Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
A long time ago, a colleague recounted how his latest interview with a candidate went. Something about the candidate’s work experience seemed off, so my colleague decided to test him with a seemingly simple question.
Internet speed keeps getting faster every year, and today’s mobile devices often outperform older desktops. But just a few years ago, catering to mobile users was a delicate art. If you wanted to offer a smooth experience, you had to minimize the number and size of JavaScript files. A large file could freeze or even crash a mobile device. Desktop users on older browsers like Internet Explorer faced similar challenges.
One day, I recommended a candidate for a position at work to my recruiter. Before I could even get back to my desk, I received a curt reply: "Sorry, this won't work. We aren't hiring people from USC anymore."
A company I worked for once spent a fortune installing a turnstile and key card system to secure the building. The idea was simple: track the entry and exit of every employee. The execution, however, was anything but simple.
At one company I worked at, we had a mysterious bug that customers suddenly started complaining about. Their accounts were being deactivated for no reason, despite them paying for their subscriptions. After digging into the issue, we confirmed the problem: paying customers were being incorrectly marked as inactive. It wasn’t a widespread issue, just enough to raise eyebrows, and it even slipped past all our tests.
When I left my previous job, I wanted to do things right. I documented everything about my work so thoroughly that I thought my replacement could step in without missing a beat. I wrote down every detail: the clients I worked with, the special cases I handled, and even the unconventional ways I generated reports. I wrapped it all up before handing in my two weeks' notice.
I was sad when I heard Paramount axed the Comedy Central website. Twenty-five years of content, gone. Why couldn’t they just let the site run indefinitely, even on autopilot? The reason: cost-cutting measures. Disney+ made a similar move when Willow flopped. Instead of letting the show quietly live on the platform, they erased it completely. Again, for cost-cutting measures.
Earlier in my career, every single person on my team had a personal website. At lunch, we’d talk about how we built them, diving into servers, Fail2Ban setups, zip bombs, and the weird little quirks we each added. It was fun, it was ours, and it felt like building a tiny home on the web.
I might be alone on this, but I’m willing to stand by it: AWS is too expensive. Not only is it costly, but it’s also absurdly complex. If a product requires you to get certified just to use it effectively, it might not be the right fit for everyone.
On a video call, silence feels awkward. It turns a conversation into a performance where every moment, even a pause to think, gets judged. Neil Postman talks about this in Amusing Ourselves to Death, but let me try to explain it with an example.
