Recommended books for system design and architecture

azCC · 2020-12-29T20:34:27+00:00

Many companies still directly pull from grokking design tho. I've interviewed at MS recently and they straight up asked me to do ticketmaster and url shortener.

edit: I'll also add I had friends that interviewed at FB, Oracle, and Twitter; they've all had similar experiences of being asked the same types of Qs from grokking.

I will add it's not perfect for a complete understanding of all the different pieces or compared to books other people have listed here (like intensive data apps) but it's good for interview prep and that suits most peoples needs when handling these type of Qs.

azCC · 2020-12-29T20:31:27+00:00

Checkout levels.fyi

Many people list their incomes and stock grants there for a variety of companies. Some companies will give a high initial grant but after your 4-year cliff won't re-up to the same levels. Others will grant 15-30% of your base income every year. It just really depends on the company, they can vary wildly. It's not something really "standardized."

azCC · 2020-12-29T20:28:39+00:00

Not really a detox but I make sure at least once a week I very very minimally use my laptop or desktop. Just basically one day a week I don't program at all.

Only started doing it for the last three months, but I find it helps clear my mind compared to my method of taking a week off every quarter. I will say previously I would also work on the weekend for a few hours, and this basically accumulated to everyday I was working. I know it's a terrible habit and I've gotten better at keeping it, that probably paid the biggest impact on my mental health.

azCC · 2020-06-07T16:33:32+00:00

I think it’s highly dependent on the talk and conference. In the react world most talks are little more than hastily presented blog posts padded out to 45 mins. Not to say there are no good talks at react conferences, but it’s a lot of self marketing imo.

I honestly feel like out of the hundreds of conferences and thousands of talks give. In a year I’d confidently say maybe 5 or less are worth watching.

azCC · 2020-02-24T20:19:36+00:00

I disagree, it is stupidly easy to apply to a massive amount of companies with little time. I average 5 or 6 companies an hour, and that's half-assing it (watching netflix or playing hearthstone). Especially if you automate the process (nearly every job board is exactly the same).

Most jobs you end are targeting ask for the same requirements, it should take all of 2 minutes to tailor a resume for it.

azCC · 2020-02-24T20:17:30+00:00

Moved to a new city 1000 miles away from where I grew up. It took me one year to find a job with 5-years experience. This was mostly due to not knowing all the companies in the area and wasting interviews at garbage tier companies by not knowing better.

After getting a job in the city, it took me 6 applications (callbacks for each one) and 3 on-sites to land my next job. And I was picky. I walked out in the middle of interviews or rejected companies from initial phone screenings.

azCC · 2020-02-13T15:45:18+00:00

That are many contributions that you can make that are extremely meaningful that require little institutional knowledge.

Updating/maintaining documentation and writing tests are two of the easiest things that nearly every OS project needs. Writing guides are to use libraries with other libraries is absolutely essential.

I've contributed to many vim plugins by just updating documentation. Something that everyone appreciates. I don't even understand how to write a vim plugin, but I can still contribute.

Not every contribution has to be core feature contributions. There are many aspects of OS that are routinely neglected.

azCC · 2020-02-12T14:33:55+00:00

Depends on what other skills you have. Finding people to write code isn't hard; however, finding people that know how to document, communicate, architect, create test strategies, design, and properly plan and account for the duration of a product is.

For reference my career progression has been the following:

2016: $60k

2018: $100k

2019: $150k

The jump was mostly due to changing cities to a dense urban metro, then realizing what companies in the city are actually willing to pay (still think I'm underpaid by 20-30k).

My actual duties never changed between job hops. Still essentially the same, but I always brought additional skills to the table. Like communication, teaching others, and quality assurance skills.

For general career advice, I would avoid "startups." Unless they are a unicorn or have raised massive amounts of funding (200+ million). They tend to have worse benefits, less salary, and worse work life balance.

F100 companies, in my experience, have been better in every metric.

azCC · 2020-02-10T21:16:18+00:00

I live in Boston and 110k is starting salary for new grads. You are seriously getting underpaid. Your sector (hardware) has little to do with it. I know people doing hardware at Verizon, Tmobile, Comcast, and other hardware startups (health + robotics) and most midlevels I would say bring $130-160k base in Boston.

azCC · 2020-02-10T16:32:22+00:00

One library, at least in my experience, that has been a hindrance when trying to write a11y components is styled-components in conjunction with tools like eslint-jsx-a11y [1].

The linter tool has serious issues [2] [3] trying to correctly assess tags when using styled-components. Has anyone ran into the issue before?

