Nolan Di Mare Sullivan

Want to watch me build an app in 30 minutes at SXSW London? 👀 Only joking… sort of. The way we code and build apps is changing FAST, and I think its super important that engineers are keeping up with the most up to date workflows and tools. Tools like Copilot and Cursor are making development faster, smarter, and more accessible than ever. At SXSW London, I want to show you how to harness these tools for your own projects. My hands-on talk will explore the AI transforming app development and what it means for the future of our industry. But I need your vote to make it happen. ➡️ Sign up for a SXSW voting account and hit the heart on my session page here: https://lnkd.in/eRmSSUnu

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If you’re an engineering leader, this report about the current state of tech has some great insights. It’s super fascinating to see what the current common themes are.

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I've reviewed some cracking RFCs recently. It's one of the things I love about PayFit France's engineering culture. People genuinely seek out other perspectives and feel comfortable proposing solutions to contentious topics. And the feedback is always well-intentioned and constructive. One aspect of a great RFC is starting with a well-defined problem statement. If you can create a compelling narrative that makes people feel that this is really a problem worth solving you are off to a great start. Before you mention the solution, can you quantify the current costs or future opportunities? Can you explain how these technical issues are worth addressing on a business level? If you do this well, your problem statement will come across as an important problem that needs a solution rather than a solution looking for a problem. Sonya Natanzon covers great problem statements and gotchas in this talk: https://lnkd.in/ecz7uqvM

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Could not agree more. What we at Fimio are building is medium code aka next-gen build tools for your predeployment/deployment pipelines. These types of tools are powerful, expand the funnel for who can build world class production level code, and drastically reduces error and cost in delivering software.

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We ran our first DevEx & Platform Engineering meetup in London 🇬🇧 and invited the incredible Daniel Bryant and the amazing Martin Brignall to speak at it. Daniel gave us a short intro to developer platforms and talked about platform orchestration. Martin discussed how OVO uses AI-based virtual agents for a developer self-service desk and how they improve the developer experience. I ran a short survey at the beginning, with some exciting results: 74% of the attendees think AI will improve the developer experience, but just 50% see an improvement already. More than 60% of the participants believe that the role of the software developer will significantly change in the next few years through the introduction of AI. The talks sparked some great conversations afterward about good practices, such as how to run platform teams, build a platform, integrate with Atlassian products, how AI can influence the developer experience, and how Compass can help improve it. I enjoy organizing this kind of event and bringing people together, but I'm staying on the should of giants. Huge kudos 👏 to: - our Atlassian Community leaders Stuart Capel, Jay Ollivierre, and Arshiya Sultana for helping host the event - our fantastic speakers, Daniel Bryant and Martin Brignall, for inspiring talks - Eficode (especially Rob Lowry and Nigel Budd) for sponsoring the venue, food, and drinks. #platformengineering #AI #devex #developerexperience

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Demo Day for Iterative Winter 2024 is on Wednesday, May 8th, at 10:00 AM GMT+8. If you're an investor, we would love to have you. After 1,000+ applications and 500+ interviews, 23 companies were selected for the Winter 2024 Batch. Over the last 11 weeks, we’ve been been focused on helping these companies grow and we’re beyond excited to share their progress with you. Iterative Winter 2024 Batch 1. ArmasTec Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) – Air-Powered Fabric Exoskeletons for Manual Handling 2. Arogga (Bangladesh) – Bangladesh’s Top Online Pharmacy and Healthcare Platform 3. Arshipelago (Indonesia) – Ocean Shipping Platform to Digitally Enable Indonesia's Domestic Freight Forwarders 4. BLITZ (Singapore) – B2B Data-Driven Last Mile EV Delivery Service for Enterprises 5. Finskor (Indonesia) – SaaS that Empowers Financial Institutions to Digitalize and Make Data-Informed Decision 6. Fluentjoy (Vietnam) – Interactive Short-Video App for English Learners 7. Gohub (Vietnam) – The Ultimate eSIM Store 8. Halana (Vietnam) – The Leading B2B Marketplace That's Consolidating the Supply Chain for Industrial Goods 9. Lawdify (Singapore) – Building AI Agents that Run Specialized Tasks for Lawyers 10. Momofin (Indonesia) – Document and Contract Management System Integrated with E-Meterai 11. Rootally AI (Singapore) – AI Therapist for Musculoskeletal Conditions 12. SansDebt (Singapore) – Automated Overdue Invoices Management 13. Superbench (Singapore) – AI Operator for Home Service Companies 14. TapTalent(Singapore) – All in One AI-Powered Talent Sourcing Platform 15. Persona Studios (Singapore) – Official AI Personas for Creators, Influencers and Celebrities 16. WaxWing AI – AI-Powered WorkOS for Marketers to Brainstorm, Plan, Prioritize and Execute Growth Marketing Strategies 17. WeAssist (Malaysia) – Connects Hospitals and Clinics in Malaysia to Licensed Medical Staff 18. 1Long (Vietnam) - Responsible Investment Plans for Vietnam's Rising Affluent If you're an investor and would like to attend, look for the 📌 in the comments to register for Demo Day.

