An effective engineering team is highly collaborative, focused on delivering high quality code with velocity. The team sets the standard for other teams to follow in how they design software, write and test their software and ultimately delivering business value to the customer. The team functions as a coherent group, helping each other succeed, having […]
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If you are a leader and/or a manager of people, go read You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a Good Coach – HBR.org
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This week I practiced what Lyn Campbell recommended during our interview on Impactful Engineer (read here). I asked for feedback from someone I work with. I asked her how she thinks I can improve in meetings. She generously took the time to give me the following feedback During one of our meetings about a previous […]
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This YouTube video really cracked me up. An immigrant kid from Hong Kong, born in Shanghai, immigrated to L.A, went to UC San Diego, majored in economics, told his parents he would rather disappoint them for a few years than disappoint himself for life, did standup, drove for Uber, auditioned 100+ times for small parts […]
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So Far I’ve deleted all my infinite scrolling apps (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter). I’ve stopped reading online news and only read a printed Sunday paper. I’ve paid for products to remove ads (Cruncy Roll, YouTube, Pandora). Call To Action To Take Back Attention & Time Today, I listened to the founder of Center For Humane […]
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Who Is On Your Team? Taking a journey alone is not only difficult, lonely but also not sustainable. Starting with simple personal goals such as exercising. If I am only accountable to myself, I can skip a day, skip a week, skip a month, I only have to answer to my nagging self. If I […]
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Seth Godin writes with the smallest number of words to convey the clearest of messages. Here he explains GDPR and the market’s dilemma “Talk to people who want to be talked to. Market to people who want to be marketed to. Because anticipated, personal and relevant messages will always outperform spam. And spam is in […]
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The myth of ‘good timing’ from Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/the-moment-of-maximum-leverage.html
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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 learned something new today. From page 160 of the book “Everybody Lies”. A great reminder to “Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides” You can read more here from author Seth Stephens – Davidowtiz (bio) and the op-ed pieces he wrote for NYTimes Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable
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Recently I’m experimenting with starting up bookclubs at work in order to meet new people and helping to instill the habit of book reading into my own life. Here is what I’m doing Create a #bookclub channel on Slack Create a document with a list of books that anyone can propose Once there are 5 […]
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Give this a read, virtues of print news instead of online and breaking news. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/two-months-news-newspapers.html?
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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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There is a Chinese proverb 難得糊塗 that my dad put up on the wall of our home which he wrote the calligraphy with Chinese ink and paper. Every day at home, I would see it. When I was younger, my dad was very angry and frustrated with life. And I like to be believe that he stared […]
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My daughter loves watching anime (Haikyuu, Yuri on Ice), she adores owning physical books, she loves drawing anime characters. She is sometimes quiet about other things, but never about these unmistakable passions in her life. She is unwavering, unapologetic and ever in love with these passions in her life. It is infectious, because of her, […]
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I loved this book (Tell Me More, by Kelly Corrigan). Once started, I couldn’t put it down. It is a book about the author’s journey to learn to do and say the hardest things in life. To learn to listen to her daughter and her dying father. I will just quote from her website instead. […]
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This podcast episode from one of My ‘Virtual Brain Trust’, Seth Godin, has given me a framework to talk about how I’ve structured my life around longer term vision leading to the right short term actions. Seth Godin’s Akimbo Podcast Finite and Infinite Games The idea is that there are finite games and infinite games. […]
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Welcome To My Introvert World I used to be ashamed to be an introvert. I thought I was weird for not enjoying cocktail parties. Everyone else seem to be having a grand old time, small talking about the weather, what they did for a living, leaving a conversation after 5 minutes so they can mingle […]
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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!
