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- Issue #562
Issue #562
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Tuesday 29th October’s issue is presented by Superblocks
Superblocks enables dev teams to outpace their roadmap by making internal app development lightweight and low-effort. Superblocks provides:
A drag-and-drop canvas for building complex UIs
100s of database and API integrations
Built-in audit logging, managed one-click deployments
Direct integrations with your favorite observability and SSO/SCIM providers.
See how development teams are building enterprise-ready applications in days rather than months
— Chelsea Troy
tl;dr: “In my experience, it is at least the case that when programmers become trial-by-fire managers, they realize they don’t know how to do their jobs. Technical leadership — tech lead roles, principal eng roles, and even the dreaded “player-coach” role—those sneak up on people. A lot of times there’s still programming involved, so folks feel prepared. Their experience has exposed them to technical decisions and it got them promoted, so the way they do it is probably fine. Right?” Chelsea discusses 3 pitfalls she commonly sees.
Leadership Management
— John Cutler
tl;dr: John calls out the counterpoints to wisdom often cited in common phrases we hear: (1) "Be customer-obsessed.” (2) Teams need clear objectives!” (3) "Think big. Start Small.” (4) "You can’t improve what you don’t measure." (5) "Focus on outcomes, not outputs."
Leadership Management
— Eric Anderson
tl;dr: Most low-code app builders rely on rigid grids, leading to simple web apps that lack the flexibility and polish users expect from modern sites. At Superblocks, we wanted to raise the bar by enabling dynamic, flexible layouts without requiring users to dive into CSS or JavaScript. Achieving this meant reworking one of our core features from the ground up, which was no small task. Along the way, we learned a lot about striking the right balance between pushing bold new ideas forward and keeping the end experience familiar to our users.
Promoted by Superblocks
Management CSS
— Christine Miao
tl;dr: “With AI and big tech layoffs, engineering organizations have been put under a microscope like never before. Engineering leaders need to adapt to this new normal.”
Leadership Management ThoughtPiece
“Earn your leadership every day.”
— Will Larson
tl;dr: A model examining how different policies affect engineering organization seniority mix. Without intervention, orgs become top-heavy with senior engineers, increasing costs. Three key policies work together: backfilling departures at lower levels, stopping senior-level external hiring, and capping the maximum number of senior positions.
Leadership Management
tl;dr: Budibase saves engineers 100s of hours building internal tools and automating workflows. It's open source, connects to any data source, offers free SSO, and is loved by over 200,000 engineers worldwide. Transform your workflows with Budibase.
Promoted by Budibase
InternalTools
— Simon Willison
tl;dr: “I’m a huge fan of Claude’s Artifacts feature, which lets you prompt Claude to create an interactive Single Page App (using HTML, CSS and JavaScript) and then view the result directly in the Claude interface, iterating on it further with the bot and then, if you like, copying out the resulting code.” Simon shares what he built in the last 7 days.
AI
— Tony Finn
tl;dr: “JJ is one of the latest round of git-compatible version control systems which allows you to have a better experience locally, without having to abandon everything that depends on git. I've been trying it out now for about two months, and this post shares some of my thoughts.”
VersionControl
tl;dr: “We process about 1.2 billion settlements each month, handling around $130 billion in cash in transit annually from over 50 different PSPs. This process ensures that funds received from various payment methods are accurately accounted for and matched with the corresponding bank statements. Settlement accounting at Uber involves offsetting receivables booked during revenue accounting, verifying the cash deposited in the bank, and analyzing contracts with PSPs to determine fees, taxes, and other charges associated with transactions.”
Architecture
Most Popular From Last Issue
How Not To Disagree — Andrew Bosworth
Notable Links
Agent.exe: Claude's new computer use capabilities.
Amphion: OS audio, music & speech generation toolkit.
CodingFont: Compare coding fonts.
Open Interpreter: Natural language interface for computers.
You-Get: CL utility to download media contents.
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