Hasnain says:

Great read on burnout in the tech industry. I’m a few years late to this post but man did it resonate hard.

“Looking back, the best moment I had in 2020 was over Christmas break, sitting on the couch with my laptop. I spent all day, maybe 8 hours, reading about SolarWinds. My boyfriend told me to stop working. It wasn’t work, and it was great. I was learning something. Completing something. Doing something because I wanted to do it, not because it was the next urgent thing that needed to happen. It felt like work used to feel like. That’s what I’m looking forward to again.”

Hasnain says:

Great read on how hiring is now impacted by LLMs

“The tech interview process needs to catch up because LLM tools are changing the definition of a “great programmer”. Being a standout software engineer today includes proficiency with LLM tools, and knowing when to utilize them. An engineer who was standout in 2021 and refuses to use LLM tools today, will struggle to remain standout in many workplaces.”

Hasnain says:

“I think this is the point of middle management! Like, the good stuff that it can do when not squashed into number-crunching and goal-checkbox-filling. At each level of the system, people have the context to understand what they’re talking about, and the relationships to say what they mean. Alignment is not bestowed; it is negotiated.”

Hasnain says:

Learnt a lot of math and systems stuff here.

“It is entirely acceptable and workable to treat erasure codes as a magic function that turns 1 file into chunks and back. You can stop reading here, and not knowing the details of what math is being performed will not hinder your ability to leverage erasure codes to great effect in distributed systems or databases. (And if you continue, take what follows with a large grain of salt, as efficient erasure coding is a subject folk have spent years on, and the below is what I’ve collected from a couple of days of reading through papers I only half understand.)”

Hasnain says:

Finally got around to reading this which was published in April. Great read

“It’s impressive what a tiny team of experienced engineers can build. I had to triple-check that Bluesky’s core team was only two engineers for almost nine months, during which time they built the basics of the protocol, and made progress with the iOS and Android apps. Even now, Bluesky is a very lean team of around 12 engineers for the complexity they build with and the company’s growth. “

Hasnain says:

“We’ve explored a bunch of different databases, all used in production by some of the largest companies on the planet, and hopefully this will have exposed you to some technologies you weren’t familiar with before. Take this knowledge with you as you look to solve interesting problems.”

Hasnain says:

The math isn’t mathing: we see daily reports of at least 100 folks killed but the death toll is still 40k (tech4palestine has a great explainer on why). I wish the media would explain that more accurately. I wish I was wrong here (would be the happiest person in the world to be wrong) but I strongly suspect the toll is already at or above 200k

“The developments underscore the worsening humanitarian situation in the enclave, where tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Israeli military, and chronic hunger threatens the remaining civilian population. On Friday, two children and a woman were crushed to death while attempting to buy food from a bakery in central Gaza.”

Hasnain says:

This is the same guy who’s said a lot of disgraceful stuff about Palestinians in the past. And even he’s calling it like it is.

““There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re now operating in Jabaliya. They’re basically cleaning the territory of Arabs,” he said, referring to towns and cities in northern Gaza where a renewed Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas has caused extensive damage in recent months. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began in response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.”

Hasnain says:

“In the meantime, Broden, Nazareth and Voth have all graduated high school. Only Broden has decided to continue working on the tetrahedron problem — when he’s not busy with college coursework — but all three are considering math careers. “It feels meaningful that I’m trying to contribute to something bigger than myself, to the nature of truth,” Nazareth said. It all starts with asking the right question.”

Hasnain says:

“Looking at the incoming Trump administration, his Republican governing trifecta, and the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, Rabin-Havt says: ”The truth is, we are condemned to the future we are going to be forced to live in because two octogenarians had egos too big to know when they had to quit: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Joe Biden.””