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Issue #553
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Friday 27th September’s issue is presented by AssemblyAI
Empower your team to build cutting-edge voice bots. Follow step-by-step instructions for integrating AssemblyAI’s Speech AI with ElevenLabs and unlock the potential of real-time AI voice applications.
Why Build Voice Bots? Boost efficiency and improve user experience.
Market Growth: Voice-based AI is growing at 19.8% annually.
Seamless Integration: Easily incorporate AssemblyAI’s API for scalable solutions.
— Dave Kellogg
tl;dr: “Strive to make things simple. Seek to understand them. Struggle to find apt metaphors for them. If you’re not burning real energy trying to simplify things for you audience, you are most like a complexifier. If so, the next time you’re about to explain to someone why something take so long, is so complicated, or requires 5 steps to be completed before the start, ask yourself — do I really believe this or I am making it complicated because I either don’t want or don’t know how to do it.”
Leadership Management
— Wes Kao
tl;dr: “As much as we don’t want to shoot the messenger, we often associate negative feelings with people who tell us bad news. Wes’ principles for delivering bad news are: (1) Avoid negative words, like "however” and “unfortunately.” (2) Avoid giving too many details. (3) Don't accidentally accept blame. (4) Get to your point quickly. (5) Remind the person of their own agency.
Leadership Management
— Kelsey Foster
tl;dr: More companies are building with Speech AI than ever before, thanks to enhanced accuracy, speed, and accessibility. Discover innovative tools transforming industries—from next-gen meeting note-takers to conversation intelligence solutions. These cutting-edge apps are redefining customer interactions—see what sets them apart.
Promoted by AssemblyAI
Management AI
— Doug Turnbull
tl;dr: “Can you give some space for everyone to have voice in the conflict? Can you create a space where you set up ground rules for conflict i.e. attacking the problem, not people. Can you maximize also “caring personally” dimension that gives air to the quiet voices? Can you encourage the employees who often come to complain 1-1, but struggle to speak up in group meetings?”
Leadership Management
"A leader is a dealer in hope."
— Gergely Orosz, Simon Willison
tl;dr: “Ways to use LLMs efficiently, as a software engineer, common misconceptions about them, and tips / hacks to better interact with GenAI tools.”
DevTools AI
— Ian Vanagas
tl;dr: Ian covers: (1) Doing support makes you a better engineer. (2) Why engineers do support at PostHog. (3) Creating a support process built for engineers. (4) How to scale engineers doing support.
Promoted by PostHog
CareerAdvice
tl;dr: “Uber needs an observability system of similar scale for measuring design quality to prevent subpar user experience, especially when it comes to adopting the existing UI libraries and accessibility best practices packaged under the Uber’s Design System, Base. Without such an observability system – let’s call it Design System Observability – it could be too late when Uber learned through complaints and public media about the end users who would suffer confusing onboarding rides, inconsistent layouts, and frustrating voiceovers / talkbacks sessions.”
Observability
— Ben Nour
tl;dr: “A somewhat opinionated list of SQL tips and tricks that I've picked up over the years in my job as a data analyst. Please note that some of these tips might not be relevant for all RDBMs.”
Tips SQL
— Mahdi Yusuf
tl;dr: “So, without fully getting into the weeds on database-specific quirks, I will cover everything you should understand about RDBMS indexes. I will touch briefly on transactions and isolation levels and how they can impact your reasoning about specific transactions."
Database
Most Popular From Last Issue
Top Five Platform Engineering Books For 2024 — Daniel Bryant
Notable Links
Harper: Grammar checker for developers.
JSON For You: Visualization and processing tool.
OpenFreeMap: Custom maps on your site for free.
PostgreSQL: v17 Released.
Swapy: Converts any layout into a drag-to-swap one.
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1 = Didn't enjoy it all // 5 = Really enjoyed it