(This post is not for you, it’s for me) It started out as 5% of my time. Just a 4-hour hands-on workshop with new hires once a month. Now it’s the following 1 engineer working on developing a hands-on workshop that will track start, finish, and verification. Able to track usage, validate answers and replace […]
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Could it be that simply to calculate the value of my backlog at work? I once heard on a podcast that a simple way for a startup founder to prioritize all the product backlog in order to focus is via a spreadsheet and do hard ranking. Difficulty x cost x quantity == value? While […]
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Last week a senior software engineer who has deep knowledge in a very specialized and high value skill (Machine Learning) for our company asked me for advice on getting more exposure and impact for her work. She was in a situation where her skills and opinions are sought after by senior leaders in engineering, product […]
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As an engineer, I’ll give you 4 attributes to define your work to choose from Ownership Customer focus Data driven Cadance You have to chose at least one of these to drive your work. Pick one and focus.
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(The art piece is done by a SF local artist of migrant workers working in California central valley) Yesterday, my direct report, a principal software engineer who is an expert in our C++ code base presented to over 150 engineers on a piece of code walk through of a “Life of a single data event […]
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(The photo is a piece of in store made of thick bacon from Luke’s, Cole Valley, San Francisco) A potential engineer doesn’t have to like math, abstract thinking, typing on the computer all day creating software. I head an interview with a IBM Fellow, who happens to be a woman say that she didn’t fit […]
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Last week at work, I learned that an executive has been working on a diversity and inclusion effort monthly. They really care about moving the needed to increase the gender and under represented diversity in our engineering ranks. I was pleasantly surprised that they are so active in this area. I personally have not heard […]
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( 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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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”. […]
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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 […]
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Two and a half years ago, when I joined my current company I was attending a new hire training and the last slide showed a very long URL to a document that we were suppose to remember for more information. I asked the presenter whether there is a URL shortener so that we URLs are […]
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In June, the two engineers will formally accept a Turing Award, the computer science equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition of their work. Hennessy later became president of Stanford University and is now the chair of Alphabet; Patterson is a professor emeritus at U.C. Berkeley and a distinguished engineer at Google Listen to the […]
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I’m celebrating a milestone for a personal 10 year project and I’m seeking your time and attention. Impactful Engineer shares the stories and journeys of women and men who are making significant impact in the software industry. The purpose of Impactful Engineer is to inspire young software engineers to see that are many paths they can take to […]
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This post is not meant for you, it’s meant for me; So no need to read. Start With “What” People ask for advice. “What should I do, I’m running into this situation where I don’t know whether I should choose A or B?” Rather than telling them what they should do, I have been realizing […]
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Recently there has been news reporting about #deleteFacebook, #metoo, #marchforourlives and #nevergain. You can track the interest over time at Google Trends For me, I wanted to know the relative traction each of these movements are actually making. Looks like #deleteFacebook is gaining traction, check back in 7 days to see if the internet meme […]
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http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/02/09/facebooks-desperate-smoke-screen/ The Smoke Screen In my opinion, the first problem — the engineered addiction — is the more pressing issue surrounding social media. These services relentlessly sap time and attention from peoples’ personal and professional lives that could be directed toward more meaningful and productive pursuits, and instead package it for resale to advertisers so […]
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Thank you Justin Baldoni, because of your speech I *know* I need to dedicate 10 years of my life to mentoring women engineers!
