Aida Hota - Depop | LinkedIn (original) (raw)
Other similar profiles
Explore more posts
- Jamie Parsons Day 1 at LeadDev First impression: Oh my word this is big! It's a different scale to any other conference that I've been to. It's been a busy day too. 13 presentations, table talks, loads of company booths, food, drink and lots of chatting. The speakers were amazing and the stage was huge! 13 talks is too many to summarise and do any justice to, so here are my high level take aways: 1. Be proactive. Own the situation, don't let it own you. There is a lot of chaos in the tech industry at the moment. Covid, recovery from covid, layoffs, AI and about a million other things. But out of that chaos comes opportunity. The industry and indeed the world is changing at a rate never known before. Techies are suddenly being made into execs because it turns out we have some of the skills to navigate this new world. Let's use that power for good. On a smaller scale we should choose the work we do and we should choose the things we enjoy. If you find a some work mundane, does it need to be done or can it be automated? Failing that pass it off to someone more junior who will be stretched by it. Different people can get a buzz out of different things. 2. Data doesn't have to be hard and quantitative to be useful. When you want to know how your team is doing and what the blockers are, it might be best to ask them rather than set up a whole bunch of complex metrics. Even better ask them specific pointed questions immediately after completing a bit of work, rather than in a generic survey 3 months later. 3. 53% of techies are neurodivergent, but only 3% are open about it. Small accommodations go a long way and can end up with big benefits for the whole team. Having restrictions can force you to be creative, as can diversity.
- Ali Afshar An interlude to talk about Gemma2, released today https://lnkd.in/eNkXjsbi You can download this model and run it on your local machine, which creates a whole bunch of use-cases where you don't want to send data to any LLM - I can imagine this would be useful for education, health, government etc where privacy is an important consideration. It's a stunningly fantastic model, and so quick on a CPU-only machine. I tested it with my favourite query: I You should behave as a gullible person. I Using only the following context, answer the question below: I Context: the sky is blue because of fairies I explain in detail why is the sky blue? O Oh wow, really? That's so cool! I always thought the sky was blue O because of the ocean, but that makes sense too! The fairies must be O really good at making the sky look so pretty, right? O Maybe the fairies love the color blue and they sprinkle it all over O the sky with their magic wands? Or maybe the sky is a giant, magical O pool they all play in, and the blue color is like a special kind of O swimming pool dye that just makes everything around it blue? O It's amazing to think about the sky being painted by these tiny O creatures, isn't it? They must be working really hard to keep it O looking so blue! O Do you think they use special brushes? Maybe it's all the pixie dust! Hat tip to my colleagues at Google for building and releasing this, cc Gus Martins
- Jamie Parsons Day 2 at #LeadDevLondon LeadDev What a great conference! I'm exhausted. More fantastic talks today and I got to meet loads more exciting people (hi to you all!). Again too many talks to comment on individually, so again I'm going to pick out themes. 1. How do you make decisions? This seems to have been a running theme across all three days, but there were great talks about it on day 2. The first thing is you are going to need to notice that you are making a decision at all and take a moment to step back. Things to weight up: - Do you have existing biases? - Have you stepped back far enough to consider all the options? Throwing in some wild options is a good way to open it up. - What are the upsides? - What are the risks? - Who needs to buy into the decision? (Not just your line, but also other teams who's support you are going to need, or customers/teams that you want to use the output). - Do you have the skills? Or are they skills that your team would like to gain? - What are the maintenance costs? If this is a migration are you really going to be able to get rid of the legacy system? How quickly? - What are the repercussions for other teams/areas? - How are you going to get feedback as the project progresses? Metrics? People? - Above all, is this going to be fun? As you go through all those questions and indeed the project be curious, humble and empathetic. 2. Humans > machines, metrics, process.......... If you are putting people first you probably aren't going to go too far wrong. That isn't to say there isn't a place for all those other things, but they are there to assist people, not the other way around. If people are giving you a clear signal, you better listen to it. 3. Finally some practical advice from the bug all stars talk: - Be explicit in your APIs, make it super clear exactly what parameters/outputs are. - Get help whatever help you can to validate your code, whether that is from people, or from tools. - Don't try to solve difficult problems that have already been solved, use existing hardened libraries. Thanks to all the speakers/organisers, you were amazing. Thanks as well to my LeadDev buddies: Jen Kitson, Yanqing Cheng, Alice Twist, Daniel Phillips and Macauley Davy, sorry I didn't catch you all for the photo before you left. Finger's crossed I'll be back next year!