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Learn something, learn anything. Learn a new sport, learn to be better at a sport you are good at. Learn a new skill, learn to use part of your brain you seldom use. Learn to be empathetic, learn to listen to others. Learn how to love yourself more than you do at this moment. Learn […]
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Read about happiness here http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/everything-you-should-know-about-happiness-in-one-infographic
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I Have A Point .. Bare With Me :D There are great companies in the eyes of the public. These could be Fortune’s 100 best places to work US Stock Market top 10 companies by market cap Companies with most number of eye balls <insert> however you want to define great companies Now let’s say […]
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Presentations!! I don’t like giving presentations, even though my job and my passion with Impactful Engineer requires me to. Why Don’t I like Presentations? I don’t like my voice in front of a big audience I don’t speak clearly enough and I sometimes mumble I don’t enunciate words clearly (I learned English when I was […]
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Imagine this … Someone invites you to a 1/2 hour meeting on a topic you are familiar with and an agenda that is clear …… You spend 2 hours researching, writing down your thoughts ahead of time with 3 possible solutions and with pros and cons ……. You go into the meeting, you ask the […]
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Here are my current tools to getting things done in 2018. I optimize for capturing 100% of my brain on paper or electronic. I do not optimize for having only a single place for a task or idea. Things that are time sensitive or urgent I use Google Reminders with time due dates I also […]
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(This is the first blog post of Impactful Engineer, make sure to sign up for our monthly interviews with software engineering leaders) You are someone who would like to mentor someone else in their professional career to help them grow their influence and impact. More Comprehensive Reference Material Mentor’s Guide – Anita Borg Institute for […]
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a good overview of some of the use cases of blockchain Technology https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf
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ImpactfulEngineer.org Mission The mission of Impactful Engineer is to empower software engineers to build a meaningful and impactful lifelong career through interviews with leaders in the industry.
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Hedonic Treadmill I’ve noticed that when I received really good news such as a pay raise, a promotion, really great results from a test (in college). My happiness level rises up for a very short time (less than 1 hour), then my emotion tapers off back to what it was before. So let’s say my […]
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How to collaborate with remote workers who are in another office or working from home. https://blog.trello.com/6-mistakes-when-you-work-in-office-but-have-remote-team-members
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Facebook Doesn’t Like What It Sees When It Looks in the Mirror https://nyti.ms/2FLVBei Turns out, an enlightened, socially engaged Facebook has a similar outlook as the amoral, audience-seeking Facebook. Each sees connecting online as key to the good life.
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Very inspiring from Edmond Lau of The Effective Engineer http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-most-intense-year-of-growth
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Someone I admire said “Nothing Good Comes Easy”. Apparently that is not a new saying. Anything worthwhile takes hard work. Ask any athlete who is on top of their game how much training and preparation they have to do to get ready.
Read more“We kept saying this was not a one-off. This was a toolbox anyone can use,” Ms. DiResta said. “We told the tech companies that they had created a mass way to reach Americans.” She Warned of ‘Peer-to-Peer Misinformation.’ Congress Listened. https://nyti.ms/2jkZH6e
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Well, I have some time on my hands so I decided to create a sleeve for my badminton birdie tubes. Right now it’s paper, but I am hoping to print them on elastic fabric so they can be reused. 2nd iteration with color!
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The psychologist Angela Duckworth argues that a person’s level of stick-to-itiveness is directly related to their level of success. No big surprise there. But grit, she says, isn’t something you’re born with — it can be learned. Here’s how. Her TED talk Duration: 44:54, Played: 42:27 Published: 5/4/16 8:00:00 PM Episode Download Link (31 MB): […]
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Linux Mag asked Bill Joy (creator of VI): “So you didn’t really write vi in one weekend like everybody says?” No. It took a long time. It was really hard to do because you’ve got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That’s also the reason you have […]
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On Oct 5th, my co-worker Ollie R. and I were chatting during breakfast and he was showing me his Android Wear watch. When he told me that developing for wearable devices is pretty new and something worth getting into, I went to Amazon the next day and bought a refurbished 2014 Moto 360 for $112 […]
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When my daughter goes off to college, I will be so happy for her. She will be growing into the wonderful woman I know she will become.
Read moreThe Future of European Transit: Driverless and Utilitarian https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/technology/the-future-of-european-transit-driverless-and-utilitarian.html
Read moreA contrast to what people ( myself included) Post publicly vs privately searching on Google. Just a great reminder to look at social media posts with the awareness that it is partial truth On social media, the top descriptors to complete the phrase “My husband is …” are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the […]
Read moreNew York Times technology reporter Mike Isaac talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode about the controversies that have plagued Uber for the past two months. In a new profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Isaac reported that the company ran afoul of Apple’s rules by keeping track of the iPhones on […]
Read moreAll of us have a key that enters our front door. We believe that no one else can get in without a key and we entrust this front door key only to people we absolutely trust. The security of your front door is an illusion. The door can be easily broken […]
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 […]
Read moreI understand the free services like LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, Facebook are supported by ads. But the ads are not well targeted or creepy and repetitive, too much in your face (2nd post on LinkedIn, every 5-7 posts on Yahoo.com) and ultimately waste a lot of my time scrolling pass them in order to see relevant content. […]
Read moreSign of the times, no more freebies. I am not sure how this will convince me to stay using Evernote or pay for it. It only makes me want to export my notes out to Google docs or One Note. “At Evernote, we are committed not only to making you as productive as you can […]
Read moreMarking my 2nd month at Splunk. I really love the culture of being data driven at everything we do. Being here at Splunk already opened up my mind as to how I can grow and learn as an engineer because of the people and the relentless focus on execution and innovation.