Read moreIn this blog post, Tim Ottinger shares his thoughts on what we should measure in the software industry and more importantly on what not to measure. https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/what-should-we-measure/
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When social media sites like Facebook requires businesses to pay to show content to their own followers, it is time to rethink how businesses engage with their customers. Facebook puts a limit that only 2% of followers will see shared content if a business does not pay. Give this article a read: Social Media is […]
Read moreDear LinkedIn, You are the only service out there to discover data about companies both private and public, what type of employees work there, which universities the employees graduated from and lots of other useful data about the professional lives of the workers. LinkedIn is a fantastic service for professionals. There have been many articles in recent years […]
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This is worth listening to learn about how Facebook thinks about software and expecially how they are trying to push software developer forward for the entire industry. React and React Native are being called out as very successful open source projects from Facebook. Cassandra has also been a huge winner. The interesting take […]
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Splunk’s Company Mission I like the simple and clear mission: We make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone Update: Oct 24, 2018 2 years at Splunk so far Personal I’ve started a large community of badminton players and even setup a badminton net in our court yard I’ve grown a community of engineering helping each other virtually on Slack I’ve […]
Read moreFrom Edmond Lau’s The Effective Engineer blog 1. Optimize for iteration speed. Quick iteration speed increases work motivation and excitement. Infrastructural and bureaucratic barriers to deploying code and launching features are some of the most common and frustrating reasons that engineers cite during interviews for why they’re leaving their current companies. Read the rest of […]
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(The photo is of my sister and I in China 1975) I was listening to Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy podcast and he was commenting on the FBI vs Apple case about unlocking an iPhone used by the the shooters. He was pointing out the following misconceptions in the popular press. Inspired by his comments about […]
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The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body responsible for overseeing the internet’s technical standards, has approved HTTP 451, “an HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles”. The new status code will show viewers when a web page is being blocked for legal reasons.Source: Error 451 is the new HTTP code for online censorship (Wired […]
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We do not pay for cable, never did and do not have a TV. We do have a movie projector and a 90″ drop down projection screen. Looking at our digital entertainment obligations: We get the recent DVD ‘s free from the San Francisco public library. We pay for Comcast for 6mbps for faster internet […]
Read more2018 update: Now I have box.com for long term storage, dropbox for daily syncs update: box.com is not doing any better either after my switch. The box.com sync app hung and I had to kill it. Recently the dropbox.com sync app on my Mac has been chewing up 100% of my CPU causing my machine […]
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As a software engineer, I had one of the most rewarding day in recent months. When I got into the office, a developer from Flickr filed a ticket about UI browser testing into another Jira queue (bug tracking) and I happen to see that it’s related to the SauceLab project I now own as a […]
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My co-workers and I were doing some user studies with an internal developer who was using our tools in order to see how he was using it daily and also asking him how he debugs problems with our tools. It was amazing to see the developer go to the homepage of the tool, he noticed a […]
Read moreReally enjoyed this background of DevOps as a movement to remove friction from a product idea to a feature making it to the end user. Not focus just on continuous delivery, not focused on specific tools. Worth listening to for anyone who cares about how to increase the velocity and quality of software releases http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2015/08/31/origin-of-devops-with-john-and-damon-from-devops-cafe/
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On August 08, 2015 my wife and I decided to get out of the stock market 75% into bonds. Leaving 25% in the market. We made this decision because my daughter will be going to private high school for 4 years and very shortly she will need money for college. We asked ourselves 3 questions […]
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Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/jedi4ever/code-but-not-as-we-know-it-infrastructure-as-code Book Preview: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920039297.do ” With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited content as he or she writes—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles. You’ll also receive updates when significant changes are made, new chapters as they’re […]
Read moreWhile chatting informally with some co-workers, I heard some of them talking about their frustrations about not feeling recognized for their work or working on projects they don’t think makes a difference. Corporations, which usually mean people in management roles, value those individuals who go beyond doing what they are told to do and look […]
Read moreI sometimes say in jest that in the corporate world the “humans are the problem”. Communication, expectation and difference in perspectives are some of what causes executions of projects to not work. This is a response to frustrations expressed by people on my team that “other” people are doing things the “wrong” way. I find […]
Read moreApril 21st, Google will rank sites higher if they are mobile friendly. Check out your site’s mobile readiness with Google’s tool https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Read moreNicholas Zakas take on consensus building. http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2015/04/14/consensus-driven-development/
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I am working on an Android app which takes the menu data from Locu.com API display the dinner, drink, dessert menu and allows a customer to add items they are interested in into a ‘cart’ for the wait staff to look at and discuss the item the customers are interested in. I’m using the project […]
Read moreMike Long on Modern C++ and the C++ Memory Model.
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Think Like A Freak – Currently just started, but already loving the way the authors encourage us to use data instead of intuition to understand the world.