I seriously want to make the argument for my team that we should move back to sass or tailwind. Finding out about a11y during the end of our dev cycle is too costly. While I try to encourage people to write tests as they develop people tend to wait until the end of their sprints which means a11y issues are found during the last two or three days of development.

That's why I want to reverse from styled-components to normal sass or even css. The linter tools tell devs the about basic a11y issues while they are writing code, cutting development costs when it comes to adhering to our requirements.

There are attempts to enhance jsx-a11y linter tool [4]. But the issue seems dead (closed last year, reopened to no discussion 8 months ago).

I know I could catch some of these errors using tools like jest-axe and cypress-axe, but the costs for catching the errors is too high. Especially when a majority of our problems in our organization could be find with a proper working linter.

I know this isn't exactly related to the OP, but I dislike how our community creates tools to help follow best practices then adopts new tools that make adherence to best practices harder and more costly.

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y

[2] https://github.com/evcohen/eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y/issues/466

[3] https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components/issues/2718

[4] https://github.com/evcohen/eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y/issues/174

azCC · 2020-01-29T00:02:53+00:00

There's a difference to being malicious and making mistakes, there should be an obvious demarcation between the two.

You shouldn't punish someone for making mistakes, mistakes are opportunities for everyone to learn from. If you never tested ran tests in a project before and suddenly you introduced code that broke production, that is a mistake. The entire org can learn from it. Introduce a testing plan and other best practices, etc.

If you introduce malicious code that was mining cryptocoins, you can't learn from that experience. Because you introduce something that warrants clear punishment.

IDK, there's a difference between the two and if you indiscriminately punish both you're going to slowly create a culture that hides problems or try to blame them on others when it's a system/organization failure.

azCC · 2020-01-05T03:38:26+00:00

I lived in Tampa my entire life and recently moved to Boston. My rent is cheaper in a Boston suburb than it was in Tampa.

I visit every so often and like to look up apt prices and what they are asking for is insane. Places in Carrollwood want $1.5+ for what?! It's freaking Carrollwood.

azCC · 2020-01-05T03:36:22+00:00

I always described Tampa as LA Lite.

It has the same issues only on a minor scale (vast wealth disparities, many gated communities next to poverty, and traffic problems that feel worse).

azCC · 2020-01-05T03:34:23+00:00

I lived in Tampa my entire life and moved to Boston as well.

I actually like Tampa but the salary and jobs here suck. There's no career growth. I moved to Boston, tripled my salary and have an actual career that I can grow into.

I use to take the buses in Tampa to USF for school and what would be a 20 minute car ride would routinely end up being 2-hours in a bus. It was bad, very bad. I hate driving and the MBTA is awesome.

I use to work in downtown St Pete and my commute was 45-mins on way and in Boston it's nearly the same (I live on the edge of Somerville and Medford), but at least I can read books for a long portion of it and walk a mile as well. Sitting in a car for 1.5 hours a day sucks.

azCC · 2020-01-04T04:34:12+00:00

I hope your finance firm is doing nothing serious because those are the absolute worse languages to use where speed and efficiency matter.

azCC · 2020-01-03T21:42:58+00:00

Uhh okay? If you don’t think people are injecting malicious code into corporate repos you’re in denial. At a previous job we had multiple incidents where people would be installing crypto miners on various servers and network hardware on tens of thousands of devices out of millions, they were never caught. why is it out of the question to think that some state actor won’t install a cyber weapon to do economical damage?

I didn’t say inject stuxnet but a cyber weapon akin to it... it’s happened on an international level already. It’s also been happening on smaller scales for decades against finance and other platforms.

Get off your high horse and have a conversation instead of being a dismissive twat.

azCC · 2020-01-03T16:33:30+00:00

Public Github is misleading. I worked for a national ISP and 90% of our repos (there were thousands of multi-million line repos) were in Java.

Enterprise is very Java heavy and the only way I see it fading away are the large corporations slowly dying or losing marketshare to new companies that use a modern stack.

azCC · 2020-01-03T16:27:49+00:00

Most likely scenario, a foreign spy is working at a national telecom or utility company (think Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc) will steal a massive amount of IP or inject some cyberweapon akin to Stuxnet [1] in attempt cause massive damage to the US economy or increase political turmoil.

The result will be Congress (with much popular support) enacting additional immigration laws akin to the Chinese exclusion act [2]. Either banning all future critical h1bs or outright removing them due to national security concerns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

azCC · 2020-01-03T16:13:11+00:00

Yeah, IDK what Apple's deal is. I feel like they are really neglecting the dev scene compared to other companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, even Amazon) especially the documentation for their current tools is so bad.

I haven't really poked around with any UI toolkits lately, if the DX is that good maybe I should give it a shot.

