SWLW #612: The current tech puzzle, find joy on the journey, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week. 

 

This Week's Favorite

Things That Used to Be Impossible, but Are Now Really Hard
3 minutes read.

"What technical problems are now possible but still hard? What can computers achieve by themselves that two or three years ago would be intractable?" -- Tomasz Tunguz asks a beautiful question to understand how LLM (and AI Agents) opens up new opportunities that were impossible but are now really hard to get right. How does it look in your business? How do you experiment to find out if it's now doable, even if hard?

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Culture

Coding Chair vs. Debugging Chair
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Deploy on Friday? How About Destroy on Friday! A Chaos Engineering Experiment
7 minutes read.

Production incidents are a question of when, not if. Your ability to build a culture that openly and proactively explores failures increases your resiliency - both for your systems and your teammates.

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Questions I Ask When Checking References
4 minutes read.

Jason Fried's questions for reference checking are excellent. Asking people who have worked with the candidate can be a great way to learn, so make the most of it. Use these questions.

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AI Unicorns Are Running Amok
5 minutes read.

AI companies are driving the market these days. Companies will have to understand and deploy their AI strategy one way or the other, if they want to compete: "This AI boom/bubble is going to throw up winners. In the end, what really matters is which side of the bet you come out on. That’s what allows you to get to the next bubble — and eventual bust."

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Peopleware

The Current Tech Puzzle
7 minutes read.

John Cutler summarizes similar problems and pains many of us feel, offers solutions, and collects feedback from peers to provide more insights. Do you feel these pains in your company? How do you deal with them? Share this post with your peers and have a discussion.

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Find Joy on the Journey—or You Won't Find It at All. (Video)
3 minutes read.

"If I get X, then I'll be happy." is how our minds are wired, making it very hard to enjoy the moment. This thinking is an evil necessity for a society that wants to achieve more and create progress. Learning to compromise (e.g., defining what is "enough") and seeking joy with the people we surround ourselves with can often help us be ambitious while appreciating the endless grind.

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Predictions for the Future of Software Engineering (Thread)
3 minutes read.

I wonder if we'll see codebases becoming much more bloated due to a lot of AI-generated code (dare I say lower quality code) and fewer software engineers applying critical thinking in introducing this code. We'll need new tools that huge companies have to some extent today to measure and deal with systems complexity of large codebases. How does it change the way you work today? How does it change the content you read and learn about to leverage this transition to AI tools?

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Share it via Twitter or email.

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@Suhail: I have never regretted shipping something too fast. Ever. Meanwhile, I have often regretted waiting and shipping slower.

@syedbalkhi: It’s amazing how much easier things gets once you just start.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.