Alex Merced

Dev agencies, if you don’t want to be treated as a commodity, stop acting like one. - Learn the business context for engineering needs - Stop squeezing your clients every opportunity you get - Prioritize transparency, communication, and accountability In short, position yourself as a partner that uses tech to solve business problems. You really can’t complain about being seen as a commodity if you treat everything as a transaction.

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To my friends who are struggling. To those who are having a hard time navigating what's coming. Neurodivergent friends. You're not alone. I am to create a coalition with anyone who has the capacity and bandwidth to fight, organize, and coordinate. My digital door is open to anyone in need of a digital home. I cannot stress this enough, if you want a tool to learn Decoloniality and put it into practical practice, a tool that will help you navigate the stressful political hurdles coming our way, please utilize my tool Justice A.I. Try it free today. Just use it. You'll see why. www.justiceai.co #oyemira #justiceai #modatlasmedia

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I know how challenging it can be to speed up feature releases in the software industry. Typically, it takes around two to three months to roll out a new feature, but what if you could cut that down to just 20-30 days? I have a few tips for you #software and #tech leaders that can boost your feature release speed. Tip 1 → Use tools like Kanban boards to enhance flexibility and efficiency. (Most important) Tip 2 → Avoid assigning tasks through platforms like Slack or Telegram. (Please don't use email) Tip 3 → Keep communication between your employees as fast as possible. Tip 4 → Prioritize your development efforts by concentrating on one feature, ensuring quality. Tip 5 → Tools like Levelsonic can help manage tasks and keep your team organized and productive. What strategies have you used to speed up your releases? I'd love to hear your thoughts. ⬇ ---- DM me if you’d like to learn more about Levelsonic. We’ve built this product to help you generate extra revenue by enhancing your team’s productivity.

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This is a bittersweet post (more on that later) and long. When I joined The ASSISTments Foundation over 4 years ago, our platform was a hodgepodge of code and frameworks accumulated over decades. Ruby on Rails, GWT, JSP, Java, an API with no standard, and a database and data structures that had long since lost their ability to scale with the kinds of things we needed it to support. All running on a few physical servers at WPI. There was SO much work to do if we were ever going to have a foundation on which to truly innovate. Over the last few years, we’ve moved our entire infrastructure to the cloud, rebuilt the teacher experience and student experience in Vue.js from the ground up, and launched a brand new product for school admins and instructional leaders. But the last step was the biggest: we had to refactor all five of our products to use our new RESTful API (SDK 3.0), migrate terabytes of content to our new database structures and build an entirely new content management and authoring system to support everything. Plus, we wanted to include some of the first new features not possible on the old system: new item types and an alpha version of teacher authoring for our longtime ASSISTments 1.0 users. On Tuesday, after well over a year of the most complex refactoring you can imagine, the team delivered flawlessly. Even though this is not the Oscars (and I certainly am not “the winner” of this), I’m now going to go over my time limit and praise the amazing team responsible for this: First, Director of Engineering Ryan Emberling and Senior Product Manager Cindy Starks organized and managed the entire project through the many, many curve balls we were thrown and pivots we had to make, building the management systems on the fly as we figured out this herculean task, with help from Michael Weingarth owner of our district admin product. Lead Designer Kyle Scheuing, working with our Director of Content and now Product Owner Dawn Peterson designed an intuitive but amazingly powerful authoring environment that is legitimately worthy of a design award if such things were given for authoring environments. Our engineering leads, Christopher Donnelly, Joan Wong, and David Magid—along with Ryan—self-organized in true agile fashion to lead the rest of the engineering team through countless hours of analysis, architecture decisions, code review, and God-knows-what-else. And finally, our amazing engineering team: Danita Forbes-Sample, Manuel Gonsalves, Rownok Nowrose, Brian Rojas, Jaime Torres, Jose Velazquez did months and months of work rewriting vast swaths of our codebase. I am so proud of this team, and honored to be able to work with them. Their achievement has set the stage for innovation at ASSISTments for years to come. The bittersweet part of this is that I will not be with them for that journey. I will miss this team incredibly, and I hope our paths will cross again.

