Lauren Tan

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

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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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The reality of system design no one will tell you is: Companies and interviewers exist on a spectrum somewhere between opinionated and dogmatic: about tech choices, products, and you. Telling a system design interviewer from Amazon that you want to use SQL, is akin to telling a hiring manager at Apple you prefer Android. Who knew? It's obvious once it's spelled out, but only because we sometimes assume these big brand-name tech companies (along with their interviewers and interview processes) are faultless. This was an eye-opening clip, Victor Moreno and Kevin Landucci! But I like the full interview even more (link in the description) 🛎 Subscribe to ApplyPass for more content like this

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My bets where AI won't replace humans: 1) Human connection: Like the one that many of us just had at Config. 2) Shared human experience: When you look at another person's eye and you know you've been through a similar joyful and painful journey. 3) Real stories behind art and culture: I listen to music, and I like paintings not just because they feel good, but because there's a real human story behind it that speaks back to 2. 4) Ingenious net new creative fields: AI can use past things to create something new by mixing them, but it's mostly always can't really create something completely new and unseen. 5) What's your bet?

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~40% of Frec’s customers are engineers working in tech, many of whom expect frequent and large capital gains. They also prefer to self-manage their money, which makes Frec an ideal platform. Meet Evan: an engineering leader who upgraded from investing in ETFs to direct indexing. Direct indexing appealed to Evan because it offers comparable returns to his ETFs while saving him money on advisory and ETF fees. “ETFs are true and tested, and giving folks a different way of investing in the market while saving more money is really appealing.” He’s used many other robo-advisors and other fintech tools, but “Frec seems to maximize tax loss harvesting opportunities better than any other product that I’ve used.” He also likes Frec's transparent fee structure.  “I feel like with a lot of other companies, that’s muddled in with the cost of investments,” he told us, “and you don’t really know how much you’re paying or how much you’re not saving as a result. I think Frec does a really good job of laying all of that out and giving you a true understanding of the cost of these investment products.” Read more about his Frec journey here ⬇

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A terrific intro into how AI code generation is reshaping the UI design process. Food for thought for back end engineers, you might be able to boldly go into trying hands-on front end design, the tools are making it a lot easier! Not clear how sophisticated these AI-based UIs can get, but it's definitely something to get familiar with.

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What gets repeatedly lost in this conversation is the difference between platform companies and product companies. Platform companies like OpenAI/Microsoft/Google/Anthropic, will capture extraordinary value from GenAI because the cost to play is so high (creating barriers to entry) and the use cases are varied. It’s no different than the desktop revolution, the mobile revolution, and the cloud revolution. Yes, for those small number of players the potential value creation is nearly limitless But for the rest of the companies in the world, who build products that serve a relatively targeted set of users and problems, any reasonable person would say “where’s the beef?” How has GenAI actually changed a manufacturing business or a travel company? If you’re being honest, it hasn’t. Maybe it will, but I haven’t seen evidence yet. The irony of course is that the original poster here left a platform company (Microsoft) for a product company (Qualtrics).

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"Your main job is to make your product win." I think this should apply to any product that your company makes. I also like what he says following this statement about what is NOT your main job. I will summarize here: "Your main job is not to make your manager happy, it is not to make execs happy." Also, note, this main job doesn't only apply to PMs, but also to senior Engineering Managers, Tech Leads, and Designers. #makeyourproductwin #leadership

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A few weeks after Coinbase’s Smart Wallet API became available on testnet, I continue to get more excited about what it may mean for the Web3 space — and us UX designers in it. All of us in the #DeFi or larger #Web3 field would be lying if we said accessibility wasn’t still a huge issue. Yet, the barrier to entry continues to rise. Smart Wallet takes a different approach that simplifies how we interact with decentralized apps and manage digital assets. By eliminating the need for extensions or passphrases and integrating features like passkeys, it removes the hours of self-taught onboarding required in legacy wallet interactions, allowing users to interact directly on the chain immediately. This solution combines the ease of use found in centralized environments like Robinhood or Coinbase’s exchange with the benefits of decentralization. MetaMask is another example of bridging the current gap between users and the decentralized web, with a user-friendly interface at the forefront. My hope is that we keep going in this direction. Coinbase's Smart Wallet is an impressive release for its passkey and security features — but it also widens the funnel of possible users. You could argue that this is what an actual decentralized web looks like.

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tl:dr: Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn i don't know if you know the Tech for Good Organisers network? if not - they're a fine and varied group of humans, who support those who help run the networks that share good practise and build connections amongst those digital folk who want to do good with tech. They really helped in developing https://lnkd.in/eMbSK65J particularly the attitude we take towards DEI - more here: https://lnkd.in/eYrbRgcY And they have the following question and offer... Are you a passionate organiser building or dreaming of building a thriving Tech for Good community in the UK? Join us for the Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - a one-of-a-kind unconference designed by and for you! Date: Saturday 18 May Time: 10am - 5:30pm - and a community dinner afterwards! Location: London What is it? This unconference is your chance to connect, collaborate, and share your experiences with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders from across the UK, with a focus on building Just and Regenerative Futures. What's an unconference? Unlike traditional conferences, you set the agenda! This is your opportunity to propose sessions, spark discussions, and dive deep into the topics that matter most to you and your community in relation to creating a just and regenerative future. Here are some things you might want to discuss: Leveraging tech to tackle social and environmental challenges Building inclusive and equitable Tech for Good communities Exploring the tech ethics and tech justice considerations of using tech to promote sustainability and regeneration. Measuring impact for a just and regenerative future Collaboration between communities to achieve a common goal The agenda is entirely up to you! Why attend? Connect with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders who share your passion for a just and regenerative future Learn from each other's successes and challenges in building a better future Share best practices and develop new ideas for using tech for good Collaborate on future initiatives and projects that create positive change Be part of a growing movement of Tech for Good in the UK Lunch and dinner refreshments will be provided. If you are travelling from afar, we also cover travel and accommodation costs. Sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn We can't wait to see you there!