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A good graphic to have handy if you are using git
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What are the best life hacks to tackle procrastination? – Quora. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for it’s completion”
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My daughter C. designed the logo, intro video and the entire app screen for this fun math game. Try it out and let me know what you think. download on The 24 Game is an arithmetical card game in which the object is to find a way to manipulate four numbers so that the end result […]
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I want to learn from others on how to maintain good habits, one of those is to code everyday. I have missed a few days, but I’m very happy with my progress so far. It has resulted in 3 mobile apps published on the Android and Apple Appstores John Resig – Write Code Every Day
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Nice article about some of the differences between development in iOS and Android. http://nfarina.com/post/8239634061/ios-to-android
Read moreLarry Page: The Untold Story – Business Insider.
Read moreApps To Help You Get More Done In A Day – Business Insider.
Read moreA quick follow up to the simple tipping app for Andoroid This is the iOS version of the How To Tip app
Read moreI use Trello to keep track of my long term life goals. I setup ‘organizations’ for ‘health goals’, ‘work goals’, ‘money goals’, ‘family goals’. Then setup boards for each goal. I still use Remember The Milk for single task todo. Using Trello allows for multiple taks for each goal. I also look over all the […]
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How To Tip Calculator – Android Apps on Google Play. Calculate how much tips to pay. 10%, 15% or 20% Also includes a guideline on tipping in restaurants, bartender, barista, delivery person, hairstylist, cab driver, chauffeur, hotel housekeeper
Read moreIn trying to pick iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S3 to replace my Blackberry. I was torn and have switched back and forth for the last 4 days. I finally found an old document written on November 1, 2011 7:52 AM in Evernote. I wrote this document when I had the Blackberry and why I actually […]
Read morehttp://radar.oreilly.com/2012/04/computer-book-market-2011-part4.html Large Programming Languages — 50,000 — 200,000 units in 2011
Read moreIt’s that time of year for me to reflect on why we are here working everyday. Please chime in with your thoughts. What motivates us to be happy and motivated at work? Money Recognition Being valued Making a difference in the world and self motivation Money is a great motivator, it’s an enabler for future […]
Read moreHeads up… Do you communication enough with your direct reports? What about your peers in the same group? What about other peers across the company? And your management chain, 1 level, 2 level and ultimately up to your CEO? How often should you communicate? What is the most effective way to communicate (email, face to […]
Read moreThe Livestand from Yahoo! iPad app launched on Nov 2nd and became the #1 News iPad app and #2 overall app on the iTunes AppStore in 1 day. Today on Friday Nov 4th, it became the #1 app in 3 days on iTunes. You should try it yourself and compare it with Flipboard and Zite […]
Read moreHow To Set Performance Standards for Your Startup’s New Hires – Yahoo! News.
Read moreIn June 2011 this year, when I was looking at my investment accounts, I noticed that it had fully recovered from the nearly 40% drop since March 2009. I was in the middle of selling my house, moving into a new rental, planning for a wedding for next year and starting an investment in a […]
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Something I started doing last year is to ask for recommendations on my LinkedIn profile while I’m still working at the company. Instead of only doing so when I have already left the company. LinkedIn’s value is the business contacts and also an online resume with real recommendations from people who are also on LinkedIn. […]
Read moreHow many meetings have you been in, or email exchanges with a selected small number of people. What you discuss and decided doesn’t get surfaced to the right people? How do you know where to send the information to? In general, how do you get the right information to the right people? I’m trying something […]
Read moreI have been wanting to be a proficient iPhone programming for 1 year now. I have tried 3 times to start but have stopped for various reasons. My most recent attempt has worked, and here is what I’ve changed Focus, pay attention to only one thing at a time I have created a separate account […]
Read moreThat was my thought last year… however, I have changed my stance. The most successful way to get children and adults to change is to model the behavior yourself consistently. If you want people to act a certain way you model it over and over again. Don’t ask them to change though, just act on […]
Read moreBe prepare for meetings ahead of time. You will be in the minority and you will get more of what you want Have an agenda ahead of time and send it, you will likely get more time If you want to a decision to go your way, anticipate the arguments, the fear, convince the decider […]
Read moreI have a reminder to myself to review whether I’m doing what my job description is defined as Here is the job description and how I rate myself from 1 (needs work), 2 (meets), 3 (exceed) • Evaluates new technologies; builds prototypes if necessary 1 : I barely do any of these right now as […]
Read moreI have been mentoring several engineers and a common theme has emerged. We often don’t spend enough time actively managing our own career. These are the positive steps you should ask yourself. 1) The things I am working on right now, are they important and will they help further my career? 2) If they are […]
