From the TL;DR in Tech archive, originally sent on Substack. Some links may have died since.

tl;dr in tech by Joe Karlsson - Issue #22

tl;dr: No joke. This article has made me more money than anything else I have ever read. Haseeb explains each of the following in detail:

1) Get everything in writing.

2) Always keep the door open.

3) Information is power.

4) Always be positive.

5) Don’t be the decision maker.

6) Have alternatives.

7) Proclaim reasons for everything.

8) Be motivated by more than just money.

9) Understand what they value.

10) Be winnable.

tl;dr: “I split the emotions into good vs. bad to get a clearer read of my mood. The overall score swings between -1 (very bad) and 1 (very good). I don’t want to be spammed with cats every time I itch my nose and trigger a frame of video that’s interpreted as negative so I added a three-second trailing average to look for prolonged periods of negative emotion.”

tl;dr: “Reach out to the maintainers and offer them generous speaking fees for remote talks to your engineering team.” Simon believes that companies are more likely to spend on a one-off paid speaking opportunities than pay a monthly donation. If the maintainer is not an experienced speaker, find a member of your team to act as a host and gather questions from your engineers in advance to run the session as a Q&A.

Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.

tl;dr: “I have nothing against process but startups generally implement them way too early and way too often.” Ravi’s advice to those thinking about instituting a new process is to answer this question: “If you could only get one thing done this year, what would it be?” Whatever the answer is, don’t waste your time on anything else. “Take your best person, make them responsible for solving that problem, and give them everything and everyone they need to make it happen.”

tl;dr: If anyone gets stuck on something for more than 30 minutes, they should ask for help. Why?

1) Simply formulating the question to ask allows us to answer the problem ourselves.

2) We are stuck because of something we don’t know, making it impossible to proceed.

3) We don’t get frustrated.

4) Reduces costs.

tl;dr: Being data-driven has been a priority for companies but many have seen mixed results. According to a survey of executives, company culture is a harder hurdle to clear than any technical problem, and the explosion of the amount of data, privacy concerns and data ownership keep making the task harder. Randy offers three principles:

1) Think different and be creative.

2) Fail fast, learn faster.

3) Focus on the long-term.

tl;dr: “Infrastructure Platform teams enable organizations to scale delivery by solving common product and non-functional requirements with resilient solutions.” The 7 key principles that can help you build the right thing are discussed.

tl;dr: Seth discusses the steps he’s taken to ensure that the packages he’s developed, notably urllib3, are secure. “I hope that some of the knowledge I’ve gained along the way can help you secure your own packages as well as inspiring some adversarial security-minded thinking.”

tl;dr: “If you want to become a manager, be aware that you’ll have to forgo some of what you probably like most about your field,” such as:

1) Focus time

2) Short feedback cycles - “management doesn’t yield instantaneous results.”

3) Conflict avoidance - as a manager you have to deliver the bad news.

4) Making technical decisions.

5) Learning new technical skills.