Whether it’s providing an experienced program manager, a technical manager or other specialists, our teams will not only be successful with timely delivery and planning but most importantly with the quality of its deliverables

SEP Technology Consulting

By Aoibhinn Mc Bride Holding your hands up and taking accountability for a mistake is never easy. So, spare a thought for the who are now admitting that hastily issuing return to office (RTO) orders wasn’t their best decision. 80% of business leaders A found that most leaders made their decision around forcing staff back to the office by analyzing keycard monitoring data and by seeing how many times meeting spaces were utilized, rather than by speaking to employees and taking their thoughts around returning to the office five days per week into consideration. new report by Envoy Additional data compiled by Owl Labs for its found that 69% of employees believe companies are insisting on a return to office because of traditional work expectations rather than functional benefits. State of Hybrid Work 2023 report Using employee monitoring data to ensure their staff are coming into the office is nothing new—companies including and have been using employee badge swipes to monitor in-office attendance for over a year—but is counting swipes the best way to make decisions around workplace location? JPMorgan Chase Google While 94% of those who took part in the Owl Labs survey shared that they could be convinced to come back to the office, 56% said their level of work-related stress increased since last year, highlighting that being in the office full-time isn’t serving everyone. Moving Forward So what can you do if your employer is insisting you wave goodbye to your home office for good and return to the office permanently? For starters, if commuting to an office every day is going to leave you worse off financially, you could ask for a pay rise to cover the cost—29% of those Owl Labs spoke to expect a pay increase if forced back to the office. Or perhaps you can speak to your manager about revising its technology so that it facilitates remote work more effectively, meaning you can adopt a hybrid working model instead. Additionally, you could try and negotiate a four-day week where you consolidate your work into four days but your . productivity and output stay the same However, if your employer is refusing to meet you half or even part of the way, one solution is to find a new job in a company that facilitates remote work. If so, the is the perfect place to start your search. HackerNoon Job Board It features thousands of jobs in companies that are actively hiring remote workers, including the three below. Senior Sales Engineer, Coder, Remote Coder is on a mission to build enterprise software that makes software developers’ lives easier and keeps them in flow. We are looking for a who will work with enterprise account executives to qualify, progress, and close revenue opportunities with Fortune 500 customers for Coder’s self-hosted Development Environment Platform. Senior Sales Engineer In this role, you will be a stakeholder in the technical relationship with customers, demonstrate the Coder platform from both the end user (developer) and administrator points of view, and install the Coder platform on various cloud and on-premise Kubernetes and VM infrastructure. . Find out more information here Product Manager, Search Platform Integration, Virtuoso Ltd, Remote Virtuoso is the leading global travel agency network specializing in luxury and experiential travel. The will oversee the integration of the Algolia search platform and play a crucial role in enhancing the search capabilities of the platform, ensuring a seamless and intuitive search experience for travel products, travel advisors, network-specific content, and travel inspiration content for valued travelers. Product Manager, Search Platform Integration As such, you will work closely with technical teams to define data structures, indexing strategies, and search algorithms that optimize search results across various content types. . See the full job description here Salesforce Solutions Architect, Vantage Point Consulting, Remote As a , you will play an integral role in the high satisfaction of Vantage Point's clients through the design and development of scalable, high-quality Salesforce services and solutions. Salesforce Solutions Architect The Solution Architect is responsible for owning the overall design of the technical application and recommending best practice solutions based on client business needs. . View additional details here Find your next job in tech today via the HackerNoon Job Board

Does Your Boss Regret Asking You to Come Back to the Office?

আপনার বস কি আপনাকে অফিসে ফিরে আসতে বলার জন্য অনুতপ্ত?

Bereut Ihr Chef es, Sie gebeten zu haben, ins Büro zurückzukehren?

¿Se arrepiente su jefe de haberle pedido que volviera a la oficina?

Votre patron regrette-t-il de vous avoir demandé de revenir au bureau ?

क्या आपके बॉस को आपको कार्यालय वापस आने के लिए कहने पर पछतावा है?

あなたの上司はあなたにオフィスに戻ってくるよう頼んだことを後悔していますか?

당신의 상사가 당신에게 사무실로 돌아오라고 한 것을 후회합니까?

Seu chefe se arrepende de ter pedido para você voltar ao escritório?

Сожалеет ли ваш начальник, что попросил вас вернуться в офис?

Patronunuz Ofise Geri Dönmenizi İstediğinden Pişman mı Oldu?

Sếp của bạn có hối hận khi mời bạn quay lại văn phòng không?