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The current workforce wakes up to manual tasks that they hate every single day. While automation software has been quietly reshaping our work landscape, the explosion of AI onto the scene means a radical redefinition of human roles in the professional world. There are many jobs that consist of manual tasks that can be replaced entirely – SDRs, copywriters, customer support specialists. Enter Artisan. They’re one of the fastest growing early-stage startups in the GTM ecosystem. Founded in 2023, they’ve participated in Y Combinator and raised over $7.5M in seed funding from investors including Y Combinator, BOND Capital and Soma Capital. They’re fast on the heels of existing incumbents in the sales SaaS space, including Apollo and Outreach, as Artisan aims to replace every single outbound sales tool you need. Check out this week's Notorious for a special writeup by CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack. Congrats to PLG + AI companies on your recent fundraises: All Hands AI, Fastn, Safe Superintelligence Inc., Brellium, Mintlify, Sakana AI, You.com, Mangomint and Oyster®! https://lnkd.in/g5SdWuD5

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This week, LinearB launched a new GTM strategy centered on modern software engineering challenges. I.e. we rebranded our website 😁 https://linearb.io/ Typically, it's easy for those of us in Developer Advocacy / Relations to sit on the sidelines for these types of projects since they often take place deep within the realm of marketing, design, and growth optimization. But, LinearB needed our brand to reflect the reality of what it takes for modern software engineering initiatives to be successful: they require buy-in at all levels of the organization, from the executive team down to the individual developer. Developers are under constant pressure to improve productivity, deliver code on a predictable schedule, and justify investments in the things that improve their lives. This is not to mention the uncertain future of the paradigm shift that's occurring as we transition toward GPT-driven software development. It's no wonder that engineering leaders are looking for solutions to better understand how to navigate these complexities. Early in this process, I unexpectedly found myself at the center of solving how we communicate our position to engineering organizations. This has been an extraordinary growth opportunity from which I've learned a bunch, and I couldn't be more proud of what we pulled together for this launch. Of course, none of it would be possible without all of the incredible people we have at LinearB.

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If you’re considering a dev agency, don’t underestimate the impact of time zones. Different time zones slow everything down. Daily communication rarely consists of just a single comment and response. There are always discussions, follow-up questions, and micro-decisions. A quick Slack message can easily turn into a long thread, and with different time zones, that thread can take days to develop. With an offshore dev agency, these interactions are complicated by cultural differences. If anything, you need more communication with them, not less. Knowledge transfer and good communication are the hardest parts of building with a team. If you’re not set up with the right environment for them, you’ll be swimming upstream every day.

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"You need better time management." Actually, I needed a completely different approach to time. The Time Anchor System: External Cues » Set visual timers for each task » Create environmental transition signals » Use calendar blocking with buffers Reality Checks » Break 1-hour tasks into 15-minute chunks » Double my time estimates (learned this the hard way) » Schedule mandatory transition periods Guard Rails » Set alarms 15 minutes before meetings » Build in recovery time between large tasks » Keep a visible daily timeline After missing countless deadlines because "it'll only take 5 minutes," I learned to work with my brain's time perception, not against it. Follow for more neurodivergent productivity strategies ⚡

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After 6 years, we finally coded the autoplay feature, which was the most requested feature into ExamPro It's a premium aid feature because why press play when you can pay? LOL If you buy a course or buy a subscription autoplay feature will be available for any of those courses. Why is it not on free courses? Because sometimes people need a bit of motivation to help support free content. #cloud #aws #azure #devops

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Today, I’m saying goodbye to my fellow Yugabeings. Keep building that unstoppable, distributed Postgres that scales and never fails. Remember, this is THE database that not only withstood the massive Super Bowl traffic but kept performing flawlessly as 200 million people watched the game online. Let that sink in and inspire you. Postgres was one of the reasons I joined Yugabyte. Over 15 years ago, I landed my first full-time job as a Java back-end developer. Our team chose Postgres, which at the time lacked many features and was considered by few. But we placed our trust in it, and Postgres has never let me down since. That project also gave me my first experience with distributed systems. We implemented a manual sharding solution to distribute the load across multiple Postgres servers. Sharding is a good option, but it comes with limitations that I personally ran into. YugabyteDB showed me that there’s another way to run a distributed Postgres, without limits. Next Monday, I’m not joining another database company, but I’m not leaving the world of databases either. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that many developers still don't fully grasp the depth and breadth of Postgres capabilities. My next goal is to close this gap by publishing a book. The first 50+ pages are already done, with many more to come. Wish me luck in getting it to the finish line!