Read moreIt’s not incompetence, but competence, that causes companies to be disrupted. That applies to big companies and small, as well as people too. Or so argue Clayton Christensen and Marc Andreessen in this podcast, based on a conversation at Startup Grind (moderated by Derek Anderson) between the a16z co-founder and Harvard Business School professor Christensen […]
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My daughter is taking up writing and publishing her stories publicly on WattPad. Her current series is based on the seven sins and she is trying to take on seven different writing styles. Give it a try and support her efforts in putting her writing out there :) You will have to sign up for […]
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 from a customer of my restaurant I Privé) We all love to take advantage of user contributed reviews such as Yelp, Amazon, Airbnb. They give us another trustworthy dimension to decide whether we want to go to a particular restaurant, buy that bluetooth headphone or rent that vacation apartment. Based on owning […]
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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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Source: One Founder’s Desperate Battle To Keep Workers Employed | Caroline Fairchild | LinkedIn Stembel can’t afford to hire a number two because she is devoting a significant portion of her revenue to a cost that her competitors eschewed long ago. Namely, she employs all 48 of her workers — her bike couriers, car drivers and […]
Read moreWhat I want for Christmas from LinkedIn Incentivize people to actually update their profiles and update with a real resume Either make resume (in PDF) a first class part of your LinkedIn professional profile. (do not send an update to your network, I don’t mind my boss finds an updated resume, but I don’t want […]
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No only can you now use Yahoo to check emails from GMail and AOL. The coolest feature is that Yahoo implemented a backend search that is way better than any email client could do. Check out how cool and fast the searches are. Download here https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/features/multiplemailboxes Power users: try these searches from:tony – emails sent from yahoo.com […]
Read morelink: http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/18-ways-to-be-more-positive/
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I’m proud to work for Yahoo, to be part of the dog fooding of this new app inside Yahoo. The team that worked on the new Yahoo Messenger app is awesome! Check out the features!! http://yahoo.tumblr.com/ and http://messenger.yahoo.com Animated gif search from tumblr directly from Yahoo Messenger unsend (is that even a word?) any message, […]
Read moreInteresting look at automation at the task level.. the mundane parts of the job can be automated, but not the entire job. Automation Will Change Jobs More Than Kill Them http://nyti.ms/1kfj78b – Tony Tam
Read moreWe do not pay for cable, never did and do not have a TV. We do have movie projector and a 90″ drop down screen. Looking at our digital entertainment obligations: We get recent DVD ‘s free from the San Francisco public library. We pay for Comcast for 6mbps for faster internet than AT&T, this […]
Read moreEvernote Basic subscribers can save up to five emails to their Evernote account. To continue using the feature, you must upgrade your Evernote account. Today when I emailed a note to my notebook, I got the above paywall message. I used to love Evernote. You can create notes very quickly, you can email notes to […]
Read moreThe best way to tell if your speech is going to go well is to give your speech. The best way to find out if your new product has market appeal is to try to sell it. The best way to become a teacher is to teach. There’s a huge need for study, refinement and […]
Read moreIt wasn’t Professor Plum in the Library with the Candlestick. So what killed Twitter? Source: Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium
Read moreFrom Pamela Fox of Kahn Academy http://blog.pamelafox.org/2015/10/voice-coaching-what-i-learned.html I use my voice a lot. I give talks at conferences, I teach workshops for GDI, and I record videos for Khan Academy. But I’ve never loved my voice. I grew up with British parents, so I spent my life wishing I had an accent that sounded as […]
Read morePlatforms, distribution and audience http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/14/distribution-and-audience – Tony Tam
Read moreEven though I work in high tech, I don’t really understand business that loose money during their entire existence. How can that be a business? I invest in a restaurant that is luckily profitable after 1 year. We offer a product people value and are willing to pay for. We have investors who want to […]
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We are celebrating my mom’s 74th birthday today. She is a medical licensed pediatrician in China. When my family immigrated to the United States in 1980, her medical degree was not recognized here in the states and she lack the basic English to be medical doctor here. She took on a job as a seamstress […]