你的老板后悔让你回到办公室吗？

These are the Best from thousands of AWS blogs on the web using search and social metrics. Subscribe to these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information. AWS Blogs AWS Blogs 1. AWS Blog Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Follow this blog to get the latest news and information on AWS. about 3 posts per week. Nov 2004 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: aws.amazon.com/blogs 2. What’s New at AWS | Cloud Innovation & News The AWS Cloud platform expands daily. Learn about announcements, launches, news, innovation and more from Amazon Web Services. about 21 posts per week. Oct 2004 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: aws.amazon.com/new 3. Whizlabs Blog | Amazon Web Services Whizlabs is the pioneer among the online certification training providers over the world. Follow this blog for AWS certifications’ preparation guides, resources, latest updates, technical topics, up-to-date study & practice material, and get connected with the experts. about 1 post per week. About Blog: Frequency: Visit: whizlabs.com/blog/aws-certif.. 4. N2WS | EC2 AWS Disaster Recovery Blog N2W Software is CPM (Cloud Protection Manager), enterprise-class EC2 Backup and Disaster Recovery software. Follow this blog which is a complete guide to EC2 AWS Disaster Recovery solutions. about 2 posts per week. Jan 2013 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: n2ws.com/blog 5. AWSInsider Follow this blog to get how-to, tips, tricks and more hands-on advice for working with Amazon Web Services (AWS). about 1 post per week. Aug 2014 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: awsinsider.net/Home.aspx 6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Follow this blog to know to build a highly availabe, scalable and cost  efficient cloud infrastructure based on Amazon Web Services (AWS). about 3 posts per month. May 2015 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: https://www.simpliv.com/blog 7. Reddit | Amazon Web Services News, articles and tools covering Amazon Web Services (AWS), including S3, EC2, SQS, RDS, DynamoDB, IAM, CloudFormation, Route 53, CloudFront, Lambda, VPC, Cloudwatch, Glacier and more from the Reddit community. about 168 posts per week. About Blog: Frequency: Visit: reddit.com/r/aws 8. A Cloud Guru Cloud Guru is a sourced collection of cloud computing and serverless articles. Follow this blog to get articles on AWS cloud. about 2 posts per month. Oct 2015 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: read.acloud.guru 9. Metricly | Cloud Monitoring Blog Metricly is a SaaS-based adaptive monitoring solution that helps organizations monitor cloud services, applications, infrastructure, and public cloud costs. about 2 posts per month. About Blog: Frequency: Visit: metricly.com/blog 10. Trek10 Trek10 designs, builds and supports cutting-edge solutions for clients using the absolute best tools and AWS platform services. Their superpower is building serverless applications on AWS and enabling enterprises to realize the benefits of adopting serverless technologies. They are fully staffed by AWS Certified Solutions rock stars. Follow this blog to get resources and articles on AWS. about 2 posts per month. About Blog: Frequency: Visit: trek10.com/blog 11. Jayendra’s Blog | AWS Certification Catalog Jayendra Patil is AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional. He has hands on experience on Technical & Solution Architect. He has been working on Java, Web, Big Data and Cloud technologies for over 13 years. Follow this blog to get in depth knowledge on AWS Certification. about 1 post per month. About Blog: Frequency: Visit: jayendrapatil.com 12. Alestic.com | A Personal AWS Blog by Eric Hammond Alestic.com is a technical blog published by Eric Hammond. It covers personal experience and thoughts about Amazon AWS. about 1 post per month. Nov 2007 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: alestic.com 13. CloudThat’s Blog | AWS CloudThat is the first company in India to provide Cloud Training and Consulting services for mid market & enterprise clients around the world. Follow this blog to get the best resource on AWS. about 1 post per month. Feb 2013 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: blog.cloudthat.com/category/aws 14. Onica Blog Onica is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner providing migration and managed services helping companies succeed on the AWS cloud. Learn from our AWS certified experts by reading our technical, education, how-to AWS blog. about 1 post per week. Sep 2014 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: onica.com/blog 15. Stelligent Blog Stelligent, is a technology services company that provides DevOps automation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Follow this blog to know more about DevOps automation in the Amazon Web Services. about 2 posts per month. Jul 2009 About Blog: Frequency: Since: Visit: stelligent.com/blog 16. AWS Cloud helpers This site is for AWS Users . Its basically a community for New and Experience AWS People to help each other . Its a forum for helping AWS Cloud people so please keep it Clean and don’t repeat the questions and answers. about 15 posts per week. About Blog: Frequency Visit: aws.in.net One more blog to learn AWS AI and machine learning jefferson Frank AWS Blog AI and machine learning are transforming the way businesses operate. We take a look at some of the key products in the AWS AI and machine learning stack. About Blog: Visit: https://www.jeffersonfrank.com/aws-blog/ Read more AWS stories on Hacker Noon :-)