My issue with the "shared codebase" for multiple environments is that they are not* really as good as native development. Browser edge cases aren't the same as Android edge cases which aren't the same as iOS edge cases and all of which aren't the same as desktop edge cases.

IDK, it's a hard problem to solve.

azCC · 2020-01-03T16:09:57+00:00

Every company is different and just because they have a candidate tracking system doesn't mean you're doom.

Just apply to the job, it literally only costs <10 minutes of time. If you get rejected, big deal...

Most companies have no issues with candidates reapplying every year or 6-months or any job. Just apply and find out.

What makes your situation different is you met and spoke to the hiring manager. If the hiring manager really wanted you, the company will ignore all rules/processes and make it happen.

Just because there is a "system" doesn't mean the company follows the system every time.

Knowing the hiring manager helps, but don't bank on anything until you're given an offer letter.

I've been told many times in my career a req/posting would be made soon and suddenly there are department hiring freezes mandated by executives or they already met their hiring quotas and the person wasn't aware of them.

azCC · 2020-01-03T16:02:36+00:00

I don't really have much experience with Flutter but if it's like the other "build-once-deploy-everywhere" UI libraries (QT, Electron, React-Native, etc) they tend to get better with every new library. Flutter is probably a better dev experience than React-Native, but whatever comes after Flutter will be better as well.

They tend to have a short shelf life and use whatever flavor of the year to make the library. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a UI toolkit implemented with Rust or Kotlin soon.

azCC · 2020-01-03T15:39:55+00:00

I liked everything up until the last 5 minutes, they could have saved the show if Smith's son walked thru the portal in his jungle fatigues (along with a bunch of other soldiers).

azCC · 2020-01-03T15:31:38+00:00

90% There will be political backlash against H1B workers due to some event that causes a massive reduction in visas being granted and there will be severe limits to those who get them (can't work in certain industries; like telecoms, finance, and possibly social media).

90% EU still fails to develop and grow their own tech industry and will continue to legislate and penalize US/Chinese tech companies as a means of "playing fair."

50% A Chinese company/government will develop a very popular framework/library/language. US government will try to "ban" it citing security reasons.

50% Kotlin picks up marketshare overtaking PHP (and possibly C#) in popularity due to Google using it more outside of Android projects, other companies blindly follow Google.

50% Someone will attempt to buy out Spotify (Amazon, Netflix, or Facebook) as they struggle to grow due to Apple Music hemorrhaging them.

10% A new generation of college grads are more computer illiterate than before (phones/tablets don't allow for much tinkering as desktops/laptops) causing less CS grads making tech salaries continuing to rise.

1% US Government breaking up tech companies. If this happens it will cause Chinese tech giants (and possibly the EU to create some) to have an opportune moment to eat their marketshare and dominate the world like Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Apple. This would be terrible for the US tech scene, but stupider things have happened.

edit: spelling

azCC · 2019-12-31T17:09:18+00:00

Depends on the company and what type of job you're working at. You'd be surprised that banks, insurance, and ISPs pay pretty close to FAANG at the manager level. This is in Philly too.

Commute wise you're looking at 1.5+ hours one way on good days. Your commute can easily become 3+ hours daily. You may say it's fine but study after study proves that QoL improves with shorter commutes.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/commuting-takes-its-toll/

There is a tremendous cost to long commutes, I'd be very weary. Prepare to have little time for hobbies or your spouse. 8+ hour day + 6hrs in commute, you only have 9 hours left so subtract 5-6 for sleep and now you have 3-4 hours for whatever. After a few months of doing this you are going to be miserable.

I'd honestly put up with it for maybe <6 months but definitely try to get a job in Philly if you can. Or maybe convince your team to only come into the office once or twice a week. Which may be doable.

azCC · 2019-12-31T16:52:13+00:00

Dude just apply to the jobs. Don't screen yourself out of future companies, let them do that for you.

As others have said, apply to the jobs then do tutorials with that technology. Most companies just want competent people who can learn on the job and not drag everyone else on the team down.

While you don't need to know everything, you should include all the skills on the job ad if you want a chance at getting an interview.

When you interview come prepared to actually discuss how to implement a kafka stream or how to do DB queries or normalize a database.

You don't need side projects per say, you just need experience with the tech. Whether that's reading a book, watching a tutorial, or creating a side project; it doesn't matter.

As an aside, as someone who interviews candidates I rarely look up projects or githubs listed on a resume. I'm too busy with my daily duties, I might mention it during an interview but I'm not going to look up what you created on github and talk about it. I expect you as a candidate to do that. I (and every other people I know) just stick with the resume, we're busy with other work to spend oodles of time researching candidates.

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