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Having a ton of fun writing an ORM for V2 of Case Kit. Typescript has such an incredible type system. I have autocompletion for column names, the ability to include relations, relations of relations, etc etc etc... all returning properly typed data (no classes in sight). It's been really satisfying seeing it coming together, and it's been great getting my hands dirty with some (relatively) complex generics. And to head off the obvious question… why aren’t I just using Prisma? Well there’s a couple of things I’m doing differently that I think are marginally better: there’s no code generation involved here, it’s just types (inspired by Drizzle); there’s no Rust binary you need to deploy, and it hews much closer to Postgres behaviour and syntax (the aim here is not to abstract away which database you’re using). But the real blocker to me using Prisma was that its extensions don’t support modifying queries of nested relations - a hard requirement for me due to the way I have multitenancy and soft deletes set up. It’s not shown in the video but the Case Kit ORM lets you write simple middleware that will be applied to every level of a nested query. Perfect for setting timestamps or adding clauses on tenant id or things like that.

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Here are 3 companies paying $100k-$400k for fully-remote devs: - Pulumi - Invisible - AssemblyAI They get it. They don't have the FAANG brand, they even pay less than FAANGs do in the US, yet they're able to easily hire and retain FAANG-levent talent. Want to know about other companies in this category? eurotoptechjobs.com has a list of such companies, growing every week. It also has 4000+ top-paying job positions in Europe. It also contains data regarding compensation and saving rates. Check it out if it sounds interesting 🙂 ♻ Like/Comment/Share if you want to help people in your network.

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so what is your move gaes

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📚 Book Title: Scaling with Soul | How I Built and Sold a $25 Million Tech Company Without Being an A**hole ✍️ Author: Sharon Gillenwater ✨ Chapter 14: Closing Marathon ✨ 📝 The Final Stretch: Nitty-Gritty Details and Soul-Searching Sharon dives deep into the exhaustive process of finalizing the deal with the European company. 📄💼 The meticulous due diligence involved endless documentation, data analysis, and almost felt like she was pouring her soul into it. The scrutiny from M&A bankers, lawyers on both sides, and other parties pushed her to her limits! 😓 🤝 Transparency with Her Team Anticipating the sale, Sharon and her partner chose to be open with their employees. They offered them the option to be "vested" with company shares and candidly shared that they planned to sell Boardroom Insiders (BI) someday. To her amazement, most employees were delighted to have such an honest founder and appreciated being included in the journey. 🎉👥 😱 Last-Minute Realizations As they neared the finish line, a call with her mentor revealed a shocking oversight: she hadn't secured employment or contractor agreements for herself and her partner post-sale. 😬 The thought of being jobless the day after closing was terrifying. She had to urgently address this with her own lawyers to get the necessary contracts drafted. 📑⚖️ 🛑 Ethical Dilemmas and Integrity Tests The challenges didn't stop there. After signing her contract, she received a call instructing her to "cancel" the employees' vested shares. Confused and concerned, she realized the law firm was trying to avoid extra paperwork. She insisted on "redeeming" the shares instead, upholding her commitment to her team. 💪✨ However, legal restrictions prevented her from disclosing the deal to "unvested" employees until it was signed. This led to a heartbreaking situation where she had to inform only some team members, causing a rift in trust. 💔😢 ⚠️ Last-Minute Hurdles Just when she thought it was over, the buyer's lawyers pointed out a minor technicality regarding the company's land lease agreement, threatening to delay the deal. Frustrated, Sharon and her M&A banker expressed their exasperation, only to worry they'd jeopardized the entire agreement. 😖⏳ 🌅 A Bittersweet Victory Thankfully, the meeting with the European firm's CEO went well, and the deal was finally closed! 🎉 While her partner and employees celebrated at a bar, Sharon chose to fly home, giving her exhausted soul the rest it deserved after closing the deal mid-air. ✈️🌟 This chapter is a rollercoaster of emotions, highlighting: 🏃‍♀️ The relentless marathon of closing a major deal 🤗 The importance of transparency and integrity with your team 🧠 Staying vigilant about every detail, even in the final hours 💔 Navigating ethical dilemmas that test your values Stay tuned as we wrap up this incredible story in the next chapter! 📖✨ #ScalingWithSoul #Entrepreneurship #WomenInTech #Leadership #Integrity #BusinessDeals #StartupJourney

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Tech debt is the interest you pay for building code fast and cheap. Sure, you can "fix it later," but that can often snowball to "we'll struggle with this forever." I get it, you're just building your MVP — it doesn't have to be perfect, but start with a solid foundation: • Ensure your code is clean • Prioritize debt reduction • Embrace test-driven development • Leverage test automation • Implement CI/CD These practices will help you sleep better at night and keep your code healthy. How do you manage tech debt? #AI #QA #Technology #TechLeadership Image Credit: Vincent Déniel

