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SledgeConf Request for Talks and Themes guide

We are open to talk submissions for SledgeConf 2020. Please apply today. To apply please email me at nick@sledgeworx.io with a 3-5 sentence summary of your talk.

SledgeConf is a remote tiny conference (https://briancasel.com/tiny-conferences/) debuting August 7th and 8th 2020. So far our survey of whether people preferred weekdays or weekends is a flat tie, so we are doing both. There will be up to six 50 minute presentations and six lightening talks spread across two days of festivities. 

The themes for this years conference are Software, Consulting and Teams. Proposed talks should apply to at least one of these themes. The conference is targeted towards software engineers but talks from outside the industry are welcome if they apply to at least one of the themes. 

Software is a pretty large theme. Talks in this category can range from software tutorials, “Integrating full text search in Rails with Postgres tsvectors” for example, to discussions of industry wide issues. A talk on wastewater management in the Bahamas would not be appropriate unless the focus was on the software used. 

Consulting is our second theme in 2020. Talks in this category will cover issues software consultants and agencies, large and small face in their business. A great talk might be “How I found my niche as a React.js charting consultant”. 

Teams is our final theme for SledgeConf 2020. Most software is developed collaboratively and how we do that is a major part of our work. Talks in this category cover the organizational issues involved in building software. A great talk might be “Begging, Borrowing and Stealing our way to consistent data collection for estimates at $Company”. 

To submit your talk please email me at nick@sledgeworx.io with a 3-5 sentence summary of your talk subject.

Ex.

Hey, Nick, I’m interested in presenting at SledgeConf 2020! My idea for the talk is Integrating full text search in Rails with Postgres tsvectors. My project deepeats is a food ingredients discovery tool and we had an interesting time integrating full text search especially when supporting image uploads of ingredients list.

Thanks,

Example Person

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Recruiter spam of underpar jobs

As your career progresses recruiters will start to spam you with lower quality jobs. I’ve had weeks where I was messaged on linkedin about a job several times per day. Normally that would be great, except most of these jobs would be worse than the job I already have. 

I’m not looking to make a downward move in my career. At some point I might start a startup or take a position as a cofounder, but otherwise I’m looking to move up in my career. Meaning that I am looking for jobs that are higher paying and higher responsibility. Not jobs that are lower paying and require less skill than my current job. 

Why do recruiters spam these lower quality jobs? Honestly, I think they are just spamming them in general without reading people’s profiles at all. Recruiters are paid on commission and there really isn’t any penalty to them for wasting people’s time other than Linkedin charging them for premium. But its not like I’m going to have a moment of weakness, respond to one of these contract for hire java developer positions and then accept an offer for half of my current pay. 

For now the solution is probably to block these recruiters on Linkedin.

Matias Ergo Pro review + affiliate link

I had a Matias Ergo Pro mac version for about 3 years, purchased in May 2016. It lasted until the end of 2019 when the USB C port that connects the keyboard to the computer died. I bought the keyboard after I started getting pains in my fingers during a gaming phase. Using this keyboard with a vertical mouse eliminated my hand pain. 

The Ergo Pro is pretty solidly built, the wrist pads are comfortable. I replaced the wrist pads after about 2 years when they started to come apart. The two halves of the keyboard can be positioned to match your natural hand tilt which is very nice. 

The most annoying issue I have had with this keyboard is that it collects dust and crumbs over time, (years), and that can have an effect on the keys. Your keys will start acting up in weird ways. The first option is to flip over the keyboard and shake it out, then if that doesn’t do it. Take the keys off and really clean it. I don’t remember if it came with a key removing tool, but  its pretty easy to get the keys out, harder to get them back in. 

Disassembling the case is straightforward, it has two sizes of screws and my ikea set was able to do all of them. 

I’m pretty annoyed that my keyboard broke I would have kept using it. 

I strongly recommend the Ergo Pro for mac users with a desktop style setup. I used mine with a laptop and external monitor. The best features of the keyboard are its ergonomics and its custom mac keys. I’m using a more standard windows style keyboard now and I miss having my command, fn and option keys positioned so conveniently. 

Links Post — Q4 2019

Here are some interesting links I’ve come across over the last few months. 

htop explained 

https://peteris.rocks/blog/htop/#htop-on-ubuntu-server-16-04-x64

4 Types of Documentation 

https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/

Making a Language Server 

https://nickmqb.github.io/2019/11/24/building-a-language-server-for-muon.html

Onboarding Preparedness Quiz

I am working on some materials around onboarding new engineers.

The Quiz

When was the last time you onboarded a new engineer?

Do different team members use different development environments to run integration tests locally?

Do you have architecture diagrams that are up to date as of last month? 

Do you have an up to date list of the APIs you consume and what their SLAs are? 

Do you have a list of all the internal tools your team uses to complete their work? 

Do you have a list of all the 3rd party tools your team uses to complete their work? 

Do you have a list of all the configuration files that your services use? 

Do you have a list of all the resources your services consume, object storage, disks, caches, VMs, queues, etc?