The 16 Best AWS Blogs and Websites  

“Whoever told you doing ICOs was easy simply haven’t done one” This is a true roller-coaster-ride-story of launching ICO in Hong Kong in 2018, insights that you don’t know but should know. Figure 1: The roller-coaster ride of launching an ICO 14th Jan 2018: 1 ETH = $1,384, “The peak of ETH and hype of ICO.” Chris, who I knew for over 10 years, the founder of a Shenzhen-based software company approached me for the second time, persuading me to join him to transform his company from a software development house to a SaaS-based company underpinned by a self-developed Blockchain platform. Given my vested interests in Blockchain and being an entrepreneur; and knowing Chris had received a pre-A round investment of around $3M; seeing 30 odds software developers rolling days and nights competing for next sprint and batch of feature release; I accept his invitation and took a role with a strategic focus on the International market development and fundraising. We were working tirelessly to launch the first commercialized blockchain platform in China in the real estate sector and providing KYC and asset tokenization services to financial service providers and real estate companies. The Platform finally went online on May 2018 and we were able to register a number of clients in the first week of launching the platform. On the flip side, the business required more money to continue, to support the expansion and platform operation and development. We started with a rather traditional approach, i.e. going after VCs with the aim of raising an additional $4M at company pre-money valuation of $16M and, it was not going to conclude in time, and soon enough we were introduced to what’s was new to me at the time — Initial coin offerings (ICO). ICO just had its Epic year 2017 as ETH peaked at Jan 2018 with a straggling price of $1,384. 97% of ICO was able to reach its soft cap (typically $1M~3M), and many of them reached its hard cap, i.e. $30M if not more in 2017. Given we are one of few “reversed-ICO,” i.e. having a working platform ahead of ICO and with real clients who were actually paying for the use of our services; Our 30 odd software developer made us look like an army competing with other Blockchain startups. It seems to be a very logical thing to start our own ICO at the time. The only question is — how? 5th March 2018, 1 ETH = $865, “Whoever told you doing ICO was easy simply haven’t done one.” Raising money via ICO was told to be easy or at least pre 2018. It looked like a few geeks who can write a whitepaper will be able to walk away with millions of dollars. That perhaps was the case before 2018. The gust of wind started turning from late 2017, when China took the shot on ICO and banned it completely on Sep 4th 2017. The ICO market reacted rapidly and converted from public sale driven in 2017 to private sale driven in early 2018. This resulted in an influx of crypto-funds — a new sector who benchmarks themselves as investment bank of the crypto-world. Meanwhile, a counter-servicing consulting industry was born — ICO advisory. In essence, the ICO advisory firms provide service over four different phases. — essentially develop a set of documentation supporting your ICO campaign. i.e. 1. Due diligence phase a. The Whitepaper that highlights your solution, Token economy that underpinned your project, ICO plan, your team etc. b. An Investor deck for private sale c. Legal opinion d. Sales & purchase agreement 2. PR & Marketing phase a. Online channels i.e. ICO website b. Social media marketing i.e. Linkedin, facebook c. ICO listings, KOL review d. Press coverage i.e. Forbes, medium e. Roadshows 3. Fundraising phase a. private sale stage 1 — typical 5%- 10% of your hard cap b. Private sale stage 2–80% — 85% of your hard cap c. Public sale — 10% of your hard cap 4. Post ICO phase a. Public listing on an Crypto exchange b. Market making c. OTC (over-the-counter) trading 5th April 2018, 1 ETH = $381, “Personas of Crypto world.” ETH hit the bottom early April 2018, but Crypto world continued to evolve, and a few personas emerged, and some of them made buck loads, i.e. Crypto exchange, lots of them eventually pulled out of the crypto world. — they are your typical startups but with a mixture of intents. Very few of them stuck to the calling of setting up a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and kept on developing and growing the platform and business in 2018. The way I see it — if you had no real collateral and equity invested in a business but managed to raise $30M to develop a platform, but all of a sudden your company value declined 70% as ETH priced dropped down to $381 from $1,384 in less than three month, what are you going to do? Mind you, most of ICO Company’s valuation based on ETH or BTC, and most of them kept Crypto tokens instead of converting them to Fiat-currency. So most of them panicked and started selling ETH, the snowball started to roll in June 2018. ICO companies — they are early bitcoin / ETH miners and investors, some family offices. They are typically investing in ICO companies during the private sale phase. Depends on which stage that they invested in, it is common to get somewhere around 20–50% discount of the listed public sale price. The offer comes with a lock-down period, i.e. 3–6 month when these token will be unlocked and open for sale. Considering most of ICO listed in exchange were getting 2x to 10x of growth in the first 3 months of ICO public listing, this is definitely a lucrative business to invest in. Crypto investors (professional crypto funds) — they are an individual, i.e. crypto enthusiast, speculators and ordinary individuals who have no clue of what ICO/Cryptocurrency is but sold with the belief that they are buying the next Bitcoin. Lowest trophic level of the food chain and many of them lost a fortune in investing in the cryptocurrency in 2018. Crypto investors (public individuals) — these are the most chaotic yet sophistic persona of