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The vast majority of content on software engineering I see out there is tailored towards teams that are already high-performing. This makes sense for a few different reasons: high-performers generally write these articles so they write what they know, it's fun and exciting to talk about the latest and greatest, etc. However most teams have a ton of low-hanging fruit that they can address to dramatically improve team performance with low effort lifts. It's very hard to tune an F1 car to go just a bit faster but the simple fact is that most engineering teams are like a commuter car... just by taking a few minutes to put air in the tires you can see dramatic handling and mileage improvements on the daily commute. What are some easier goals to aim for to improve a struggling engineering team? In no particular order: * How big is the average MR/PR? In general a 1,000 line MR/PR isn't four times harder to review than a 250 line MR/PR, it's much much harder. Several thousand line MRs/PRs dropped every few weeks across a team cause lots of issues including merge conflicts and taking a long time to review. After discussing with Product, can tickets be smaller so that merges aren't so big? * How long on average does an MR/PR stay outstanding before getting merged? The older an MR/PR is at merge time the higher the chance of merge conflicts and merge conflicts are a way to generate work but deliver no value to the end user. MRs/PRs that take a long time to merge could be indicative of the team not correctly accounting for the time it takes to review. Should tickets have bigger estimates? * If you're running sprints (and if you're on an underperforming team I recommend switching to sprints ASAP as they bring into focus these types of issues), how often do you have carry-over and how big is it? Improving these estimates is not just an exercise in accounting. A team that estimates work well is one that is not rushed, performant, reviews well, and has time to think about the highest priority tech debt. But most importantly a team that estimates work well is one that delivers on their promises. You may be on a team where these goals have already been achieved or never were an issue in the first place. That's great! But if your engineering team has been underperforming these could be some of the best places to first look. What's some low hanging fruit that you've seen on engineering teams that when addressed had the biggest impact?

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Is this the end of embeddings? Hear from Josh and Tashrish on the pros and cons of using embeddings-based RAG for document data extraction and our experiments with switching to completions-only RAG.

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🏎️💨 Making of a Ridiculously Fast™ API client in R. Why my package is **~17x faster** than the community alternatives that call the **exact same API endpoints**. 👇🏽**design choices matter** ✨ https://lnkd.in/ggi_2XyQ

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If you've ever had to deal with inconsistent UX, multiple generations of design systems, and the perpetual back and forth between UI and backend developers - there's hope, you are not alone. And let me just say it out loud - there's no "full stack" development - it is simply impossible for an engineer to stay up to date on all the development across JavaScript, frameworks, Node.js, Kubernetes, Java, etc. You either have deep and somewhat narrow, or broad and shallow. These problems are quite common for everyone who has inherited an existing product (which is like 99.9% of us). This blog post by Kyle Shevlin about building a tightly-enforced composable design system resonated with me. #UI #designsystem #react https://lnkd.in/gStEWHtC

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It’s THIS article (the second one in the post below): https://lnkd.in/dEdPxy62

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🌶️ Mandatory Config reaction post: Surprised they’re leaning more into asset generation, work approval statuses, and presentation tooling versus full workflow integration across the dev lifecycle. They’re choosing to go after Zeplin and gSlides because it’s easier, but Flutterflow can/will quickly close the gap for the next generation of emerging orgs. Figma will become the entrenched Axure big-team-bloat waterfall design tool? Easier for Flutterflow to build a better design interface than Figma to do the opposite and move to delivering code in production.

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I'm finally ready to share an experiment I've been working on with the Future Audiences team at Wikimedia. It's a pretty special team where I get to have space to think about the intersection of things like LLMs and the evolving online space of (mis/dis)information: specifically how can this technology not replace humans as an information source, but help better connect us to living sources of information created by humans. I have this hope/dream that tools for us to verify information in a world where creating questionable information is so widespread will be as easy and normal as your internet browser coming with built-in adblockers to protect you from being overwhelmed with pop-up window spam. Anyway, the experiment we have is called Citation Needed, and if you are using the Chrome browser, I'd love for you to try it out. After you install it, you can use it to check short texts online to see if they are corroborated by information on Wikipedia, and have the opportunity to learn more about it. It's still experimental, and uses LLMs/AI, so you might see some funny behavior once in a while -- which you can report to us in the extension -- though I invite you to imagine what this functionality could look like in the near future, and/or beyond the confines of a browser extension. And then let us know where this sci fi daydream takes you. Link: https://lnkd.in/eQwd4iqK

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To stay relevant, you have to get your hands dirty and feel the pain. Engineering leaders typically amplify the team to maximize impact. However, being detached from the problem or not feeling the pain could easily end up leading the team down the wrong path (solving the wrong problems, etc). Even with reports, you should still spend time to understand your product and talk to the users. Your PMs, QAs, UXes, engineers relaying the feedback to you does not replace your own opinion and definitely does not represent fully your end users. Some things I have tried that helped me (as an engineer): 1. Use your product. When was the last time you actually use your own product? 2. Read (and write) code. At the very least, write prototype code. When was the last time you actually make a decision grounded by technical evidence instead of theory? 3. Talk to the users, read feedback from users. You will find that what the team's echo chamber may be very different from what the end users are saying. What else YOU have done to distinguish yourself from armchair strategists? ### Inspiration came from that Google Chrome is crashing frequently on IME input changes. I decided to get the crash dump so I can at least find out what is causing the crash ... reminds me of the old times doing windows crash dump analyses in bulk Costco style. #randomthoughts #leadership #beinghandson

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