Author: Tony Tam
-
How much to pay for a muffin and coffee in SF?
Today, I picked up a strawberry muffin and coffee from Bello Coffee and Tea in Glen Park. When I first saw the total bill was $5, I was taken aback. $2.5 for a coffee and $2.5 for a muffin. Was it ringed up incorrectly? It was so much lower than I would expect. My usual…
-
Trust bucket
I’ve been thinking about why we trust certain people but keep others at arms length. This was inspired by seeing how a colleague navigates their interactions with meeting new people in the company. For people (other) in our work and personal life who we don’t feel an increase in trust – Our intuition tells us…
-
Link NYTimes: I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t).
I also deleted Facebook, stop using any apps that are personalized infinite scroll apps, but did not add tracker blocker. It is interesting to see this person actually bought less online as a result of not getting personalized ads. I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t). https://nyti.ms/2YdvvKk
-
It is 2019, how could FB store passwords in plain text?
( my opinions are my own and not my employer) I just read this article: NY Times: Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here’s What You Need to Know. https://nyti.ms/2YdyAKj As an engineer, I don’t understand how it could happen to a company like Facebook. They have engineers and security folks who audit designs and…
-
Why should engineers write?
I write a lot of internal documentation, blogs to convey ideas for my future self as well as for engineers internally to reference. Younger engineers often are reluctant to write anything other than code. Here are reasons to write Writing something down clarifies your own understanding of the topic It’s one of the highest leverage…
-
What is next most important to add value?
Our VP Of Engineering asked us to think about this at work. We are all busy at work, but are we adding value to our customers with what we are doing now? What is the next most important item on our backlog that add value to our customer immediately? It’s a great way to prioritize…
-
When NPS doesn’t cut it
How do you know when a training is effective? NPS score is a measure of whether the participants would high recommend someone else to take the training. But I wanted to switch up the metrics to measure outcome and confidence. At work, we are delivering a deep dive training to engineers to teach them about…
-
Doing 1:1 with my direct reports
For my direct report 1:1’s, I’m trying a new structure. I open up a Google Doc that we both have access to for our 1:1’s Hearing from them what’s on their mind and discussing I bounce some ideas of future work to put on their backlog, some updates that are interesting for them and give…
-
My Email Flow
If you send an email to me, it’s very likely (95% chance) I will reply If you are recruiting me for a position at company X – You will get a polite / canned response that “I am extremely happy at Splunk and want to be there for 4 years to help the company grow”.…
-
What does Tony do in Engineering Productivity?
My full time job is to work on engineering productivity. Often folks ask me what I do every day / every week? I often tell them what I’m working on this quarter. Quarterly Focus Well, the first quarter in 2019, my focus is on creating coding labs and content for new engineers that join Splunk…