them all. They are early ICO practitioners, marketing companies, legal and law firms, financial companies and play a role throughout the ICO phase. Many of them are well equipped with content knowledge and expertise in their corresponding areas, i.e. in trading, digital marketing, legal and regulatory practice but remarkably few of them had actual ICO experience. Considering there were less than 1,000 ICO launched by the end of 2017 globally (909 to be exact according to ), there are just not enough experts with the end-to-end experience. Despite all that, in the age of gold rush, you will take whatever tools you can get to succeed in the competition. Who made most of the money in California gold rush (1848–1855), I won’t know for sure, but I am certain Levi Strauss — founder of Levi Jeans definitely made the most successful business out of the gold rush by selling a pair of blue jeans to the working man — “For men who toil.” ICO advisory firms icodata 5th May 2018, 1 ETH = $806, “how much it costs to run an ICO.” Media likes to report on how much money startups fundraised via an ICO, but you rarely see anyone talk about the cost of doing ICO. So how much does it cost from planning to the closure of an ICO? It is a rather large amount, which also depends on many factors, i.e. your project and solution maturity, country of your ICO, the advisors you are working with, timing. Our ICO were conducted mostly in Hong Kong, if I decouple direct cost, i.e. cost of staff with the indirect cost of doing ICO, i.e. money that you need to pay to external service providers, the indirectly cost alone is in the range of and $500K $3M. What the heck! Yup, that was the cold hard reality, which is why most of the startups just can’t afford it. · The single biggest cost item is to pay for listing on a Crypto exchange. Large exchanges, i.e. Huobi, Bittrex can charge you a million dollar to be listed. · Advisory service during the due-diligence phase can be in between $30K to $300K · Legal fee is another small fortune, i.e. $50K — $80K to get a legal opinion to certify and vouch that the ICO token is not a security token. · Cost of running a marketing campaign can burn $100K per month subjects to the media platform and scale of your campaign. Many successful ICO fundraised somewhere of $15M to $50M in 2017 and Q1 2018. 55% of ICO failed to complete in Q2 of 2018, i.e. reaching the soft cap. Ones who completed ICO are only getting a fraction of what’s in 2017, i.e. $1 ~ $5M. That’s one of the fundamental reason of why the majority of ICO cease to exist towards to the end of 2018, as the cost of doing ICO is almost level up to the amount that the company can fundraise. 5th Sep 2018, 1 ETH = $264, “Scams and gags.” ETH rose up to its last peak in May 2018, i.e. $806 and it has since been experiencing a steady decline. By Q3 of 2018, the cost of doing ICO was no longer economical for most companies who are still in ICO. The party had finally come to an end. No one wants to talk about it; blockchain companies no longer want to associate themselves with ICO as this whole thing was a scam and gags. But was it? ICO started well as it offered an alternative path to startups to raise sizable funding without substantial business at an early stage, which was not possible before it. The issue has been germinating since people had a false expectation on the underlying technology, as Blockchain is not the panacea for everything; “Greed and speculation” spoiled young startups like giving excessive amount cash to a 10-year-old before he knows what to do with it. 5th Feb 2019, 1 ETH = $107, “Party is over, what then now?” I am not a cryptocurrency investor, and I don’t know enough about this market to see where it will go. However, I am a believer in history always holds signs to the future if you know where to look. Behind any ICO and any crypto token, there is a common ground — someone like to call it Blockchain, industry experts like to call it Distributed Ledger Technology. Regardless of its name, you need to understand the that technology resolves that others cannot, and know to a DApp powered by a viable use case to make an informed investment decision. fundamental problem how to identify Where you will likely find the successful use cases, we are yet to see a killer DApp in the B2C world, and I think it will continue to be the case. Is Bitcoin the one? I don’t think so, it is not user-friendly, same goes with most of the common Cryptocurrency. I am sceptical about B2C Blockchain Apps and ICO companies as I see they are trapped in the paradox between being efficient and user-friendly with being is autonomous and trustless. Can you imagine if Uber will work as efficiently and user-centric as it is now if it was built on the decentralized and autonomous model? Who is going to pay the developers that work towards a unified goal? On the same token, Linux is an open source OS which hasn’t been widely accepted like windows, not because of the technology but its design principles. I am in favour of Blockchain companies who focus on the B2B space as well as on the protocol level, where they gaze on enterprise problems and interests underpinned by 6 intrinsic features of blockchain with long term potential for disruption and transformation. 1. Distributed shared data over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks reduce single points of failure; 2. Consensus-driven trust cuts out the intermediaries; 3. Immutable transactions ensure trust 4. Hashing-based data ensures integrity and security 5. Automated smart contracts promote touchless interactions across process and value chains 6. Permissioned and permissionless flavours give enterprise users flexibility These six blockchain features are changing the way we think about business transactions, data storage, and even industry value chains and associated revenue models. If you found this article useful and would like to view my other work please be sure to clap and follow me on Medium and LinkedIn!

