Carl Gorringe

I was reading one of the 2 newsletters I follow - The Grappler's Diary on Substack - and the author (Chris Wojcik) pointed out one of those "well, yeah, of course" kind of ideas that made me stop and think for a bit. Wojcik pointed out that it takes more and more effort to reach higher levels of skill in jiu jitsu. This is of course true of any skill. I've certainly seen that with programming. The easiest and biggest leaps are at the beginning. Going from zero to your first working program is pretty easy. Becoming a true professional developer takes years. Continuous improvement takes introspection, feedback, seeking out training and education, and lots and lots of work. And the noticeable improvements these days are small: cleaner code, improved readability, and better organization. Little things that matter. And the more time I spend as a "programmer" the less I write code and the more time I spend on related things: technical design, code review, stakeholder relations, project management, and more. Just as you get more skilled in martial arts, the more time you spend teaching, coaching, and advising, and the less time you spend getting beat up by kids.

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While there are certainly individual variations in skill and experience when discussing modern software development the story is much more nuanced than pure individual effort.  * software development is a team sport -- individual performance is heavily impacted by the system in which they are asked to operate in.  * we pair skill and experience to this model of understanding performance by expecting people to be able to influence and adapt in direct proportion to their seniority, aka the more senior you are the more responsible you are for the outcomes of your work, the less senior you are the more your manager and management chain are responsible.  * humans want to succeed, we're social animals who derive purpose from demonstrating skill, and working collectively. All of which is to say there is no way you have over 1000 people underperforming at your company without senior leadership deeply implicated in.  If nearly 10% of your company is failing, versus just having the market move against you, you need to fire the CEO.

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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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🚨 Hot take: Using a "best practice" might be holding you back. Are you using best practices by industry giants or doing real innovation? It's time to tailor our approaches to the unique challenges we face. The Cynefin framework offers insight into different problem types: 1. 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲: Clear cause and effect. Standard practices often work well. 2. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱: Requires expertise, but solutions exist. 3. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅: Unpredictable. This is where innovation thrives. 4. 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰: Think of production outages. Novel solutions often emerge here. Remember: Context matters a lot. 🔍 Google's best practices could stifle your startup's progress. 🎬 Netflix's culture code could backfire on your team. When encountering a "best practice," consider: * What type of problem are we facing? * How does our context differ? * How can we adapt this practice to our needs? * Should we reassess as we evolve? Innovation thrives when we question norms. Be the person who adapts and creates solutions for your unique challenges. Which "best practices" or industry norms have you found unsuitable for your specific situation? Share below! 👇 #Innovation #Startups #BestPractices #CynefinFramework

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Want a preview of what I'm going to be talking about in my keynote for RubyConf? You can catch a glimpse of it here!

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There's a sad irony that we've reached an era where LMGTFY is actually an *unhelpful* tool due to the high likelihood of receiving bad AI results promoted over useful information. Google has really fucked a major utility of the internet for no particularly good reason.

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🍜Anybody up for some ramen? I am excited to share that I am back in the garage, building again (it’s actually a house in the Berkeley Hills). We are taking the wraps off of Supercog AI, a new startup focused on solving Application Integration using LLM powered agents. My co-founder in this new venture is a great friend of mine (and a former co-founder partner), Alex Osborne. Alex and I have worked around the application integration space for a long time, and we are unrealistically excited about applying the GenAI stack to this problem. Not many people relish the task to get some bits to move from system A to system B. But it’s a critical job to be done, and that’s led to a lot of brittle scripts, a myriad of inflexible “no code” tools, and a lot of hand crafted SQL. But the power of the Large Language Model, trained on a huge corpus of information, offers a remarkable tool to solve this problem. The LLM you use today already knows the APIs of hundreds of popular systems. It knows the SQL dialects of every major database. It understands the semantics and data schemas of many popular SaaS systems. It understands much of the specific domain in which your business operates. I like to call the AI revolution “the last platform shift”. That may turn out to be hyperbole, but I definitely believe we are in the very early stages of seeing what this new stack can enable. I know we are hardly the first folks to claim that “amazing stuff is coming!”. But this is why Alex and I have decided to focus on a real and hard problem. If we can prove that LLMs can power a new way to solve this problem, it will be the first successful *new* approach in 15 years.. We will have much more to share about this new platform soon. In the meantime, if you’re interested in getting a peek - or even better if you have application or data integration tasks that you would like some help with - please reach out because we want to help. #genai #startups #backinthegarage

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Curious and slightly unsettling experience with chatGPT during a novel review processl (it has been a long time since the publication of my last fiction book!). I uploaded 4 chapters using the premium version and requested summaries of the main characters' names, surnames, and descriptions. One character intentionally had no surname, but chatGPT provided one. After pointing out the error, chatGPT apologized, acknowledged the mistake, and offered a different surname. When I inquired about the repeated incorrect surnames, chatGPT explained its reasoning: Certainly! The reason for the earlier errors with the characters' surnames is a mix of factors: Initial confusion in searching the document: When I tried to retrieve the names from the original document, the search didn’t extract the correct information, leading me to create plausible but incorrect surnames instead of relying on the actual text. Autogenerated names: In cases where I couldn’t locate the correct surname, I defaulted to generating surnames that seemed fitting for the context or the character’s first name. This was a mistake, as I should have used the accurate details from the text. Imprecise searches: My early attempts at searching the document didn’t yield the right results, so I made assumptions instead of double-checking the content properly. #chatGPT #AI

