Stephen Hawkins

Having lived in SF bay area for so long, I came to know the big coffee culture scene here. I was totally consumed by it a while ago and spent years trying to attain the “perfect" latte. I published a fun coffee story and my entire home setup, which took weeks of research and multiple iterations, in my blog link in bio. Meanwhile, to all fellow coffee loving tech peeps, here are some top tips that no one told me. Put it in practice at home or in microkitchens. - A big factor in preparing milk suitable for latte art is pressure of the wand. If this is important to you, you need to get a machine that has a strong enough pressure. - When pulling shots, put in 18g of beans and extract 30g of espresso. - The darker the roast, the coarser the setting should be on the grinder, the lighter the roast, the finer the setting should be. - When adjusting the grind setting, do so while the grinder is working if there are beans in the hopper. Otherwise, a bean can get stuck between the burrrs. - Pulling a shot should take 20-30 sec in time, or based on observation. It should look like caramel going out, not a waterfall. - Eventually work your way to using a bottomless portafilter. It punishes you for all the small imperfections when preparing your coffee puck, like any tilt, and uneven distribution. It does so by spraying the espresso all over the place. The more you can get it to flow uniformly, the better your preparation of espresso, objectively. - Seal your beans in a vacuum, so they don’t go stale. The more stale the beans, the more minor adjustment you need to make to grind finer. - When steaming milk in your pitcher, you can tell if it’s done by holding the pitcher and as soon as the heat becomes unbearable i.e. stings, it’s done. - Taking a latte art course at a local coffee shop was the best boost for me to start nailing latte art.

9

Project update! My application tracking extension is now doing fuzzier matching and injecting new information into LinkedIn (and other sites) to keep me from doubling up on applications. Next up: local storage and bulk import/export operations...

12

2 Comments

Hiring great software engineers isn't a numbers game. It's a soul-crushing, lonely fight. Finding the right talent feels impossible. The market is flooded. We desperately need a better way. We must stop the madness. My team and I were drowning. We were months behind schedule. Our last product launch failed. It was devastating. We lost key team members. Morale plummeted. We were close to giving up. The pressure was immense. Then, we changed our approach. We focused on cultural fit. We prioritized soft skills. Communication became key. We started interviewing differently. We made it personal. We asked about their passions. We listened to their stories. We looked for grit. We sought resilience. We found people who cared. They loved what they did. The results were incredible. Our team thrived. Our product launch soared. Success followed. * **Focus on values:** Align hiring with company culture. * **Prioritize soft skills:** Look beyond technical skills. * **Humanize the process:** Build personal connections. * **Invest in training:** Develop existing talent. * **Offer competitive compensation:** Attract top talent. The transformation was profound. It was life-changing. We finally built a high-performing team. Our products are amazing. Our customers are happy. We're proud of our work. Empathy is the key. It changes everything. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. - Vidal Sassoon What will you do to change your hiring process? #HealthTech #SoftwareEngineering #Hiring #CultureFit #TechTalent

1

Santana Row shopping center in San Jose has implemented a ticketless parking system that eliminates the need for drivers to take a ticket upon entry and pay at a pay station upon exit. Instead, drivers can simply scan a QR code (see photo) posted throughout the garage using their phones, enter their license plate number and credit card information on the website that pops up, and a camera will read their license plate and open the gate as they exit. While this system may seem convenient and efficient, I think there is a significant security concern! There is a risk that perpetrators could replace the posted QR code with their own, which would redirect drivers to a fake website where they would unknowingly enter their credit card information. This could lead to unauthorized charges and potential identity theft. It is crucial for the shopping center to address this security concern by taking appropriate measures to protect drivers' personal and financial information. They must ensure that the QR codes posted are authentic and that there are no vulnerabilities that could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system. As an alternative solution, pay stations could be installed for shoppers to use instead of relying on their own phones.

32

12 Comments

This morning I've got a guest post on Google's Open Source Programs Office blog: what to do when your open source contribution stalls out. There are posts and posts about how to improve contributor experiences from the maintainer side, but I couldn't find much about how to push through a rough contribution process from the contributor side. Turns out you, as a contributor, actually have quite a lot of power here! I wrote down some of the strategies that have worked for me and my team as we contribute to the Git project; they apply for open source work, but also for any kind of decision stalling out. https://lnkd.in/g3eD6W4N