A true story of an ICO project — my experience of launching an ICO and insights worth telling.

A story of how one CTO took the company to the brinks of its existence and another almost managed to save the ship I have been sitting on this post for some time now — I wasn’t sure if this is a story that others would find interesting or useful. But after speaking with Jeff Meyerson on the podcast I realised there might be a lot of lessons other engineers and would-be founders can learn from what transpired at Yubl and avoid making the same mistakes. Software Engineering Daily _http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/ServerlessBurningMonk.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download After raising $18…_softwareengineeringdaily.com Serverless Startup with Yan Cui On a side note, one of my submissions to Hacker News about also got some traction a while back. As you can see from the comments some readers tried to extrapolate a causality between Yubl shutting down to our decision to use AWS Lambda. things we learnt about AWS Lambda at Yubl Anyone who was there knows that was not the case, and although I had previously touched on the it’s a story that needs to be told in its entirety for one to understand the burning shipwreck it was and how close we came to saving it. Had one of the investors followed through with the investment he verbally agreed on, things could have turned out very differently and those involved will get the accolade they deserve for turning things around in a short time. context around Yubl’s closure But alas, there was no fairy tale ending. Instead we have a cautionary tale of how one CTO took a well-funded startup to the brinks of its existence, and for another CTO to (almost) turn things around through ruthless, decisive hiring & firing. A tale that I will tell with characters from beloved TV series Game of Thrones in order to protect the people involved. : Disclaimer I joined Yubl in April 2016 so I wasn’t present during the reign of the first CTO, the stories from that era are first-hand accounts by those who were there and lived to tell the tale. Prologue (~Aug 2013) A group of fresh university graduates were literally put into a room to think up ideas for a new startup. After some market research and brainstorming, the idea of a new social networking app is born — an app where users can interact with your post via interactive buttons that are part of the post rather than via meta-actions (liking, retweeting, etc.). The idea is pitched to private investors, (non-trivial amount of) investments are raised, and soon a commercial entity is formed around this idea. The app will be known as , or, o r social ubb e. YUBL Y U B L The Littlefinger Era (2014 to ~Aug 2015) joined the company as consulting CTO on the strength of his remarkable CV. On paper, looks the perfect fit for this young, ambitious and well-funded startup looking to take on the established giants in the field — the , and Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish Petyr Baelish Facebook Instagram Twitter. It’s no small feat. Luckily we now have a fancy office in the heart of London and has assembled an elite marketing team to help us take on the big boys! The only problem is that, we don’t have a product yet… Petyr Baelish The engineering team would be situated far away (at one point the engineering team was in a different building!) from the “product people” so they can focus on doing what their do best. would act as the bridge between the teams and provide regular status updates to the investors to let them know that everything is on track. Petyr Baelish Requirements are passed down to the engineering team in the form of a 300 page document, lovingly crafted by the same eager young minds that had conceived the very idea the company is founded on. Meanwhile, the engineering team scrambles to build more and more features. We need a timeline feature similar to Twitter. Check. Users should be able to follow/unfollow other users. Check. Users can search for other users by first name and/or last name. Check. We need a Suggested Users feature to recommend people for you to follow. Check. We need a Nearby Users feature to show you nearby users for you to follow. Check. and the list goes on, and on. Amidst all the excitement, we also secured contracts with various outsourcers: a company to moderate contents on our platform (for the paltry sum of £10k/month!) a company to provide us with contract PHP developers to develop a CRM/CMS system long term contract with MixPanel at £3k/month … 18 months flew by. No one outside the engineering team had seen the product yet. Despite all the reports from that we’re making good progress and are on track, the investors grew weary. Petyr Baelish And yet, all the engineers are also singing the same tune. If and his engineers are to be believed, everything is rosy, right? Petyr Baelish One of the lead investors, (the original ) did manage to find the truth he seek from the diligent and honest QA engineer . Jeor Mormont Lord Commander Podrick Payne From what and told me, this is how that conversation went. Jeor Podrick : “So tell me, how are we really doing?” Jeor : “We are f**ked” Podrick : “No, that’s not true. We are really really f**ked!!” Podrick : “The app is untestable, nothing works! And the devs are not remotely interested in fixing bugs, when I bring bugs to the server team they just blame the client, when I bring them to the client team the client team just blame the server, nobody wants to find the actual problem.” Podrick It sounded unbelievable to me, I have never ever worked at a place where developers would just keep passing the buck and not take any ownership of their work! Yet, that was a recurring theme when I spoke to folks about what happened during _Petyr Baelish’_s reign — distrust, incompetence, arrogance and downright disrespect and hostility towards one another. Two of the Node.js engineers would forbid the other server developers to look at the code they’re working on. It would later transpire that they spent months building their own framework for doing pub-sub via RabbitMQ. What’s worse, the system they conjured together was so complicated they had no way of debugging and making sense of it. How bad was it? Well, see for yourself… Here, the handler for a RabbitMQ message would decide which of the modules named , , , , and so on would process the message by giving each a chance to run a predicate function against the message. The reason the modules have to be named this way is to enforce precedence. 1 2 3 4 To call it the worst, over-engineered, ill-conceived piece of crap would be an insult to crap. I’ve seen bad code in my time, but this takes the cake. Try figuring out what happens when the handler receives a message from RabbitMQ… The feature in question, however, is crucial for retention — when you post a piece of new content it should be distributed to your followers by background workers. The QA team had a detailed spec of how it should work and a suite of test cases, the system failed most of the test cases. We reimplemented the feature from the ground up after consulting with the product team to understand how the feature is supposed to work. The rework took just over 2 weeks with most of the work carried out by one developer. The reimplemented feature passed all of QA team’s test cases. The feature was rewritten using services AWS offers out of the box, was far simpler, and was covered by a suite of automated tests that were created with the help of the QA and product team. The culture of a startup stems from the founders and the management team, and judging by the evidences on offer one must question the leadership of both (the CEO at the time) and , specifically at their decisions to bring in engineers with such destructive qualities into the company. These bad apples were brought in at a great expense too, all of them were on pretty high day rates even by today’s market standard. Aerys Targaryen Petyr Baelish Angered by what he heard, took immediate actions. Within days both and are gone. Jeor Petyr Baelish Aerys Targaryen was dismissed in a spectacular and public style, and was gently pushed aside as took over the reigns as CEO. Petyr Baelish Aerys Targaryen Jeor Mormont _Baelish’_s close allies soon fled the company, and with _Baelish’_s removal there is now a power vacuum that needs to be filled. In comes as the new head of engineering. Edmure Tully We would later discover some questionable hires by that brought forth questions about his integrity: Petyr Baelish , a tester turned contract