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We’re back with Day 2 of Launch Week! Checkout the launch video here: https://lnkd.in/euCKrkb9 This time we’re launching an improved experience for Logs and Traces. Our Logs and Traces tables display a huge volume of data. New search operators help filter the data to exactly what you want to query. We also now support custom table columns. You can select columns that you want to see, even if its a custom parameter you're sending through. #software #observability #o11y #chickennugget

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🔔 New Measure release is out! This incorporates lots of feedback collected from moblie devs over the last month and has many bug fixes, stability improvements and useful new features. The best new feature is the ability to browse and search through individual sessions. You can filter through sessions just like you would through Crashes or ANRs. You can also do full-text search through your sessions by User/Session ID, Logs, Event Types, Target View IDs, File/Class names or Exception Traces. Big thanks to devs who have given us feedback so far and we will continue to make Measure even better for mobile devs in the coming releases 🙏 Checkout the full release here: Server & Dashboard: https://lnkd.in/grjYGj4i Android SDK: https://lnkd.in/gpg_qBw6

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Now you can browse and search through individual sessions. You can find out what the user was doing and how was memory and CPU consumption during the usage.

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MVPs shouldn't go to the bin, unless the business pivots to something else. Way too often I've seen agencies & devs building MVPs in a 'poor' way (and that's a nice way of putting it), because 'who cares, it will go to the bin anyway when you get PMF and fundraise'. I disagree. There's absolutely NO reason that your MVP should go to the bin, unless your business model or product change dramatically. And even then, a lot of boilerplate (like signup, subscriptions management, emails, etc) - can and should stay the same. If done right, that should be a given, with 0 extra effort on the dev side. If someone's quoting you to do a poor job, don't work with them. You can stay agile & lean (as a startup should) without compromising on quality, and forcing yourself to rewrite the next version of your app. When you're investing in something, especially at an early stage when money is tight, it's important to NOT buy garbage.

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𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸? 🔧 This week discussed this on the podcast with Malte Ubl, CTO at Vercel! I loved our chat — here is what we talked about: 1) 🏗️ 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗹'𝘀 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 — how the entire org uses Vercel every day 2) 🚀 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 — how Vercel uses feature flags and extra-fast feedback loops. 3) 👥 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗴𝗺𝘁 — how teams have hybrid duties across the “spider graph” of leadership responsibilities. 4) ⚡ 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝘃 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 — achieving near-instant feedback and building safety nets 5) 🤖 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 — the emergence of generative UI and the AI engineer. And much more! You can find the full episode in the first comment! 👇

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Ever been in a meeting where the CTO starts talking about "complex database work" and you just know—deep down—they're stalling because they really don’t want to do it? Yeah, we’ve all seen it. Instead of tackling a simple feature request, they spin it into some mystical tech problem, drop a line about "focusing on growth, not features," and suddenly your whole idea is on life support. Brilliant deflection. And if you’re using an outsourced tech platform? Welcome to the development queue of death—where good ideas go to die, or get resurrected with a price tag that makes you wonder if you’re paying for an actual resurrection. Even worse, that “innovative feature” you paid through the nose for ends up farmed out to your competitors. Feels good, right? You end up feeling stuck—constrained from growth, forced into clunky workarounds, battling limited resources, and hoping the CTO stops having bad days. But here’s the thing—DIY tools like OpenAI, Claude, Anthropic, and a growing list of others are rewriting the script. The old song and dance of "we can’t because it’s too complex" is getting real tired—if you know where to look. Still hesitating? Keep in mind, while you're sitting there debating, others have already grabbed the tools and moved on. Can you relate? How often have you seen a platform bottleneck your business? In Leadgen, it's practically a rite of passage. Let’s hear your stories—how did you handle it?

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Trying to hire a junior to mid-level engineer in Scotland with great benefits and remote working is hard... https://lnkd.in/eQNHVqGR Not because the role isn't attractive (you'd be working on exciting large-scale system infrastructure challenges writing code with Golang - 1,000's of Kubernetes clusters, 10,000s of cloud VMs) or because the team are all crazy (they're thought leaders in their field including multiple upstream Kubernetes contributors from 3 continents!)... you got me... maybe there's a little crazy - but only the good kind! No... my challenge is whether this AI-generated image to go with my LinkedIn post makes any sense! I never have much luck with images containing generated text. Even using prompts like "spell check any text" or as is the case with this one "do not include any text" doesn't seem to work. Not to mention, I know what a Scottish Terrier is... but that "thing" in the bottom right looks more like an angry, tartan-wearing Capybara. Comment below for your biggest concerns with this image... or if you're a junior/mid-level, talented software engineer based in Scotland - maybe just skip over the image and apply online - https://lnkd.in/eQNHVqGR

