum OS - OS based on Linux which conforms to Material Design guidelines

Maybe it was taken down due to negativity. But here's an article about it, with screenshots: http://9to5google.com/2014/11/21/quartz-os-linux-material-de...