Alex Ponomarev (Page 8)

18 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Is Remote Work Here to Stay?

I was recently interviewing a software developer, let’s call him John. John was struggling to balance his work and personal life. He had to move to another city because

17 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

CTO Skills: Much More Than Just Being a Great Engineer

Today, I’ve stumbled upon a 2017 interview with Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and CTO of Airbnb. In it, Blecharczyk discusses his background as an entrepreneur and how he became involved

16 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

When Off-the-shelf Products You Depend on Shift Gears and Target Enterprise

Airtable, a code-free software company once valued at $11.7 billion, has announced layoffs of 27% of its workforce, or 237 people. This is part of a plan to refocus

15 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Art Behind the Apps: Why Software is a Creative Act

Building software products is a creative process, much like painting, writing, or any other art form. This became clear when I recorded an extremely short screencast demonstrating a product our

14 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

The Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand of Project Management

I have a friend. Every message she writes begins with “URGENT! IMPORTANT!”. I’m not kidding. She does that because she learned that if she doesn’t add those words

13 Sep 2023 · 6 min read

Why We Ditched Material UI for the Long Haul

The house I rent right now near Ericeira, Portugal, has terrible plumbing for heating. Very few people care about heating in Portugal because winter here lasts only a few months,

12 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

Why Product Development Turns Into Herding Cats As Tech Teams Grow

Have you ever noticed how things can look so perfect from a distance but less ideal upon closer inspection? It’s like planning a vacation and choosing a hotel based

11 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

Overemployment: Genius Hack or Unethical Practice?

Santiago Valdarrama shared a story on Twitter yesterdat about an employee he had to let go. The employee was secretly working two full-time jobs at the same time. Santiago had

10 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Auto Industry is Sacrificing Your Privacy And Why You Should Care

A few days ago, the Mozilla Foundation released the results of its research about data privacy in modern cars that they’ve conducted for their “Privacy Not Included” guide. The

9 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Myth of the 10x Engineer Building Products in 10 Days

The open-source software community is a beautiful thing. As a kid, I was amazed by the universe of software available to play with and learn from. In the early 2000s,

8 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Perils of Putting Everything on One Square

Have you heard already that Square is down today? This major outage has put thousands of businesses at a standstill. Founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square

7 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Rat Race: The Dangers of Short-Sighted Employee Productivity Metrics

In 2011, the film Moneyball brought data-driven decisions into the spotlight. The 2003 book by Michael Lewis told the story of Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager. Beane assembled

6 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

Custom or Off-the-Shelf ? Choosing Which Way To Go Is Like Shopping For A Campervan

We’ve all faced this dilemma before — do we invest in an expensive, custom-built solution or go with a cheaper, off-the-shelf option? It’s a question that gives every builder

5 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Context Switching Catastrophe: How to Save Your Engineering Team from Burnout

It was the perfect storm. One of our lead engineers, Alex, had finally settled into coding a complex new feature that customers had eagerly awaited for months. Thirty minutes into

4 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Why Your Engineers Can’t Do It All: Building a Data-Driven Dream Team

Acme Inc., a mid-sized retailer with 50 stores, wanted to use all the customer and sales data they had accumulated over the years. The CEO envisioned using analytics to optimize

3 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Info Overload: How to Avoid Drowning in Crappy Data

The sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 is one of history’s most infamous maritime disasters. Over 1,500 lives were lost when the supposedly “unsinkable” ship struck an

2 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Is This Our “GUI Moment”? — Comparing AI Interfaces to Computing History

The debate over whether the current wave of generative AI models like OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Bard, or Facebook’s LLaMa is really the start of a new era

1 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Engagement, Not Signoff: Building Partnership With Stakeholders

The Apple Lisa was launched in January 1983, before the Mac. The launch wasn’t public, though. It was overshadowed by the Mac the following year. The Lisa was named