26

2 Comments

A data-driven approach to driving wound healing outcomes Marcella Gomez, University of California, Santa Cruz https://lnkd.in/gAkWZYJT Meet: https://lnkd.in/g4AAWkcK YouTube Stream: https://lnkd.in/gwtqaTmf Talk details: https://lnkd.in/gWn3B3cU Subscribe for talk announcements: https://lnkd.in/g5ciuNuX Abstract: Precision medicine requires an ability to predict the response of an individual to a prescribed treatment regimen a priori. Thus, advancement in the field is challenged by a lack of predictive models and, arguably, a lack of time-series information for a highly dynamic system. Here, we discuss work in wound healing, for accelerating wound closure. We argue that timing of treatments is as critical to consider as the choice of drug or therapy. Due to system size and complexity, data-driven methods need to be explored to develop multi-dimensional quantifiable indicators tracking systemic changes. In this work I discuss how bioelectronic devices enhanced with deep learning can help facilitate real-time sensing and actuation for automated decisions in treatment for wound healing and preliminary work in transcriptomic based classification of wound states. Bio: Marcella M. Gomez is an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz in the department of Applied Mathematics and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Baskin Engineering. She received her PhD from Caltech in 2015 and a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2009; both degrees in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests are in the broad field of bio-control leveraging methods in machine learning and control theory. Applications range from controlling single-cell response to driving complex systems such as wound healing. #modeling #simulation #medicine #healing #trauma #predictivemodeling #datascience #data #woundhealing #biology #bioengineering #systemanalysis #sensing #omics

3

🚨 I took down a major piece of infrastructure as a tech lead at Yahoo! and didn’t get fired…. I think this is the nightmare scenario for engineers - to not only break your own product, but to do broader carnage to systems at the company. I think we all fear what the repercussions are if we do this. However, when intent is good, recovery is swift and learnings documented, these things are actually quite formative. When it happened, I was able to remain calm and walk through a rollback in 2 minutes, which allowed the downstream infrastructure to recover in about 10 minutes. This was also the start to my reputation as a level-headed technical leader. Good relationships with my peers in the infrastructure team allowed us to quickly diagnose that my code push was the cause of the incident and take action. I was leading a team building a very powerful piece of software. We had a client library that was installed on every server and allowed us to push out front-end code to every web property simultaneously. Code changes would propagate in about 2 minutes from push. It allowed us to provide a consistent branding, search and navigation system.  Because we understood the power of the system, we also had plans in place if something went wrong and had practiced rollback and forwards. Typically, when things went wrong, they were minor UX bugs in the interface. Medium problems cost us some dollars in search revenues. However, this time, my change had a massive impact downstream. I had added a new polling feature that worked against the caching strategy of the platform I was calling. Within 2 minutes of diagnosis I executed the rollback strategy. The bad news was the product manager had to wait a few more days for the new feature to roll again respecting the caching strategy of the platform. The good news is that we recovered quickly. I learned a few lessons from this outage: 🚨 Outages happen all the time and you will likely not lose your job if you cause one. 📝 Your team should have plans should an outage happen how you will approach debugging and recovery. ⏰ Practice for urgent situations before they occur. 🏋‍♀️ Building and maintaining strong connections with leads of systems where you have dependency is key. 🧞‍♀️ I have a special ability to appear completely calm while feeling absolute panic inside, which is a good capability to have. 

60

10 Comments

32-bit floats instead of SemVer! Obviously a horrible idea... or is it? https://lnkd.in/ghybmg4v (My searches turned up nothing like this but if it's already been invented, please let me know and I'll add a "prior art" section.)

10

8 Comments

The recent wave of layoffs in technology is more than a temporary setback. It impacts the software engineering labor market in ways that could last for years. Layoffs have eroded the implicit trust between employers and employees, leading to a workforce that may be more cynical and less committed to long-term loyalty. This could increase job-hopping and make retention even harder. Some experienced engineers might leave tech for more stable industries, and new grads could choose different career paths. This could result in a talent shortage down the line, leaving companies struggling to fill crucial roles. With traditional full-time roles appearing less secure, some may embrace gig or contract work, prioritizing flexibility over stability. This shift could make it challenging for companies to maintain long-term cohesion in teams. Employees will increasingly push for remote work, flexible hours, and greater work-life balance. This helps de-risk relocating for jobs that don't deliver on promises. Workers may focus on continuously improving their skills to stay resilient. We could also see a cultural push for collective representation or employee advocacy in technology. If companies want to attract and retain the best engineers in the future, rebuilding trust and prioritizing employee well-being isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s essential. Would be great to hear people's thoughts! #TechLayoffs #SoftwareEngineering #FutureOfWork #TalentManagement #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

60

11 Comments

When you need to source software engineers quickly ProgAI can help. Not just a list of candidates to present to your hiring manager, but candidates with the skills that match the role and will likely move. Our Likely-to-Move™ Score helps you know this. This smart feature predicts how likely a software engineer is to switch jobs, based on over 20 different market signals. You get to target the right candidates. You are no longer For HR teams... They can spot engineers likely to leave their roles and take action to keep their best performers on board. Ready to see how it works?