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Cool tech Friday. Nango (YC W23), and Arrows. This past week I ran into two really interesting glue code solutions (i.e. blend of no-code and low-code). There is nothing l love more than getting introduced to a solution that exists, for problems I have, but did not think could improve. It's Friday No-Code Time - So Matty Hogan from Pompeii Labs was demoing their new open-source library, MagmaFlow when he happened to ask why my new project was storing its own OAuth2 tokens from Google Calendar Access. I had no good answer. It never dawned on me that I could offload these refresh tokens and storage to a third party. Enter Nango. Damn. What a wonderful way to delete hundreds of lines of code and speed up my app. (* I have not deployed the new API with the Nango solution to production, so the jury is still out. I am concerned with network latency) Second, Arrows - a turn-key (brandable) frontend onboarding solution for a Hubspot Pipeline. This is a pure no-code solution that rethinks customer onboarding and turns it into a startup app for early revenue. I have never (honestly) been excited to recommend anyone use Hubspot, but in this case, the combination of these two solutions together is AMAZING. Nothing goes in my glue code recipe book without code vetting. My list of killer solutions to vet is outgrowing my time to do it. So I might just start publishing the wait list and see if anyone wants to lobby for something to jump to the top. *On Desk for Next Week?* Next week I am going deep into the new platform from Matty Hogan and his team have launched fast-launch micro AI agents. And then switching tracks and tearing into J Chris Anderson's new project Fireproof, scalable local storage that seamlessly transitions to the cloud. What? #fireproofStorage #localdb #lowCode #NoCode #GlueCode

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I've seen a lot of bugs. (No, not another cicada post). Software here. Egregious, immediately noticeable bugs. The opposite - those that require 6 concurrent conditions and 6 hairs from your nextdoor neighbor and it still only triggers once a month. (Okay, 7 conditions, 6 hairs...don't split those hairs). A continuum of buggage. Those complicated ones, sans the hyperbole - those are your Zero day issues. Regression testing doesn't find them. A super wily code-reviewing look-at-it-all software QA professional (I know the best one)...might...but probably not. How do we even engineer testing all of the complicated conditions? The interrelationships at runtime? I don't see a lot of talk about "how could we have caught this?" in public for disclosed issues. Most of the fixes for Zero days (those security holes best known because they're patched with updates to software like Google Chrome browser, Apple's ioS, Microsoft Windows) are downplayed. You get "Hey, user, look at these new features you're getting, and in whispered voice, "and security updates." Not familiar with the term? Zero day means a security issue without a patch. When the patch arrives, there's a remedy for the problem. Users often don't APPLY the remedy until much later...its own problem...prolonging the risk of the Zero day issue. Back to my kinda silly example. That's a wicked hard problem to test for. A bunch of concurrent situations that then trigger the problem. But, when the problem's a known issue, it's not hard to re-trigger. And therefore exploit. So what do we do? Other than fixing/patching, and communicating? What else is there to add to this conversation? Sunday thoughts. Sunday thoughts.

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I’m giving a talk today and realized I’ve been doing this (building web applications and the teams that build them) for THIRTY years. That’s crazy! So here are 30 truths I’ve learned over the last 30 years. 1. More people read code than write it. Prioritize readability. 2. Technical debt compounds. Address it early and often. 3. The best architecture evolves with the product, not before it. Don’t fall into the trap of #7. 4. Continuous integration isn't a tool, it's a practice. 5. Tests are an investment in your future self and team. They’re even easier to produce these days with AI. 6. Documentation is a love letter to your future self. 7. Premature optimization is the root of evil in software. 8. Your code isn't "self-documenting." Write clear comments. 9. The most expensive line of code is the one you don't write. 10. Respect the single responsibility principle. Do one thing well. 11. Code reviews improve quality and spread knowledge. 12. Automate everything that can be automated. 13. Embrace change. The only constant in software is evolution. 14. Security isn't a feature, it's a property of well-designed systems. 15. Code that’s written by a team is stronger than what’s written by an individual. 16. Errors should never pass silently (unless explicitly silenced). 17. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. 18. There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. 19. Now is better than never, although never is often better than right now. 20. If you struggle to explain the implementation, it's a bad idea. 21. Naming things is hard. 22. Your users don't care about your tech stack. They care about solving their problems. 23. The best software teams have a culture of learning and mentorship. 24. Diversity in teams leads to better problem-solving and innovation. 25. Communication skills are as important as coding skills in software development. 26. The best software architects are ones who understand the business. 27. Agile is a mindset, not a set of rituals. 28. Technical skills get you hired, soft skills get you promoted. 29. The most successful software projects solve real problems for real users. 30. In software, as in life, nothing is perfect. Embrace iterations. Share these with your teams.

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