Francis Wu

🌟 Attention Engineering Managers and Technical Leaders! 🌟 In just two weeks, on June 28th at 10 AM PDT, I’m excited to host an interactive roundtable on Feature Flags and Delivery in conjunction with ELC! 🚀 Why Attend? This is a collaborative discussion where your expertise and curiosity are key! Whether you're experienced or eager to learn, your contributions are invaluable. 🔍 Discussion Points: - Decoupling Processes - Boosting Team Efficiency - Optimizing Feature Delivery - Tracking Platform Usage Expect rich conversations on best practices, unique implementations, methodologies, and the latest tools enhancing feature flagging and delivery. Who Should Join? - Engineering Managers - Technical Leads - DevOps Engineers - Software Developers This roundtable is your chance to: - Share your experiences - Gain new insights - Network with peers - Discover practical recommendations RSVP Now and mark your calendars for June 28th at 10 AM PDT! Let’s collaborate and elevate our skills together! #EngineeringManagement #TechLeaders #FeatureFlags #DevOps #SoftwareDevelopment #TeamEfficiency #TechRoundtable

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Accessible, Inclusive, Safe, Secure, Sustainable, Reliable, Resilient, Transparent, Independent, Human-centred. "We need a web by and for humans". humanewebmanifesto.com What an important and necessary project by Michelle Barker. Read & share!

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Some takeaways for a Jeff Hinton interview with timeless insights. My POV as an app builder is that models are now being improved for better UX (faster response/multi-modal) and reasoning capability and cost continues to improve. The technology headroom remains strong, and the integration of LLM into all software experience will continue and expansion of the reach (invasion) of software + intelligence will also continue. - Next word prediction is not merely parroting of training data. To do next word prediction well, LLM needs and already exhibits strong reasoning behavior. This would continue to scale / improve with more data / training. - LLM is a compression of human knowledge. The compression mechanism is identifying similar concepts across domains and reduces duplications among them. This can also be a source of "creativity" as LLM "sees" correlations of seemingly unrelated ideas through this compression. LLM can be more creative as it sees similiarity / correlations across all domains beyond (human) convetional wisdom. - LLM can exceed the quality of its training data. Jeff gave an example of an experiment where a model trained on 50% intentionally incorrectly labeled data, can still perform at 90+% accuracy after training. - Multi-modal models can improve the overall world understanding and lead to better overall reasoning. It does not even need to generate multi-modal output. - Not ML specific, but an interesting life insights. Bad intuition comes from believing (or wanting to believe) everything you are told. It diminishes the ability to make a clear choice that would lead to differentiated success (or failure).

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We published an article about all the awesome product observability features of Segment we have today and upcoming in the near future. Bookmark this if you are a Segment user!

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I chew the cud on the magic and mechanics of idea diffusion. Beware, I fanboy hard on this book. https://lnkd.in/gaCQKztq

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Excited to share how I've optimized my workflow with my home lab setup! 🚀 My CI/CD tooling, along with automations for Jira and Google Docs integration, has been a game-changer. While Jira is fantastic for workflow management, JQL language can be limiting. But fear not! With JQL, you can extract any subset of Jira data into Google Sheets seamlessly with simple queries. DevOps moving to DevEx, making work more fun every day! :) Check out this insightful article on Jira Smart Chips in Google Docs for more details: https://lnkd.in/e9gDePRt #WorkflowOptimization #JiraIntegration #CI/CD #Automation #GoogleDocs #TechSolutions #DevEx

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Isn’t it funny that 60% of engineering managers see a shortage of qualified candidates while 56% plan to increase headcount? The math is not mathin’. 🧮 Maybe it’s time to rethink what makes a “good engineer”. Skills are evolving with AI and machine learning, and our criteria needs to evolve too. The “passion engineer” coding all night is rare now, and that’s okay — maybe even better — because we can introduce more diverse skill sets, experiences, and problem-solving. Let’s evaluate our talent definitions, invest in training, and embrace diverse paths of excellence. ✨ For more insights like these, check out Jellyfish's 2024 State of Engineering Management report: https://lnkd.in/eKAJ5jZy

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I rarely post on LinkedIn, but I'm curious to find some folks to chat with about some ideas for an Enterprise Product Management product. My thesis is that the current suite of tools do not do a sufficient job providing features for managing sprawling, complex suites of products + product lines that mature tech organizations maintain. Most PM products are geared toward startups and smaller companies with simpler products, but few tools help PMs and other leaders manage the sprawling complexity of a situation like 30 products over 6 product lines, 14 industry solutions, and components from a dozen acquisitions. Let me know if you'd be down to chat for 20 minutes one day about it!

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Video from my recent talk is now available! Learn about how we're building our own developer tools to make frontend engineering fast and fun at Datadog

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Looking for fresh ways to boost creativity and drive innovation? Learn about mindstorming with MindManager, a powerful technique that encourages outside-the-box thinking and fuels idea generation. Dive into our latest blog post to learn more!

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I love Rick Rubin's book, The Cultural Act: A Way of Being. Each time I pick up something new. It's for artists, but the way Rick describes what an artist is, it's anyone who creates anything. The work we create and share with the world has a symbiotic loop. Our culture informs who we are. Who we are informs our work. Our work then feeds back into the culture, allowing the process to restart and evolve. This is why flow state is such a magical state of being. When we let the work drive, we are a part of and contributing to something bigger than ourselves. The thing holding us back is (typically) not the work. When we make the moment about the work, we allow ourselves to let the work take the wheel and drive. Image by AI (very cool)

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More and more devs are diving into ECS for Unity, and it can represent a significant shift from what you're used to. Get a first look at what it means, or refresh your understanding of it, with this incredible 50 pages e-book https://lnkd.in/egrj6xsy

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Backstage from Spotify hosted a "Roadmap webinar" today. Spotify Portal for Backstage was the clear 💫 superstar 💫 of the presentation. I talked to several teams using Backstage recently, to varying degrees of success. All have struggled to get over the initial hurdle of adding catalog-info.yaml files to each of their repos. It's clear that Backstage's evolution is hitting the right notes here. That said, I'm still skeptical. Will opening PRs and providing simple context be enough to help these teams actually get the benefits Backstage? Backstage comes with massive amounts of ongoing maintenance that Portal doesn't tackle, and legacy setups and monorepos that probably every team has somewhere in their infrastructure don't quite fit into Backstage's perfect world one-click setup model. Spotify is walking the line between: - Full extensibility with massive effort to setup and maintain - Highly opinionated, easier to setup, but fewer capabilities Clearly I think Backstage is on the right track, but I'm not sure how they're going to pull it all together. How will they make the ingested data more meaningful? How will they make their product more accessible, especially those who don't have large DevEx or Platform teams? Do you have your own thoughts about Platforms, Portals, or developer enablement? The last few weeks talking with engineering, platform, and DevEx leaders have been some of the most fun of my career. I'd love to hear from you.

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After a year of work my book Building A Startup - A Primer For The Individual Contributor is finally available! https://lnkd.in/erThxvpP If you’re working in or around startups as an IC or technical leader this book is for you. It’s based on 20 years of startup work and will help set you up for success to do more with less, move faster and more correct, and spend more time building features and product people love and less time banging your head at roadblocks and bottlenecks.

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Two facts: First: Jack and the Storefront team handle some of the most interesting problems at Recharge if you're into caching, synchronizing, and lots of data puzzles to solve. Second: I work with the team as Principal so we'd get to have some fun while we do the first part.

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