4

Elastic is committed to contributing Elastic Distributions of OpenTelemetry (EDOT) features or components upstream into the OTel community. Read more about our portfolio of OTel components, OTel collector, and language SDKs that give SREs and developers improved infrastructure and application monitoring with Elastic Observability: https://gag.gl/orTzUz #Observability #OpenTelemetry

4

Whew, fellow engineering managers, do we need to talk? We had more yeses to these three questions than either front-line engineers OR execs: 📈 I do not feel the potential for advancement in my current role 🚀 Leadership at my company is out of the loop when it comes to engineering challenges 💥 I do not feel secure in my current role. Pair that with the 69% of EMs who’ve experienced burnout in the past year and it’s enough to make even the best of us look at the engineer/manager pendulum with renewed interest. For me, the saving grace is the big improvements we as an engineering industry have made on informing and driving the business strategy over the decades I’ve been in tech, and wanting to stay in the room where it happens. Check out the 2024 State of Engineering Management to think about where you and your team falls on the trends we're all experiencing firsthand. (And for funsies, you won’t believe which group thinks AI is a gimmick. ✨)

12

What started as a great Cassandra meetup just went GINORMUS. If you are in the Bay Area on October 11th, you must get to the Netflix campus for some of the best free content you'll get all year. Cutting-edge data and AI won't get any more legit. That sounds like a big claim, so what do I have to back it up? To start, we have speakers from some of the most hardcore Cassandra users lined up with "What's next" talks on how Cassandra is slowly taking over the data center in all sorts of ways. Apple, Netflix, Uber, and DataStax. Combined, we are probably running over a half million nodes that power your daily life. Cassandra 5 just dropped, and we'll talk about how it lets you do more with less and is ready for the thing you are building tomorrow. Operators who know, know. Scale is a constant battle between cost, schedule and quality. Check out these talks: How Netflix Handles C* Tombstones at Scale & How Netflix Does SLO-based Data Retrieval and Back Pressure - Vidhya Arvind, Netflix Incremental Repair Scheduling on C*, The Future of C* Repair - Chris Lohfink, Netflix, Jaydeepkumar Chovatia, Uber AI AI AI. Yep, that is THE topic here in the valley (and everywhere else). I'll tell you about a topic DataStax has been championing: Vector Search at scale! None of this one laptop business, and was just named by Forrester Research as the leader in Vector Search engines. Generative AI with Vector Search in Cassandra 5 - Patrick McFadin, DataStax I'm sure you've heard that there is no AI without data? How do you think data is processed at the scale and speed needed for today's largest models? Terabyte scale is entry level now. How about Petabyte? You'll want to see this talk: Securely Processing petabytes of data with Apache Cassandra 5.0 without passwords! - Dinesh Joshi, Apple Go to the link below and find out why Cassandra will be in your toolbox as we enter this next speed run on data infrastructure. https://lnkd.in/gVZb_npM

24

2 Comments

Did you guys know that it’s going to be the 3rd Olympic Games in ✨LA✨? 💥The first one was in 1932, and 💥the second in 1984. We already have an infrastructure from before, and you can even go check it out. 🪻LA City is working on restoration now. If you haven't been, the LA Memorial Coliseum is a must-see—it's where history was made and where it will be made again! 🪻But it's not just about the history—it's about the California vibe. The upcoming games will showcase not just the athletic prowess of competitors from around the world but also the unique spirit of Los Angeles. Picture this: the sunny beaches of 🪷Santa Monica🪷, the glamorous streets of Hollywood, and the innovation hub that is 🪸Silicon Beach🪸—all coming together to create an unforgettable experience. 🪻What’s even cooler? Celebrities are already getting hyped about it. Think of athletes training with the backdrop of Malibu sunsets, or events being streamed live from the heart of Downtown LA, where old meets new in the most dynamic way. The LA vibe is all about blending culture, sport, and tech in ways that only this city can. 🪻And hey, while LA is buzzing with preparations, it’s also a great reminder to find balance—just like how the city balances its rich history with forward-looking innovation. Whether you’re catching a wave in Venice or grabbing a coffee in West Hollywood, it’s all about embracing what’s coming while enjoying the moment. So, how did you spend your Saturday ? Dreaming about the future or soaking up the Cali sun? Let me know in the comments! #testing #engineering #LA2028 #software #firmware #retrocars #qa #development #OlympicGames #cicd #sports #innovation #olympicUSA