Read moreI will not try to repeat what a software architect is, you can read it here at wikipedia There are various types of architects. Solutions Architect Enterprise Architect Application Architect Systems Architect A large part of the duties of an architect in a large organization is to design and to communicate. In my experience as […]
Read moreThis article from NYT has been on the top 10 technology most emailed since December 29, 2010. Almost 16 days now. Read it at 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology Here is my take and I’ve added 2 more 1. GET A SMARTPHONE Also Why: I use my Blackberry for calendar, music […]
Read moreToday I have formally taken up the role of a Solution Architect to help Yahoo! properties on board with a new solution that I help create for Global News My role is defined as follows Solution Architect Expediter – identifies support needed Expert – determines the best solution for a given engagement Consultant – identifies […]
Read moreThe Typical Yahoo! Engineer from this point known as Y!E. (this is all my personal ramblings, if it doesn’t fit you, sorry.. it fits me) Y!E is someone who drools when his needs to design his software to work for 30 millions users. Potentially growing at 40% every year. Y!E designs software with no upper […]
Read more(Bringing back an old post from 2005) A Yahoo! Engineer (Y!E) is a very lucky person. Y!E gets into the office anywhere from 6:00am to 10:00am. If this was a bell curve, 80% fall under 9:30-10 Y!E gets to eat freshly cooked omelettes, hot cereal for under $3.00 Y!E gets free espresso drinks all day […]
Read moreWhen I graduated from Berkeley with a computer science degree in 1992, I just wanted to write code. The professor at the time whom I admired the most was a super C hacker who loved to use C pre-processor to build super macros. I would sometimes pass by his desk and just listen to his […]
Read moreYahoo! bought a company named Associated Content, which was recently changed to Yahoo! Contributor Network. I am the software architect on the backend content management system for Yahoo! Media and actively working with the engineer trying to integrate the great tools from Associated Content into the Yahoo! infrastructure. In order to truly understand the power […]
Read morememory flash back. Y! News launched it’s Most-emailed stories and photos page back in Feb 2000 and New York Times wrote an article that we were the first ones to aggregate and show the data back to users Back then, we looked at what users were emailing, when we troubleshoot the system and noticed a […]
Read moreJeff, my manager posted 5 Dysfunctional Attributes of Good Engineers I agree with all 5 and I think I suffer from all 5. I’ll call myself a good engineer. I think that is why I still have a job. lazy: check I’m hugely lazy, rather not do the work, but if I have to, I’ll […]
Read moreI admit I’m a bit obsessed with working at Yahoo! I don’t work very very long hours but I spend a lot of my free time thinking about Yahoo! I don’t believe I’m a workaholic, just someone who loves his job. I used to apologize for being so obsessed, but now I’ve come to terms […]
Read more( a random photo of SF civic center in the morning) Today a fellow Yahoo! engineer ping’ed me on IM and asked to shoot some 9-ball. While we were playing, he mentioned that he was leaving in 2 days for the greener pasture of smaller startups. While I was still taking in the news, I […]
Read moreToday a fellow Yahoo! engineer ping’ed me on IM and asked to shoot some 9-ball. While we were playing, he mentioned that he was leaving in 2 days for the greener pasture of smaller startups. While I was still taking in the news, I finished shooting in the first 7 balls straight and was about […]
Read moreImage is from Kontra coffee in Copenhagen with my reflection, they are showing off their World Barista Championship trophies hiring the right engineers has always been a challenge. Do you hiring the best technical person but his personality may not fit well in the team? Do you hire someone who can learn quickly but is […]
Read moreLesson of the day for engineers. Whatever large system you design, some component of it will fail one day. It’s a valuable exercise to draw a diagram of every system, machine, load balancer, DNS servers and start drawing a big X on each component and ask yourself what happens when that component fails. 1) What […]
Read moreIt’s a term I first learned 15 years ago in my computer OS class. Multitasking operating systems execute different programs ‘in parallel’ by giving each a little bit of time to execute. Because the CPU was fast enough, it appeared that every program was running at the same time. Now back to real work and […]
Read moreI was writing some PHP code while a co-worker from Florida was chatting with me about Munich and how perfect of a city it was. I was intending to write function addTopicSet() But I ended up typing function addGoodSeafood() Damn Lucas
Read moreWhen I was interviewing new engineers for Yahoo! News back in late 2004. I told them that they will part of a team that can make a difference. The team is small enough and our site audience is large enough (25 million) that they can contribute as much as they have the time and energy […]
Read moreI’m mostly referring to obsessiveness about cleaning your house. I know I am obsessive since I was really antsy all day, the moment Kate went down for bed at 8:00pm I started cleaning until 1:00am. Putting all her toys away, doing 3 loads of laundry, wiping along all the edges of the floor moldings, scrubbing […]
Read moreThe best team I ever worked in was the Electronic Services Group in SGI from 1995 to 1999. We built X11 Motif tools installed on every IRIX OS machine to search and apply patches automatically, log support calls over the internet, get hardware configurations and send back registration information. The tools were build on ontop […]
Read moreI am motivated by fear. Fear of failure, fear of not knowing, fear of dissapointing those around me. How about you?
