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 #36

airplane on ground surrounded with trees

Photo by David Kovalenko on Unsplash

tl;dr: Underrated traits of the best engineers:

1) Crisp writers and communicators.

2) Aim for the broadest impact.

In this post, Amber “guides other engineers up and down the org chart as they weigh their next career moves, leaning on the frameworks and lessons she’s pulled from in her own career.”

Strategies for working with people you don’t like

tl;dr: “They called it the “group test”; around 8 of us were led to a room and asked to solve a puzzle together. Each of us was given an information pack, there was a white board, and a timer ticking down from 60 minutes.”

tl;dr: “The bad news is that this was on Friday, and we needed to have the videos back up at most for Tuesday morning. We had to upload ~8TB of data with a 30MB/s connection. Not ideal, and I had to think about something fast.”

tl;dr: “Shibboleths are historically a word that indicate membership in a particular group or culture… I have only studied and worked in the field for around a decade, but in that time I believe I have learned to recognize some key “distsys shibboleths” that help me recognize when I can trust what a vendor or other engineer is telling me.”

Showcasing a quality-oriented process for achieving higher reliability in microservices acting together to improve the platform.

tl;dr: “Today is my birthday. I turn 70… I’ve jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year…”:

1) About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.

2) No one is as impressed with your possessions as you are.

3) Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become.

4) Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.

5) Don’t keep making the same mistakes; try to make new mistakes.