The truth about starting with microservices – Arnold Galovics
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Launching Stacks - Cohesive
Stacks help developers launch multiple microservices in a single click
Achieve Your Goals with Less Grinding - Expanding Awareness
It doesn't always have to be so hard
How Every Executes: two tweaks that generated ~54% more paid subscribers
Real data from our business showing how execution is exponential
The problem is of course that you have no idea what the risk-adjusted return is, because at the end of the day you’re pulling numbers out of your ass, and the framework doesn’t give you any leverage to come up with better numbers. All it does is quantify your prior beliefs, but what we really want is a method to come up with new, better beliefs.
The output of a system is determined by the bottleneck. If you want to improve the output, you need to attack the bottleneck until it no longer is the limiting factor, and something else is. Rinse and repeat.
The Theory of Constraints tells us if we want to improve our system, one of these steps is going to be the critical “limiting factor.” In other words, no matter how much we improve the other steps, it won’t make a big difference because all the improvements are being held up by the bottleneck.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to get to the bottom of exactly what Every should do to get more people to read our articles, but the reason I wanted to show this is to illustrate the type of thinking you can do about your own business, using the Theory of Constraints.In a way, this is where strategy meets execution. Deciding what to execute better on is a strategic decision. It’s also an art. There is a ton of uncertainty, so it’s better to move fast and try things than to debate endlessly.
In Dropbox’s case, their version of success early on was actually a fairly different business than B2B enterprise sales. The things you need to do to make the product better for businesses would actually make it worse for consumers. The entire product philosophy might have to change: more options, more settings, more complexity.
How do Chrome extensions impact browser performance?
This article looks at how 1000 popular Chrome extensions impact the performance of the browser.
Control Planes vs Data Planes
Moduliths: because we need to scale, but we also cannot afford microservices
My blog, where i attempt to collect my thoughts and share the occasional interesting topic with others
Modules, monoliths, and microservices · Tailscale
What is a microservice? When are microservices a good idea? Lately, I get people asking me when microservices are a good idea. In systems design explains the world, I talked about big-picture issues like second system effect, innovator’s dilemmas, and more. Can systems design answer the microservices question? Yes, but you might not like the answers.
Can a Zebra Change Its Stripes?
Silicon Valley is puzzling over Marc Andreessen's decision to back Adam Neumann's new startup Flow.
A dev's thoughts on developer productivity
Developers are systems thinkers and yet, most measures of developer productivity are metrics-based, instead of systems-based. In this post, Sourcegraph co-founder and CTO Beyang Liu presents five charts that visualize what really matters for developer productivity.
The Misunderstood Parts of Dilution and Venture Math | by Jason Yeh | Jun, 2022
Equity 101 for Software Engineers at Big Tech and Startups
A growing number of startups and Big Tech companies offer equity - stocks, options, and others - as part of software engineering compensation. However, I've noticed few engineers understand what these mean. When I was a hiring manager at Uber in Amsterdam, engineers usually focused far more on the base
The $100b Bull Case for Temporal
Why Temporal is worth >$1b now, why it will be worth >$10b, and how it *could* be worth $100b
How can you tell if the company you’re interviewing with is rotten on the inside?
How can you tell the companies who are earnestly trying to improve apart from the ones who sound all polished and healthy from the outside, whilst rotting on the inside? This seems to be on a lot o…
The Heptagon of Configuration
A pattern I've observed in software configuration of complex systems and that explains why bash scripts are everywhere, even at Google.
Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends
Trends in medium, AI, and user interaction underpin Instagram’s response to TikTok, and will determine Meta’s long-term moat.
