The Earth didn't go around the Sun 405 years ago

On the same day, 405 years ago, in 1616, Galileo Galilei got into trouble with the Inquisition and got formally banned by the Church for teaching heliocentrism.

1. Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long? - How a startup melts in corporation warm hands. Wonderful, wonderful summary of the corporate life vs. startup. 7 years of struggle past the acquihire. I could easily quote the whole, but let’s start with those few excerpts:

   • …You cannot fight the nature of the beast, this is China… [or Corporation]
   • …Working as an independent start-up is fundamentally different from a corporation and it is much more nuanced and deep…
   • …The product is a tool to advance the employees career, not a passion, mission or economic game changer…
   • …It is practically impossible to fire someone for the basic reason that you don’t need this role any more or there is a better person out there or just plain old “you are not doing a great job”. This neuters managers and does not lead to great teams, driven by mission, pushing each other to do better…
   • …We did have a lot more marketing dollars to spend but had to spend them like any other company, except we were constrained in what we could do and which 3rd parties we could work with due to corporate policies…
   • …as much as I tried to keep the team focused, being part of a Corporation means that the signal to noise ratio changes dramatically…
   • …The only control you have to increase your economic returns are whether you get promoted, since that drives your equity and salary payments…
   • …I have always been a pretty passionate guy, especially at Waze. After the acquisition, I was invited to speak on many different Google panels and events and very quickly, I began racking up my HR complaints. I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG…
   • …Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it’s the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy…
   • …everyone working in the tech space is SUPER LUCKY. If you happen to work for one of the tech corporations - you are even luckier. […] While most “real” people were worried about keeping their jobs or finding one, many employees were complaining about expensing their food on top of their salaries/stock/bonuses…
   • …If I had to summarize it, I would say that… […that you need to read it on your own]

2. 5 arguments to make managers care about technical debt. If you need time for tech debt, just talk to your manager in his language, say …in the last 3 months, we spent this-percentage of development budget in fixing quality issues. But be prepared to prove it. Actually, it should be visible in velocity upfront, but not everyone counts it or do it correctly. Well, then you need to prepare the data.

3. Software Architecture: How You Make Them Care. Few practical “dos” for staff engineers aka architects:

   • Do code (but not all the time)
   • Do speak Managerese to Managers (and Engineerin to Engineers)
   • Do tell stories (not fairy tales)

4. Hacking native ARM64 binaries to run on the iOS Simulator. A bit specific problem is getting solved, but muchos goodies about what you can extract from the binaries and XCFrameworks and how to do it using otool, ar, lipo, and when the existing tools fail - you can just write your own.

5. Hookshoot. Lovely little app to quickly and intuitively manage app windows. I was an avid user of BetterTouchTool for many, many years; I also experimented with both: Magnet, and Mosaic when I found it on Setapp. This tool made me switch in half an hour.