Scrum Master after a crash course (well, technically he is certified) was on the payroll for 2 months on a staggering £900/day. When quizzed about his role by he openly admitted that he was doing nothing. Well, at least he’s honest. Pycelle Daenerys , a server engineer who allegedly wrote the “whole” backend system in C++ although he was never in the office and no one has seen any evidence that this backend system exists in any form anywhere. What we had, was an invoice for £60k. In the email thread that shared (to prove that was in fact under Yubl’s employment) was a conversation between the two men where was coaching on how to make his invoices seem more believable. I don’t believe was ever paid that £60k. Jaqen H’ghar Petyr Baelish Jagen Baelish Jagen Jagen The Edmure Era (~Sep 2015 to Jan 2016) If _Petyr Baelish’_s reign was marred by questionable dealings and a lack of visible results, then ’s reign is the personification of desperation and ineptitude, with devastating consequences. Edmure Everything I have heard about paints the picture of a nice guy, a good engineer, and someone who genuinely wants to be everyone’s friend. Whilst he makes a perfectly fine teammate, he lacks a crucial skill required of leaders — knowing when to say no. Edmure From my experience, all the best leaders I have worked with are able to hold both the carrot and the stick and use the appropriate tool to motivate/push his team to get the job done. Those are also the qualities that I look for in the leadership team in any company I join. is perhaps the most famous example of a leader that is able to effortlessly combine both approaches and apply them depending on the player and the situation. Sir Alex Ferguson To ’s defence, this is his first time in the hot seat, and thanks to previous regime’s failures he is put under immense pressure to deliver . The investors have already spent millions and seen nothing in return, they want to see results right away. Edmure immediately Given where the engineering team was at, and the upheaval that has just happened, there was no way it could be done and the reasonable thing to do would be to explain the situation to and ask to revise the plan accordingly. is a perfectly reasonable man and a successful businessman, and he would have understood had communicated clearly the absolute mess they were in at the time. Jeor Mormont Jeor Edmure Unfortunately for him, and for Yubl as a whole, he did the one thing he shouldn’t have — he said Yes. His plan? Hire more developers. It must have been like an early xmas present for recruiters and contractors alike. Here is a startup with a good idea and a lot of money, desperate, willing to pay above market rates to bring people in by the bucket load… At the peak of this hiring craze, Yubl had 15 mobile developers for each mobile platform — that’s a total of 30 mobile developers! All of them expensive contractors. But wait! Why would do that? We know bringing more people on board a software project late on is only going to slow things down, and we have known that since 1975 thanks to the . Ironically, when later confronted by , would use the as argument to support his decision to bring in an army of developers to help get the project over the line… Edmure Mythical Man-Month Daenerys Edmure Mythical Man-Month After firing one CTO and spending a lot of money bringing in all these contractors, expected to see progress. Yet, good news were hard to come by and after a continued lack of progress (especially given the investment and support) it was clear that things had to change, again. Jeor In comes as the new CTO. Daenerys Targaryen The Daenerys Era (Jan 2016 to Nov 2016) In his own words, is a man (I know I know, is a woman in the TV show) who does not tolerate bullsh*ters. Daenerys Daenerys In his first few days on the job, interviewed everyone in the tech team and fired most of the newly hired contractors. In addition, a few of the bad apples who were either bullsh*ters or disruptive forces were also removed. Daenerys After just a few days the size of the technology team was down by nearly half, and the reduced communication overhead allowed those remaining to better focus on getting the app ready for launch. Aside from trimming out the fat in the staffing, was also acting as the . He discussed with the product team and trimmed down the launch feature set to a more manageable level. At the time, the essential features in the app were still barely functioning but the engineers were spending a lot of time working on new features such as VOIP. Daenerys Bad Idea Terminator _Melissa Perri presents how to destroy bad product ideas before they go to market while achieving the business goals and…_www.infoq.com The Bad Idea Terminator In a minor miracle, managed to launch the app within 7 weeks of taking over as CTO. After more than 2 years sitting on a shelf, most people had lost hope. The CEO even offered the option to start over if he thought the ship could not be salvaged. Daenerys Daenerys But things still aren’t great. The app is still buggy. The mobile platforms are not in feature parity. The backend infrastructure is not going to scale. We are down to 2 server developers ( had resigned at this point, after a failed attempt to get fired). There are still a few questionable characters in the mix due to contractual constraints with their agencies. Edmure Daenerys needed to surgically reconstruct the server team and he needed people who are doers, people he can trust. Daenerys I was introduced to through a mutual friend, I had the skillset he needs and he can offer me the new challenge that I’m after. Soon after I joined a few other people knew and trusted from his previous company also followed suit. Daenerys Daenerys What followed was an intense 6 months of transforming the company from both a product and engineering point of view. I am immensely proud of the work me and my team accomplished in such a short time, our efforts did not deserve the bitterly disappointing end we received. I have discussed our work during the podcast and at various , and I have many of our learnings on my blog. Software Engineering Daily talks shared The folks at AWS were very impressed with our work and were in the process of writing up a case study on us when the company was abruptly shut down. _theburningmonk Server Architect Developer @ Yubl. I like C#, F#, Erlang, Go, Dart, Elm, PostSharp and occasionally dabs…_theburningmonk.com Yubl's road to Serverless architecture By the end, we had attracted closed to 1 million installed users, and had around 200k MAU. The VC funds we were speaking to said we were much further along than other social networks after 6 months, but they won’t step in without seeing 12 months of live data. Epilogue (Nov 2016 — present) Since Yubl closed down, we have all gone our separate ways. My biggest disappointment is that the server team (the one that got together in the era) had been broken up. In the short time we worked together we had developed a great rapport and we worked so effectively as a team. Daenerys We tried to stay together as a team but none of the avenues we pursued panned out. After speaking to quite a few companies — by now I have developed a much better sense of what a good start up looks like and the sort of environment I would like to work in — I decided to go back to the mobile games industry and joined Space Ape Games. Space Ape Games is a really weird company in all the good ways — it defies many norms amongst tech companies and does many good things where other companies do badly. During my interview process I was really impressed by my conversation with the founders — they have a clear vision for the company and clearly defined the company’s culture, every recruit is hired for that fit. The company’s mission statement is clearly communicated regularly, and there is great transparency and honesty in the way the founders communicate with the rest of the company. It’s no surprise that, Supercell decided to after speaking to over a hundred game studios all around the world. The two companies bear many resemblance in how they’re structured and the way they operate with small, autonomous game teams. acquire Space Ape Games _Clash of Clans maker Supercell has acquired 62 percent of London-based Space Ape Games for $55.8 million. The deal is…_venturebeat.com Supercell acquires 62% of London's Space Ape Games for $55.8 million I’m currently working on a secret new IP which I can’t talk about just yet, but hopefully it’ll continue to progress through our creative funnel and become publicly playable in the near future!