Read moreAfter owning the I Prive restaurant for over a year and helping run the digital infrastructure as well as posting job openings on Craigslist, I have a theory that a lot of people who used to work part time at restaurants are now working as drivers for Lyft or Uber. The hours are probably more […]
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I have played badminton for half my life. Four years in high school, four years for the UC Berkeley club, then I picked it up again very seriously trained and competed for 3 years and now I play for fun with my co-worker and near my house. I love playing of course because of […]
Read morequoted from synopsis East•Side Sushi introduces us to Juana, a working-class Latina single mother who strives to become a sushi chef. Years of working in the food industry have made Juana’s hands fast—very fast. She can slice and dice anything you throw at her with great speed and precision. Forced to give up her fruit-vending […]
Read more(dinner at the restaurant that I own in Burlingame, I Privé ) / stepping up my high horse I would love to see this in the perfect world for a product support experience. 1) Takes me zero effort to report a problem, make this as easy as possible. Realtime chats, email. 2) I get an […]
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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 […]
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In the restaurant that I own, I Privé in downtown Burlingame we receive a lot of feedback from our customers. Yelp, Travelocity and Facebook users send us both positive and negative reviews, all of them public. We solicit private feedback from our diners via email. We leave paper forms in the final bill before they […]
Read moreI love listening to podcasts. This is a good list of podcast by developers for developers. I am currently catching up on the old episodes of ‘Debug’ http://simpleprogrammer.com/2014/03/10/ultimate-list-developer-podcasts/ – Tony Tam
Read more“From conducting Equity Research at Thomas Weisel to entering tech as the CFO of Playdom (which she helped sell to Disney for $760mm), Christa Quarles went on to senior roles at Disney and Nextdoor. She is now the CFO of OpenTable and is in charge of figuring out the strategy for what OpenTable does next […]
Read morehttp://www.rosietheriveter.org/ “As the U.S. faced a new and daunting challenge of a global war in the 1940s, people on the home front came together as never before. The stories of their struggles, which broke barriers and shaped many of today’s best social innovations, chart a path for new vision today. Rosie the Riveter is a […]
Read moreGet IP Address from Command Line http://davidwalsh.name/get-ip-address
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We will all die one day. That is the way of life, it’s interesting that even kids realize their parents will die one day and they don’t seem very surprised by that. It’s an eventual fact all humans accept as part of life. People often say “live life as if it’s your last”. I interpret […]
Read more(repost from 1/9/2007) I believe I have a healthy relationship with money. I know how to invest my money, I know how to earn money, and most importantly I know how to spend money on the people in my life. I usually don’t make such bold statements since I’m usually a humble person. Money in […]
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Don’t be that person who does not respond to emails who does not respond to feedback who is late to meetings who says he will do something but doesn’t after repeatedly reminded who speaks at a level of detail that is too little or too much in an executive meeting who gets too emotional in […]
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(Repost from 2006) So this film producer and I were chatting on the train back from Copenhagen and we got on the subject of working for Yahoo! and I was telling him about how I got a very unique perspective about the major news events the last 7 years. Almost 100% of the people out there […]
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 […]
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I grew up in communist China from 1970 to 1979 before coming to the United States. This photo is a rare photo of our family together. This is the time when China just opened their immigration policy to allow people to leave China. My mom was a pediatrician, my dad was an architect. I have […]
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I was visiting this jewelry store in Rome by a very famous jewelry maker Diego Percossi Papi (exibition). The shop is tiny and I was a bit intimidated since the jewelry were all well over $1,000. I looked into the shop for a good 5 minutes until the owner/designer buzzed me in and told me […]
Read moreIn 2013, public relations executive Justine Sacco tweeted an offensive AIDS joke before boarding a flight to South Africa. By the time she landed, she had been denounced around the world, and lost her job soon after. Did Sacco deserve her public humiliation? Or was she yet another victim of social media shaming and a […]
Read moreShout out to Micharl Radwin of Yahoo. https://ruthlessray.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/inventing-favicon-ico/
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