16

10 Comments

Markdown to... command line app - wat? That's the topic for today's unsolicited face time. A single Pipedown pipeline can be used in numerous contexts thanks to the way it consistently accepts inputs and produces outputs. I waffled about my love of pipelines a while back: https://lnkd.in/gERrAsvA Though it's much handier to see in action! https://lnkd.in/giR-KVDT Let me know your thoughts 🚀

4

> "Note that different people tend to be drawn to different ends of these trade-offs. For example, TPMs typically are drawn to the “control” side and prototyping engineers are typically drawn to the “autonomy” end. This means that people will have their ego attached to one end of the trade-off, making the debate — especially if it frames the question as a binary and not a trade-off — somewhat emotionally charged." Leading a team can be especially tricky when team members hold strong, opposing viewpoints. The key, at least in my opinion, lies in prioritising a collaborative approach that emphasizes small, iterative steps, regular evaluation, and a shared goal of creating value for users/customers, not winning internal debates.

4

In this clip from Orb's Tractable podcast, WarpStream's Richard Artoul talks about how WarpStream is a drop-in replacement for Apache Kafka and its zero disk architecture means you never pay interzone networking fees. Check out the full episode.

1

Exciting Adventures and Tech Discoveries with Waymo Every summer, I visit my sister in California, and we typically explore the beaches, trails, valleys, mountains, and other scenic spots. This time, we decided to dive deeper into the heart of San Francisco, where we stumbled upon a Waymo driverless car. Without missing a beat, we decided to experience it firsthand. Flashback to a few years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was preparing for a Machine Learning certificate course and immersing myself in every video by the renowned AI/ML guru Andrew Ng. One of his YouTube videos segued into autonomous cars and the feedback loops used to train and improve these models. That was the moment I became a believer in this technology and its potential to drive new innovations. From the early days of large computers mounted on vans to the millions of Teslas on the road today, the progress has been astounding. Experiencing Waymo's driverless car was a revelation. It's not just a tech marvel; it's a user-centric innovation. From the seamless booking process to the constant updates inside the car, and the personalized touch of displaying my initials "SC" when the car arrived, every detail was meticulously crafted to enhance passenger comfort. The price point was comparable to Uber, which was another pleasant surprise. Ultimately, the success of any product hinges on User Experience, Cost, and Accessibility. Waymo has built a competitive product that I believe will see massive adoption, potentially paving the way for more competitors in this space. My 10-year-old son asked, "When is it coming to West Chester?" That question sums it up perfectly. Here's hoping to see autonomous cars in West Chester, Philly, Palakkad, and everywhere else soon! #Innovation #Technology #AI #AutonomousVehicles #Waymo #UserExperience #FutureOfTransport

40

4 Comments

Have I mentioned that this computer scientist, developer, and straight-up genius is the brains behind yuda ? An MJC counselor once told Daisy she’d never make it in tech because of her math scores. But if you know us #Latinas, you know we don’t back down—we say, “Oh really? Watch me.” Not only did Daisy prove them wrong, but she’s also empowering so many women in the Central Valley and beyond to believe they belong in tech. Thanks to her leadership, our local Google Developers Group and Women Techmakers ambassadors have launched chapters in #Stockton led by Laiylaly Mandujano, #Turlock, Kelley Coelho, PMP® and #Merced Norma C. Cardona, MPA + Lourdes Ovando—making waves that others said were impossible. Daisy is always humble, but let’s be real: she deserves the credit. When I was fired from my alma mater, California State University, Stanislaus, for advocating for Latinas, Daisy stood by me. We were planning a tech event for International Women's Day, and despite the department committing $20k to continue without me, Daisy and Women Techmakers Modesto (Google Developer Group Modesto Partners) voted against moving forward without my voice at the table. That level of integrity and selflessness speaks volumes. This is why I am—and always will be—your ride or die co-founder, Daisy Mayorga-Fuentes. You believed in me when others didn’t, and together, we’re building the future of tech for Latinas and beyond. #LatinasInTech #WomenInTech #DigitalEquity #GoogleDevelopers #WomenTechmakers #CentralValleyTech #RepresentationMatters #Leadership #Integrity

14