I have met every character from Game of Thrones, all while working for a little known startup…

Revolutionizing the Value of Data with cheqd

200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter in 2022

200 mujeres negras en tecnología para seguir en Twitter en 2022

200 femmes noires en technologie à suivre sur Twitter en 2022

टेक में 200 अश्वेत महिलाएं 2022 में ट्विटर पर फॉलो करेंगी

2022 年に Twitter でフォローするテクノロジー業界の黒人女性 200 人

200 mulheres negras em tecnologia para seguir no Twitter em 2022

200 phụ nữ da đen trong công nghệ để theo dõi trên Twitter vào năm 2022

2022 年将在 Twitter 上关注 200 名科技黑人女性

Meet David Deal, HackerNoon Writer David Deal is a Hacker Noon writer, notorious for his love of pop culture and the digital. Outside of his writing life, David is also an accomplished marketer. In this Slogging Interview, we got to meet the creator behind various amazing titles and took a look at his inspirations. This Slogging thread by David Deal and Mónica Freitas occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability. Hi @channel! It is with great pleasure that I announce our next Slogging AMA guest, David Deal. David is a Hacker Noon writer, notorious for his love of pop culture and the digital. Outside of his writing life, David is also an accomplished marketer. Please, join us in this Slogging Interview, between 1 pm and 3 pm CST, where we'll meet the creator behind various amazing titles. Feel free to ask any burning questions you may have below. David Deal Mónica Freitas thank you for having me here! Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:16 PM Thank you for accepting our invitation. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself? For example, name, profession, and personal interests. David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 6:20 PM Sure thing; I am a marketing consultant and have been running my own business since 2013. I came from the book publishing industry; I was an editor. Lo and behold, the growth of employee blogging put me in that position all over again but in a different way. Personally, I love writing, music, movies, and books. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:22 PM Interesting! More than a marketer, you're a storyteller. What made you want to write in the first place? Was it your experience in the publishing industry? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 6:25 PM Great question about what made me want to write. I always loved writing, but I really started to develop a passion for writing after I visited Paris in 1981 and visited Jim Morrison’s grave on the 10th anniversary of his death. Seeing how one person could have so much impact on people through his words changed my life. 💚 1 Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:28 PM That's a great origin story! You tend to focus on digital and pop culture themes. What draws you to those topics? David Deal Popular culture intersects with so many passions of mine, such as music. I’m fascinated by the interplay between the two and how they influence each other — a good example being Travis Scott and his role as a pop culture figure in addition to being an artist. As for digital: I was working at Accenture literally at the dawn of the digital age. I saw the incredible disruptive power of digital first-hand. I mean, I lived it! I remember sitting in on meetings between Accenture thought leaders and journalists in the late 1990s. The skeptical questions, such as, “Why on earth would I take the risk of using my credit card to buy anything online?” 😂 1 Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:40 PM I bet you have a gold mine of stories from those topics alone. It must be strange having lived through all that change. Has that affected who you are as a writer? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 6:47 PM Yes, digital has taught me how to be more concise. Twitter is a perfect headline-writing coach. I believe that digital has also helped me become a better reporter because it’s so much easier to find supporting points online. The most exciting change to live through was the rise of employee blogging. Being head of marketing at Razorfish, I saw how blogging could empower employees in ways not possible before. When I think of being at Razorfish, I am proud of the fact that I encouraged more of it rather than try to control it. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:47 PM Oh  I absolutely agree with you. On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:48 PM Could you tell us about an iconic moment you've lived through because of employee blogging? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 6:49 PM I think the biggest challenge is giving up some depth of analysis in order to write and publish a point of view faster. There’s so much pressure to react to breaking news with a “what it means” especially because we know news aggregators are looking for content that seems relevant and timely. David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 6:52 PM Sitting down with two Razorfish executives at Andrew McAfee’s office and sharing what it was like to embrace blogging as a business. I remember it so well, being with Ray Velez and Amy Vickers, and all of us just gushing with pride and excitement. The concept was so fresh and new! Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 6:56 PM You were at the forefront! That's incredible! Your Hacker Noon description is: David Deal is a marketing executive, digital junkie, and pop culture lover. What would your own self-description be like? ❤ 1 David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:04 PM My honest self-description would read, “David Deal isn’t even the best writer in his family. He’s married to the published short-story writer Janice Deal, whose debut novel, ‘The Sound of Rabbits,’ comes out in 2023. He is father to Apollo Marion Deal, who recently won a 2021 Academy of Americans Poets Prize for the University of Rochester for his poem ‘Tryst.’ David’s singular talent is listening to every note of every song ever recorded by the Doors and Led Zeppelin and pondering their existential meaning.” Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:08 PM Writing does run in the family! You stole all the talent in the neighbourhood. 