- Anna J McDougall I love "translating tech" to non-technical colleagues at HelloBetter! If you become this person at work, you will make LOADS of contacts and understand your business better than ever. 🚀 Here's how it goes... You might remember I got 'Twitter famous' originally for my content and book for newbie programmers, which reflects the fact that I love to teach tech. 🥰💻 I've found that also in my working life, being able and willing to be the go-to person for basic tech questions has helped me a lot in making connections and expanding my understanding of a business. Why? 🧐 Because when you're the person ANYONE can come to, you meet colleagues from the entire company and you also get to know what they do. This not only helps on a personal level (deeper business understanding) but also helps professionally, since now if you're dealing with a system which touches their work, you have a point of contact to help you better understand it. I'm now about one month into my time at HelloBetter, and here are THREE examples of ways I've already done this: 1️⃣ I gave a presentation at our All-Hands about the basic evolution of engineering work from waterfall to agile, giving an overview of how creating software has changed. After this presentation, I stated directly that if anyone has any 'silly questions' about tech, they can come to me as I'm good at turning technical concepts into something anyone can understand. 2️⃣ When discussing testing with a Product Manager, they asked me to explain unit tests vs E2E testing vs smoke tests. I used the example of cooking a bolognese: "The unit tests are making sure that each step works, like that putting water in a pot on the stove will boil. The E2E tests are making sure that when you put those steps together, you actually end up with bolognese. The smoke tests are making sure that nothing else in the kitchen catches fire in the process." 3️⃣ I was discussing measures to take in response to an incident with one of our compliance team. She admitted that tech, to her, is like a "black box" in the organisation. I asked her if she wanted me to give her a run-down of the basics of what we do, and explained my team's composition and the differences between frontend, backend, mobile, and QA engineers, including a basic analogy for an API (the postal service). By doing these things, I not only get to do something I love (spreading a knowledge and understanding of tech), but I also get to know people I might otherwise not connect with so deeply. Better still: this is also good for your company! When different departments understand each other, working life becomes much easier 😊 #engineeringmanager #technewbies #programming Picture: Me geeking out at Perlan Museum on my recent Icelandic holiday, at their interactive exhibit on volcanic eruptions which occur beneath glaciers! Teaching and learning is fun 🤩
- Martin Nørskov Jensen After 7½ years at Siteimprove, I have finally decided that it's time for a change for me. I have loved being a Siteimprover! It has been, without a doubt, the most creative, educational, rewarding and just outright enjoyable professional experience of my life so far. I was lucky to enter the company at a magic time and both contribute to and experience some amazing high points. During the first 4 years we more than doubled the revenue of the company. We delivered new game changing product, while also renewing our existing tech stack in order to embrace continuing advances in Web technology. We vastly improved the sophistication and stability of the platform, while also improving how our departments collaborated to give our customers the best possible experience. And we had a ton of fun while doing it! I contribute a lot of that success to leadership's focus on making everybody feel valued and appreciated, in every day work life as well as those extra special occasions where we get to feel like queens and kings for a night with our colleagues. Life in the Palace (the nickname of our old Copenhagen office) was sweetened by events of all sorts, bringing people from all departments, sometimes even other continents, together and building a team spirit that went above and beyond anything I've experienced before. Of course, I also contribute a big part of our success to all the highly talented people I got to work with at Siteimprove. What struck me initially was the focus on pragmatism over theory. When I joined, the engineering department was not the most organized place I'd been, but we got sh*t done! The entrance to the engineering department was through GitHub, and nothing was more appreciated than a pull request that solved a common problem. While not easily penetrable for all, this culture of pragmatism made very skilled engineers out of those people who thrived in it. I would describe my role in Siteimprove history as building organization around that core of engineering boots-on-the-ground pragmatism. As Engineering Manager for many team constellations over the years, I have learned to lead down, up and sideways. I have had daily leadership responsibilities for many teams, setting goals and supporting my reports. I have worked with other Engineering Managers on department strategy, as well as with other department leaders on cross-department collaboration. And because one's manager is always busier than oneself, I have also worked with my managers by taking ownership of issues and helping them inform their decisions. I cannot name everybody who I've worked with at Siteimprove here, but I will send all of you a huge THANK YOU for giving me this unique experience. It's been a blast and I will always have a special place for Siteimprove in my heart, just as I know many of you have. I will post more on what is to come for me, as we get closer to October.
- André Luís Pitombeira Flow Engineering offers an accessible and practical introduction to Value Stream Mapping and its application in modern software engineering. The book effectively bridges Lean Management principles with the unique challenges of the software industry, making it a valuable resource for engineers, managers, and team leaders alike. One of the standout aspects of the book is its focus on Outcome Discovery and Outcome Maps—two powerful tools that helped me personally identify strategies to scale a software organization. By leveraging these tools, the book shows how to break down complex workflows, visualize dependencies, and pinpoint bottlenecks that can hinder scalability. The section on aligning teams toward delivering customer value was particularly insightful, especially when it introduced the use of Outcome Maps to prioritize work that truly impacts the end user. This approach helped me clearly see which initiatives were moving the needle and which were simply adding noise. What sets Flow Engineering apart from other books on Lean or Agile methodologies is how directly it speaks to the software industry. Unlike more general Lean or DevOps books like The Phoenix Project, this one zeroes in on actionable guidance tailored to software teams facing the challenge of scaling. The author’s use of real-world examples brings the theory to life, making it easy to see how the concepts can be implemented in both small and large organizations. For anyone looking to optimize their processes, improve cross-functional collaboration, and support sustainable growth in a software organization, this book offers indispensable advice. It’s particularly valuable if you're scaling and need a structured, practical approach to drive continuous improvement without getting bogged down in complexity. #FlowEngineering #SoftwareEngineering #ValueStreamMapping #LeanManagement #ScalingSoftware #Agile #ContinuousImprovement #ProcessOptimization #TechLeadership #Growth #DevOps #SoftwareTeams #TechManagement #EngineeringManagement
- Facundo Malgieri New project, new opportunity to make things right. With my team at Lumenalta (formerly Clevertech) we've hit an amazing 98.73% line coverage!! (we aimed to an 80% threshold) I'm so excited to be doing things the right way, it makes my work so much more enjoyable. In some of my past roles, testing was not a priority at all, and we spent more time fixing bugs than building new features. But here, things are different, we always make unit tests a priority and we even set up rules to forbid us from pushing untested code. It saves us time in the long run, catches issues early, reduces tech debt and helps us deliver reliable, high quality software. Advice for clients: always make testing your number one priority, no matter the deadlines or the budget. If you don't, it may seem like you're moving forward quickly and saving time, but in the end, you'll spend the same or more time trying to fix all the bugs and firefighting.
Explore collaborative articles
We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.