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In case you missed it while prepping for Flag Day 🇺🇸 Happy State of Engineering Management Report Day happened this week! The annual thought leadership piece from Jellyfish has dropped. Hear from Engineering leaders, managers and frontline ICs .... we cover a range of topics that matter to great R&D leaders. Key Points: 1️⃣ Engineers are now strategic partners! 🙌 2️⃣ Burnout continues to be a challenge 😱 3️⃣ The talent shortage is spiking back up. 4️⃣ Many teams have embraced #AI 🧠 5️⃣ Others have legit concerns about AI ⁉ If #developerproductivity #genAI #engineeringexcellence are important to you .... have a read! (link in the Comments)

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It's official! The London Observability Engineering Meetup is back for an exciting talk about scaling and managing SLOs at a global scale! 🌏 Join us on Thursday, July 11th, where Alex, Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Google, will present the evolution of Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for the GCE Compute API over the past eight years. He'll start with the initial 30 SLOs, move through a phase with around a thousand, and end with millions of per-customer SLOs. He'll share anecdotes, techniques for handling low-QPS (continuous over discrete metrics), and strategies for aggregating data to enhance leadership visibility. He'll also give practical tips for running and improving this system in production. #observability #engineering #devops #sre

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So, about dinner last night... 😁 Julianna Lamb and I co-hosted an engineering leaders dinner on behalf of her team at Stytch and our team at Orb alongside guests from Bardeen, MongoDB, Pinecone, Log10.io, Sybill, DeepScribe, meez, Census, Pocus. Here's what was top of mind: 1️⃣ We broke the ice talking about production incident stories, as always. There were some good ones - near data loss, versioning protobufs, and staging coming to the rescue. It's encouraging to see how much a team can come together when these issues happen -- says a lot about the talent you've built! 2️⃣ There was a lot of discussion around product management in early companies - what's the right stage to hire your first PM, and how do you balance the founder vision with PM strategy? Despite lots of differing opinions on this, everyone agreed that a great PM is able to exercise pointed and often non-concensus intuition to advocate for specific product investments. 3️⃣ Quality assurance in software is a hot topic - it certainly seems that the days of pure MVPs are gone, especially in B2B enterprise software. Strategies here ranged from manual outsourced full-time QA to a battery of automated, property-based tests. My sense is that there's a lot more framework to develop here (and I admire folks like Meticulous who are pushing the boundaries!). 4️⃣ When the conversation turned to favorite vendors, Fullstory, Twingate, and Conveyor came up. It's always fun and a bit counter-intuitive to see how many times a 'favorite vendor' involves lots of excellent customer support. Durable trust is still built in these interactions! 5️⃣ I suspect that the areas of cloud economics and cost management are still a severely under-invested-in area for most companies. We discussed several stories on both sides: teams racking up $100K+ bills over a weekend from a cloud provider, to having to shape their internal architectures to support free tiers and cost management for customers over optimizing performance. This is an area where I'm particularly excited to see Orb's features around spend caps/alerting make a dent. Thank you again to Ram Sriharsha, Artem H., Niklas Quarfot Nielsen, Parth Shah, Nikrad Mahdi, Brad Buda, Aniruddha, and Ujwal Bachiraju for joining us!

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We recently rolled out one of my favourite features — one that I've been constantly nagging our tech team about. Castled now enables reading push tokens directly from your cloud data warehouse, bypassing months of SDK warmup👇 I love it because it's a feature made possible uniquely by our warehouse-native approach. I love it because it positions Castled as one of the few CEPs you can actually test drive before committing to a purchase. Here’s some context... Typically, launching your first Email, Sms, or WhatsApp campaigns on a B2C customer engagement platform could take 1-2 months. This delay is due to the time needed to sync and organise customer data from your cdp/dwh to platforms like Braze or Iterable — a hurdle our zero copy model inherently solves. However, triggering an effective push campaign takes longer, ranging from 6 to 9 months. Now this holdup stems from the infinite wait for all your active users to be onboarded onto the new SDK and for their tokens to be registered. We have seen that this can take months even in the best case. And also one of the major reasons contributing to vendor lock-in with legacy platforms. With this latest feature, Castled reduces the time to deliver real value — from months to mere minutes — across channels. While we still recommend installing our SDK for improved delivery rates, richer notifications, and comprehensive analytics, this feature offers our users the capability to run useful productive campaigns from day one.

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I've been deep-diving token naming conventions as I'm starting to re-architect our shipwright design system. I'm going to be spending some time working on this for Intermode - Software Consultancy for Logistics & Supply Chain. That being said, it's crazy how everyone approaches tokens differently. I know Romina Kavcic and some others are working on a standard ( Thank you! ). Now I'm starting with Figma variables, which I know are not tokens but I want to make sure that we have a good representation in our design tool for our team. I'll be documenting this effort here as I build things! Attached is another rough exploration to help set the vision. #design #designsystems

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