😁 I'd say listening to great bands is also an amazing achievement. ❤ 1 Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:08 PM Now, as we're on the subject, what is your guilty pleasure of choice? Outside of studying the Doors' lyrics. David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:12 PM That’s a great question about guilty pleasures. I used to think Hall & Oates were a guilty pleasure (and I love them), but it seems they have become cool again. I love the Eagles and have come to realize many people consider them to be a guilty pleasure. I am definitely a sucker for one-hit wonders from the 1970s, especially the “light rock” stuff such as “Shannon,” by Henry Gross. Very sappy but I love it. 💚 1 David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:15 PM For the longest time, I did not write very much about music and my personal journey, but I have been doing so more on Medium. It’s really fun — and very difficult. Writing about the music industry is one thing; writing about how music sounds and how it affects you is quite another challenge, and I feel like I always come short in that way, but I keep trying. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:15 PM Now, us kids, call them classics to try to be as cool as you and have that kind of good taste in music. I got one more fun question for you because you're a pop culture fan. What would you say is your all-time favorite movie? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:19 PM Thank you for saying that about music! BTW Father John Misty is someone who has that visceral impact on me like the Doors have for years. And the Mountain Goats. My all-time favorite movie is Lawrence of Arabia. It is breathtaking on many levels. I watch it probably once a year and get something different from it each time. I am especially fascinated by how T.E. Lawrence embraced his otherness and then struggled with power. David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:21 PM Elon Musk has that kind of rock star impact on the people who love him and follow him. Tim Cook is like Don Henley or Glenn Frey of the Eagles back in the day: clear leaders of the group, but not charismatic rock stars at the Jim Morrison level. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:27 PM I'll have to admit I'm not familiar with all those musicians, but I'll be googling their music later! If I may put in my two cents, I'd love to read about your journey. If even your origin story as a writer is movie-worthy, I can't imagine the rest. As for music, I think the general public is waiting for someone to put into words the effect music has on all of us. I'm sure you will be the one bringing us that in the future. I may be a bit "basic" here, but Slash was always one of my all-time favourite rock stars. What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:31 PM Slash is a great one! Amazing how his public persona changed from dangerous to nearly beloved thanks to Guitar Hero. I expect to write more about the intersection between the metaverse and entertainment and marketing. I will keep covering New Hollywood streaming companies as well. Thank you for asking! David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:32 PM And thank you for asking about my journey and origin story. I wrote this a few years ago about being at Jim Morrison’s grave in 1981: http://bit.ly/2QkWZxs Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:35 PM Absolutely! Even the way we perceive the old "rock star way of life" has changed. We've covered a few of your passions, struggles as a writer, and many more. However, we haven't talked about your wins. What was your latest Hacker Noon Top story about? I'll make sure to read it! Thank you for sharing that! David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:41 PM Thank you for asking. My latest story took a snapshot of the New Hollywood streaming companies in light of the Emmy Awards. Right before that, I did a post on the Netflix merchandising shop. By the time I got going on the Netflix story, I thought everyone had already covered it from an e-commerce standpoint, and I wondered if I’d find anything fresh to say. After I took a closer look, I saw that Netflix was taking an inclusive approach working with designers for the shop, and I realized this was an angle not getting a lot of attention. David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:46 PM The streaming companies fascinate me because they are so compelling. Netflix has confounded and surprised industry watchers (and sometimes its own customers) for years. Then you have venerable Disney, reinventing itself through streaming and applying decades of entertainment savvy and experience to show the cool kids a thing or two. It’s so interesting to follow all the streaming companies, even more so in the age of the pandemic. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:52 PM Streaming Companies have grown during the pandemic in a way that surprised me, especially in terms of the content they offer. Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:52 PM That's to show that there's always another angle to look at things. As a marketer wannabe and Netflix consumer, I found your article very interesting. I'll be keeping my eye out for more New Hollywood content from you. As we approach the end of this interview, I'd like to thank you for your time and for letting us get to know you a bit better. I hope you've enjoyed this bit. Do you have any closing words? David Deal Sep 28, 2021, 7:53 PM Thank you so much! My only closing words are: look outside technology to write more effectively about technology. 💚 1 Mónica Freitas Sep 28, 2021, 7:55 PM I could not have ended it better! Thank you so much, David! ❤ 1

Meet the Writer: David Deal

What's Developing In The Indian Crypto Ecosystem [An Overview]

SEP TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING

septechconsulting.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

SEP TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING

EVERGREEN INDEX #9812

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

SEP Technology Consulting WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

SEP TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING

septechconsulting.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

SEP TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING

EVERGREEN INDEX #9812

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT SEP TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

SEP Technology Consulting WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!