After Reading "Lab Girl"

I was generously gifted Lab Girl by Hope Jahren through Jane Kim in her last week at OfficeLuv. I finished it today, after about a month.

Weeknote of 2018-08-21, Making and Breaking Patterns

On repeat: Joe Goddard - Electric Lines

Weeknote of 2018-08-05, Second-order Effects

On repeat on these hot nights: ultralight beam

I just ended a text message to my girlfriend with a semicolon and I think I should be done for the day.

Handy Kue Maintenance CLI Scripts

Building systems at my last few companies, it has been enormously useful to have a robust queueing platform. I’ve tried Amazon’s SQS, NATS, and a couple others but Automattic’s Kue has been the best combination of performance and introspection.

After Reading "Life in Code"

After reading her excerpts from the last few months, I picked up Ellen Ullman’s Life in Code. I finished the collection of essays yesterday.

Timestamp - Chicago Startup Tech Dinner

I am invited to a dinner with other team leaders from other tech startup companies in the city. We meet at a comfortable restaurant and order cocktails. Out of our nine members, two are women. Eight are white. Two business founders, three engineers, two product managers, two marketers.

On Adding React Native to Existing iOS and Android Apps

I write in defense of the beliefs I fear are least defensible. Everything else feels like homework.
- Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments

Migrating a MongoDB App Datastore to PostgreSQL

A couple weeks ago, Narro had a nice uptick in usage from Pro users that resulted in a large increase in data stored by the application. That is always pleasant but this time, I had a corresponding uptick in price for the data storage. Time for a change!

On Narro Joining Stripe Atlas Beta

In June, I applied for Narro’s entry into the Stripe Atlas beta program. Since building Narro incrementally, the worry of financial separation crept up on me a bit. Between the end of one job and the start of another, I had a perfect time to formalize the structure of Narro into a real entity. I thought I could provide a review of Stripe Atlas for anyone considering the program.

After Reading The Undoing Project

My brother’s gift to me this Christmas was The Undoing Project, a novel by Michael Lewis on the work done by researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I read it from December 27 through January 1.

To Revisit When Starting a New Job

After starting at and helping to start companies multiple times, I’ve noticed a few writings and lectures that I tend to revisit each time. Even when not moving to a new group, I tend to watch or read these every few months. The beginning of this list came out of a question from the wonderful Jane Kim.

Recruitment Searching on GitHub

We’re currently looking for Senior Mobile (iOS / Android) and Senior Fullstack Engineers at OfficeLuv. Finding great developers is…difficult. I will occasionally search for individuals on GitHub, where I can find a scrap of contact information and reach out.

The Benefits of Daily Code Review

I wrote a while ago about a methodology for daily code reviews, one which we implemented originally at ThreadMeUp. Now that I’m building a new team at OfficeLuv, I’ve been excited to start them again. Recently, I was talking to a very good friend of mine and found myself reasoning through the importance of team code reviews. I think it boils down to four main skills for individual team members.

A Recommendation of Vasyl Stetsyuk

Vasyl is an eager and diligent QA Lead. While we were working together, a member of our team remarked that they had met no other QA leader more interested in the actual technology, and I would agree. He is a splendid team leader, and defined our testing processes for the group. I would trust him to test my applications again in a heartbeat.