Ever study something, but when you try to explain it realize that you'd understood nothing? A few sips from the pool of knowledge and we think we know it all! I find it helpful to combat this tendency
Zain Rizvi
I'm a Software Engineer who's spent over a decade building the infrastructure used by millions of devs around the world. In the past I helped build Stripe, GCP & Azure. Nowadays I build PyTorch
Newsletter #18 - The problem solving tactics of top scientists
It felt like fighting a hydra. I'd chop off one head and two others appeared. I had to fall back on systematic principles to get past this
How to slay a Hydra: Finishing projects
This project was supposed to be easy, why do I keep running into brick walls?!? Ok, how do I work around this one without compromising my vision?
Newsletter #17 - Find the Key Details
Ever find yourself reading insightful advice, but forgetting all about it when it was time to put it to action? It would happen to me all the time (heck, still does). I desperately wanted to get better about it. This
Newsletter #16 - How to Think Better
When was the last time you changed your mind about something big? For me, it happens about every three years. The most recent one happened last January, when Naseem Taleb's book Antifragile [https://amzn.to/34BtNHV] pointed out
Newsletter #15 - The Psychological Safety Paradox
Psychological safety at the workplace comes with tradeoffs. Where should you draw the line between making it safe about their performance, while still requiring people to meet expectations? Slava [https://click.mailerlite.com/link/c/YT0xNTM3NzgzOTE2OTgxNjU1NTE0JmM9dTR0OSZiPTQzNjkyNDU0OSZkPWo3bDh2NGY=.RQ37YVKDZ5JgcFuaNT-dXXxl-N9mNGJpysaf__9y9_M] and
Falsehoods programmers believe about time zones
I decided to make a time zone converter. It had seemed like an easy project, but I was horribly mistaken
Newsletter #14 - Timezone madness
My aunt has a problem: she wants to join Zoom meetings, but they're all hosted in different time zones. And she can't convert them to her local time. She has to ask for help every time.
Newsletter #13 - Develop insights by noticing connections
In school, did you hesitate to ask questions? I certainly did. It was peer pressure, raising my hand was a big no-no. I didn't want to be that kid. So I suppressed the instinct to ask. And those
Newsletter #12 - My sister got scammed. The bank helped her scammers
Hi friends, My sister just wanted to earn some money before returning to college. She found a job posting on craigslist, which she learned too late had been carefully written by scammers. Those people took advantage of her bank website&
How banks help scammers with their bad UI
My sister wanted a summer job before starting college. Instead she was scammed out of thousands
Newsletter #11 - Send a Bat Signal
At work, cutting scope is a way to potentially save weeks of effort. But where does cutting scope cross the line into cutting corners? Slava and I try to find that line in: The Nonintuitive Bits episode 25: Cutting Scope