Tradeoffs in API Design
There are a few choices when designing an API layer: REST or RPC, binary or plaintext, TCP or HTTP, schema or schemaless? A few of the tradeoffs and an overview of some of the tools. * Schema-driven? You can do this with REST (e.g., OpenAPI/Swagger) and RPC (e.g., protobufs). While having a schema means you can automatically scaffold client/server stubs and enforce message types, it doesn't come for free. The code generation step adds friction to the developer workflow, and developing outside
Friction as a Proxy for Value
Sometimes we use products, no matter how difficult they are to use. Friction is a good proxy for value. It's a simple cost-benefit equation, where cost is often more observable than benefit. And it's much easier to optimize and quantify cost rather than benefit – how quickly, efficiently, or easily we can do something (rather than how much we enjoy or value an experience). Better yet, high-cost activities are more likely to have inelastic demand. This principle applies to generational technol
Welfare Queens
What’s the most successful venture capital firm in history? Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital backed many Internet-era success stories. Andreessen Horowitz? No, one organization towers above. This firm was there before the first transistor was printed, and it will be there after we receive brain implants. One investor funded the computer, the internet, speech recognition, […]
Network effects and token incentives
On how tokens can be used to jumpstart and breakdown network effects
New Relic: The Rally Is Just Beginning
Shares of New Relic have been on a win streak since mid-May, powered by a string of strong quarterly results. NEWR still has plenty of room to rally higher.
Nobody wants to buy software in India
Quickbooks is out. Zoho and others are trying to fill the gap. It’s unlikely anyone can.
Let it slide
No matter the size of the business, there'll always be an unlimited number of tasks left to do, processes left to improve, and contingencies left to plan. The work is truly never done, so regardless of how much effort is put in, you'll inevitably end the day unfinished. All you can control is what you're willing to let slide. Most days...
Try hard not to solve hard problems
You don't have to solve the majority of hard problems you encounter in either business, design, or programming. Almost all of them can be restated as an easy problem, if you dare question the assumptions, reweigh the trade-offs, and stop diving after sunk cost. Above all the other principles at 37signals, this is our key to keeping the...
Cloud Native Localhost
Localhost development isn't going anywhere, but it will look much different in the cloud native world. At Google, I maintained open-source and local-first software – kubernetes/minikube, which runs a local Kubernetes cluster on your laptop, and skaffold, a docker-compose equivalent for Kubernetes (in addition to a few other open-source projects). Cloud APIs might actually help standardize and abstract local developer workflows. There's two conflicting forces in local-first software – the desi
Towards Granular Compute
Runtimes, infrastructure, and APIs tend to get more granular. Maybe we're just in the unbundling phase (implying a future bundling phase), or maybe it's a byproduct of moving functionality to the edge (the network is the bottleneck), or perhaps this is just a general form of progress (breaking things down into abstractions). At a basic level, granularity lets us bin-pack workloads. Different workloads have varying levels of safety when it comes to resource sharing and allocation. Isolation hap
Growing the Pie
In negotiations, there's a distinction between distributive and integrative bargaining. Distributive bargaining is a zero-sum negotiation where fixed resources are allocated between parties. Integrative bargaining is where multiple interests are negotiated at the same time and deals are structured to create value through creative solutions. Not every negotiation is open to integrative bargaining. For example, in car buying negotiations, the buyer wants to pay as little as possible, the seller
Avoiding People at Work
People are avoiding each other at work and the self-service is on the rise. Software is democratizing every department. Product managers can run analytics and workflows without developers, developers can provision infrastructure without IT, and marketers can publish copy without developers.
Developers Should Deploy Their Own Code
This is the platonic ideal. We're not there yet, but the all signs point to this rather than specialization. Applications and their infrastructure (functions, queues, permissions, runtime) have always been closely intertwined. Fewer handoffs mean quicker deployments and less context loss. So – Why can't developers deploy their own code (yet)? 1. Provisioned infrastructure economy1 Competing product teams must be allocated resources at companies with provisioned infrastructure. Finance depar
Work From Office
Work from home is polarizing. Last week I was on Smerconish, and after articulating the benefits of remote work for four minutes, I spent 30 seconds on the downsides: Offices are where young professionals establish relationships with mentors, colleagues, and mates. In sum: Put on a shirt and get into the office. Cue the Tesla-bro-like […]