🚀 NZ Tech Rally is a new developer community founded by Wellington-based developers, including fellow Xero Prae Songprasit. Their first event is in-person conference centrered around software engineering being held in early July. The theme is What does great software engineering culture look like, and how have kiwis done it?.

I’ve had a small glimpse into the work involved to get the conference off the ground and my hat is off to the team. It’s going to be great. I’ve purchased my early bird ticket and I’m looking forward to talks by Adam Howard, Jenny Sangh, and Katrina Clokie.

🏛️ Work-life balance looks different at the White House

You can find a reason to stay at work all night, every night here. There is always going to be something to do. You are never going to clear out your inbox. You are never going to return every phone call. You are never going to read every paper that you could. Ultimately if you do that, you’ll be worse at your job.

This short article reminded me about the key lessons of Four Thousand Hours and Getting Things Done: there is too much to do, so knowing what you can not do, and actually not doing it, is really important.

🛤️ What is the difference between Turbo and Stimulus, and what exactly is Hotwire? Every year or so I try to get a taste of the latest Ruby on Rails stack. This year I’ve come across a lot of new front-end focused stuff in Rails. This blog post succinctly describes the philosophy and mechanics behind the new tooling.

It’s about time I shared another great Nickolas Means talk. This one is from RubyConf 2022 and covers what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility after the 9.2 earthquake and subsequent tsunamis that struck Japan in 2011.

As usual Nickolas Means tells a dramatic story with fascinating characters and just the right amount of technical detail. Then he dives into what we can learn as software engineers and managers. This particular talk is especially useful for leaders, with very clear illustrations of what to do and what not to do when faced with the worst case scenario.

🤖 I’m interested in the state of AI, how I might use it, and the possible repercussions on my work and the rest of the world. The best single place I’ve found for that is Jack Clark’s Import AI newsletter. It’s been the source of several Monday Links. An alum of El Reg, Jack Clark is the co-founder of Anthropic and was Policy Director at OpenAI before that. I mention all of this to demonstrate that Clark isn’t just a techbro moving from blockchain to AI, he’s a genuine expert and a bloody good writer.

📗 I recently finished Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The subtitle of my copy is “Time and how to use it”. The American subtitle appears to be “Time management for mortals”. I think both of these do the book and author a disservice. The fundamental thesis is of Four Thousand Weeks is that time isn’t something we can manage or use. Our time on life is short and as long as we look for ways to make “the best use of our time” or to save time, we will probably always feel behind, or guilty, or disappointed in some way big or small. Burkeman makes the case that our quests to be more productive or fit more in generally make things worse because they just highlight how many things we could have done but didn’t.

Burkeman encourages use embrace finitude, to find meaning in the everyday, to stop trying to make a dent in the universe and look to making a positive impact on the people around us. Volunteer locally rather than found a startup. Enjoy the local hills rather than being determined to only be satisfied by conquering Everest. Realise that just like we are part of the universe, time is a part of us. Needless to say, I found the book quite refreshing.

Badger

As part of embracing being open to work, I’m trying out Badger, a new tool for asynch, timeboxed, focused conversations. The group I’m in is centered around the networking aspect of Badger - it’s a collection of folks with a similar goal asking questions and sharing advice.

My favourite part of Badger is how you set up your profile: rather than retreading your LinkedIn headline there are several prompts you can choose to answer, some professional, some personal, some random. It’s a much more engaging way of talking about yourself.

I haven’t tried the audio feature yet. I think I’m a text guy. My Badger profile is open if you want to get in touch.

Cal Newport: What Kind Of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?

The response to ChatGPT, and to the other chatbots that have followed in its wake, has often suggested that they are powerful, sophisticated, imaginative, and possibly even dangerous. But is that really true? If we treat these new artificial-intelligence tools as mysterious black boxes, it’s impossible to say. Only by taking the time to investigate how this technology actually works—from its high-level concepts down to its basic digital wiring—can we understand what we’re dealing with. We send messages into the electronic void, and receive surprising replies. But what, exactly, is writing back?

Update: As of June 2023, I’m happily employed at The Co-operative Bank.

I posted this message on LinkedIn and I think it’s worth posting here too, should folks be interested in working with me.

After nine and a half years at Xero, I’ve decided it’s time for a change. My last day will be at the end of this month, and I’m excited to explore new opportunities in the software development world.

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished during my time there. I was fortunate enough to work with several great development teams and contribute to the development of many useful features. I helped with Xero’s migration to AWS, which enabled us to grow to over 3 million customers. I participated in countless interviews and it was my pleasure to say says to dozens of fantastic developers, team leads, and products owners who became friends and mentors.

I loved working with our designers, product managers, and CX team too. A highlight was winning the XPLORE hackathon twice by assembling a crack team, working through the CX team’s list of bugs and shipping the fixes.

The thing I will look back on most fondly were the opportunities I was given to help grow and develop our engineers and leaders. The work to rebuild the Grad Programme delivery team with talented folks from around Xero and beyond and then successfully rebooting the learning program to award-winning acclaim is a career highlight I’ll never stop talking about.

As I look for my next big role, I’m going to be a bit picky. I’m eager to work in the problem spaces that I enjoy, which include product startups, big hairy software upgrades and migrations, and engineering culture development. If you know of any opportunities in those areas, please don’t hesitate to reach out!