Read moreWell we all knew this would happen. Google eventually would miss their quarterly numbers like all fast growing companies. For those of you who always lament that you didn’t buy Google when it was $200 or $300, this is your chance to test whether you are a real investor or just one of the sheep […]
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When troubleshooting software bugs I follow these simple rules 1) Try to first understand the system from beginning to end, ask questions until you feel like you understand it. 2) Do not trust what anyone else says, verify it for yourself. (watch HTTP traffic with LiveHTTPHeaders, watch TCP traffic with tcpdump) 3) Make assertions, ie […]
Read moreThe first thing my manager said to me when he walked in was that he heard Yahoo! News retained the #1 spot again in December. I’m a bit obsessed with statistics. The first day I joined Yahoo! in 1999, that was the first thing I looked at, and I continued to dig through the data […]
Read moreOften times I help people with long lingering software bugs or computer problems and when it’s finally fixed, they usually thank me profusely or express their undying love for me :-) I tell them that it’s the Geroge Orwell 1984 philosophy. If you have not read the book or you forgot what it’s about, read […]
Read moreSomeone asked me tonight. “You seem to like your job, now tell me one thing you don’t like about your job” I pondered that question and I can’t think of a single thing. I think I’m either in denial or I’m one hell of a lucky guy. I love the pressure of the working for […]
Read moreSomeone asked me tonight. “You seem to like your job, now tell me one thing you don’t like about your job” I pondered that question and I can’t think of a single thing. I think I’m either in denial or I’m one hell of a lucky guy. I love the pressure of the working for […]
Read moreI was having ramen at Ryowa in Berkeley with someone I met who was a consultant. I told her I worked at Yahoo! for 6 years already, she was shocked at first then she said it’s ok, there are a bunch of “lifers” at her company as well. Somehow that didn’t make me feel better […]
Read moreWork To Live or Live To Work? It’s an age old question and people have different perspectives on this. Of course there is your family and friends who see a completely different side of you for like 4 hours a day and weekend time and of course those are the people who will always be […]
Read moreIt’s an age old question and people have different perspectives on this. Of course there is your family and friends who see a completely different side of you for like 4 hours a day and weekend time and of course those are the people who will always be there for you and they are the […]
Read moreIt has happened to me so many times now I think I’ll just have to accept it and just go with the flow. Trying to explain what a software engineer does for Yahoo! News to people I meet or family members has been interesting. Here is a sample conversation with a friend I met. Friend: […]
Read moreIt has happened to me so many times now I think I’ll just have to accept it and just go with the flow. Trying to explain what a software engineer does for Yahoo! News to people I meet or family members has been interesting. Here is a sample conversation with a friend I met. Friend: […]
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My dad was the person who pushed me into software engineering in college (I was drifting a bit with no goals) But after working for 5 years in SGI, my dad saw how crazy my hours were and commented to me to start preparing myself to exit the industry and find another line of work […]
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A Yahoo! Engineer (Y!E) is a very lucky person. Y!E gets into the office anywhere from 6:00am to 10:00am. If this was a bell curve, 80% fall under 9:30-10 Y!E gets to eat freshly cooked omelettes, hot cereal for under $3.00 Y!E gets free espresso drinks all day Y!E gets free pool tables, ping pong, […]
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