A massive AWS outage broke the internet this morning — taking down everything from Fortnite and Snapchat to Starbucks mobile orders and Ring cameras. On Blind, engineers say the crash was a long time coming — the result of mass layoffs, outsourced talent, and poor leadership. “If you constantly fire people who make mistakes, you’re just left with people who haven’t learned anything and are waiting for their turn to screw up.” — Verified Amazon Employee “Constant layoffs have consequences.” — Verified Zapier Employee Was this just bad timing — or the inevitable result of years of cost-cutting and leadership decay? Share your thoughts below. Read the full story on Blind

you should have better problems tomorrow than you have today and if that’s not the case, then you aren’t doing good architecture work you may need to find new architects or consider not having any architects at all

recently partnered with @GergelyOrosz to write "What is good software architecture?" for The Pragmatic Engineer: newsletter.pragmaticengineer… the core thesis is that good architecture work involves upgrading your problems

After building the @v0 mobile app in React Native & Expo we’re never looking back. Look out for the incoming eng blog post by @FernandoTheRojo

I have seen so many L5s at meta and FAANG uplevel their titles as “head of”, even though a lot of them don’t have an official job title like that.

This happens everywhere for many kind of roles when budget is restricted for the level you want to hire. Then the title is bumped. It's a marketable asset so people take it. This is very old game. There are a few things to check during interviews against inflated titles. - If contact is established via 3rd party recruiter, is it an executive recruiter or a technology recruiter ? Companies often work with executive recruiters for true director level roles even under technology domain. - What is the grade scale and where is this role located in that scale ? (Red flag if grade scale isn't disclosed) - Does the role has individual performance goals that target business outcomes not technicalities, and is subject to individual bonus scheme that's indepedent from company wide standard bonus scheme ? - A true director level signal: Does the role has its own hard allocated budget, own cost center ? (A manager telling "here is X$, you can spend this" is not same as having X$ allocated for your name, in company financials, making you 100% accountable. The first one means, you actually have no budget, just given some soft allowance) - If role implies people management, does it also have autonomy to decide raises/bonuses/promotions and hiring/layoff decisions within company limits and given budget ? - Finally, does the offer include custom severance package (e.g worth of 1-2 years salary, pro-rota if layoff within 1-2 years) If the job isn't ticking many of those boxes (especially financial related ones), it's most probably an inflated title. Note: All people leaders have budgets. But also ICs may have large budgets without having any direct report, if the role needs it.

At Uber, people got the “head of” title a decade ago if we didn’t want to make them director but they didn’t want to join as a group PM