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Hey folks! Garrett Milster and I have only posted about Sacramento Labs once, so we figured it's time for an update 😊 **What is Sacramento Labs?** We’re a small team focused on launching software products that solve real-world problems. Think of us as a startup lab—constantly testing ideas, learning from feedback, and building tools that matter, and having an impact while doing it. **How do we decide what to build?** We like to build products that: -         Solve real-world problems in mostly ignored industries -         Are small, highly maintainable, and scalable codebases -         Make the world a better place directly, or by donating a percentage of profits to a relevant charity in that space You can learn more about our philosophy at sacramentolabs.com **What you can expect from us** We’ll be posting product ideas that are in various stages of our pipeline: Early Concept, Customer Development, In Progress, Launched, Scaling. We’d love to hear your feedback! **Our latest concept: Self-Hosted Security** Here’s the problem: - Businesses often use third-party URL shorteners to share internal tools, resources, or campaigns, but these services introduce serious risks. Enterprise companies like Google, Microsoft, and Stripe have built their own internal URL shorteners for this reason – but most businesses don’t have the resources to do that. - Phishing attacks are rampant, and links from external services can be spoofed or abused. - Branding and security controls are limited, leaving sensitive information exposed. - You can’t track link activity—who’s clicking what, when, or why. - When employees leave, their shared links still work, leaving potential vulnerabilities. Our proposed solution: Self-Hosted Security. It’s a plug-and-play solution for businesses to host their own branded URL shorteners with: - SSO for secure access tied to your company’s directory. - Link expirations to ensure old links don’t stay active indefinitely. - Audit logs to track activity and improve visibility into link usage. 📢 We need your input! Would this solve a problem for you? What features would make this indispensable? Check out the landing page and share your thoughts: selfhostedsecurity.com Want to chat? Email me at [email protected] 😊 💡 And here’s something we’re passionate about: a percentage of profits from Self-Hosted Security will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Your feedback not only helps us create better solutions, but also contributes to making a positive impact. Thanks for being part of the journey!

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I found a highly useful book on how to handle "crucial" conversations, for example: how to provide feedback, how to disagree, share alternative point of vew properly: https://lnkd.in/gwjwfB4r It might be useful for someone else too.

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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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🔥GITHUB SIGNALS 🔥 Out of all the signal sources we added, Github has the best APIs. Not surprised at all, but it's been fun to see their APIs paired with our best-in-class ID resolution engine. The result? Speedy lead lists. "Woah, the sync was so fast (sync). Thank you!! We're really excited to get going!" "Showing the info from stargazers is already very helpful, especially for those with personal email on GitHub profile." Been really fun seeing Netto Farah push the limits on what's possible - turning repos with 10k+ stars into a fully-enriched lead list in a matter of minutes! This is one of MANY signals we just added this week, check out the whole catalog here: https://lnkd.in/gzrhNZ9a

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Code reviews are broken, and GitHub’s UX is a big part of the problem. Fragmented conversations, duplicate fields, and disjointed action logs create a clunky workflow that slows developers down. At Baz, we're building a better way 👉 buff.ly/40QiMzR #codereview #softwaredevelopment

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This is a very good paper on benchmarking courtesy of Justin Jaffray. We definitely need more practical books and writing on benchmarking practices geared at senior+ developers. https://lnkd.in/enuumUy4

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There's a big difference between "necessary" & "running the show" UX/UI is a great example of this (I'll use it over some of the other roles you mention) It is absolutely critical: let's be honest, all us engineers know we suck at UI/UX, most of us will produce something completely unusable by laymen even when we put a lot of effort into it UX/UI designers are absolutely necessary - it's a symbiotic relationship But when UX/UI designers start "running the show", you also end up with an unusable product, because they may not understand that the beautiful UI they've created may not be a good reflection of the underlying system it's meant to convey The most competent engineers (this doesn't just apply to software) should be the ones calling the shots But yes, the other roles are necessary, too

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Its about solving the problem, not 'having AI' in the system. This is from last March, but the Wave 1 vs. Wave 2 distinction does seem to be playing out. Less 'generate me content', more 'synthesize vast amounts of relevant data and aid in decisonmaking or signal extraction'. https://lnkd.in/ehFBFC32 They don't talk about multi-agent systems here, but looking forward to more startups with a focus on leveraging agentic design patterns (https://lnkd.in/ed5rMmFe) to streamline real world workflows.

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I just realized: we should start saying "build memoization" rather than "build caching." We aren't really talking about least-recently-used or time-to-live algorithms, we're talking about "don't bother recompiling this piece if none of its inputs changed." (It has been puzzling me that some people are so deeply fearful of "build cache" as a concept, and honestly I think it's mostly because most build systems have non-hermetic state scattered all over the place. Maybe a slightly more precise term for the type of caching we're concerned with would clarify the semantics in question.)

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