The Balanced Engineer Newsletter

The Balanced Engineer - Software Engineering Newsletter The very best weekly newsletter for generalist software engineers.

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Tomorrow we will continue talking about mentorship with: How to Find a Mentor!

Understanding Scalability in Distributed Systems This edition of The Balanced Engineer Newsletter dives into scalability in distributed systems, covering challenges for reaching scalability and common approaches!

In March I'm exploring all of my Distributed Systems notes! Today we're chatting about scalability, including common scalability patterns such as:

- Statelessness
- Partitioning
- Replication
- Load balancing
- Caching

What other patterns for creating scalable applications belong here?

A graph of lines of code vs number of comments on a review for a pull request. As lines of code goes up, number of comments goes down dramatically.

LGTM 🚀

Visibility: Writing This week, I'm urging software engineers to embrace writing for greater visibility and influence.

Learning to write well as a software engineer is a critical skill, and here's why:

1. Writing shows others what you're working on
2. Writing scales your influence
3. Writing promotes deeper thinking

If you're waiting for a sign to start writing, this is it! Start that blog or newsletter! Write!

Visibility: Writing This week, I'm urging software engineers to embrace writing for greater visibility and influence.

Found myself agreeing to all the points in this months theme of visibility by @balancedengineer.com. In the latest issue on writing, this line hits hard!

"The important thing is finding your voice and sharing it."

archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/visi...

More newsletter feedback ♥️

Check it out at balancedengineer.com!

Also, if you like something someone wrote, tell them about it! It will totally make their day! 😁

Visibility: Social Media This week, we discuss harnessing social media for professional visibility as a software engineer.

This feels silly to put ON social media, but this week I've been exploring how to do things on social media! archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/visi...

Some highlights:

- Be authentic
- Be consistent
- Put some effort into your digital identity

Also featuring some of my fav Bluesky feeds!

Visibility: Personal Branding If the term “Personal Brand” makes you cringe, you're not alone. But after diving deeper into the topic this week, I’ve come to believe that developing your...

Does the term "personal branding" make you want to cringe?

Same. But when talking about Visibility I thought it would be important to define and discuss!

What is a personal brand, and how can you make sure that yours is reflecting what you care about?

Visibility: Internal Visibility February Theme: Visibility This month, we're diving into the topic of visibility—a key aspect of building your career and influence as a software engineer....

This month in The Balanced Engineer Newsletter I'm talking about Visibility. Or how you get your name and work seen.

This week is all about internal visibility. How you can increase your visibility with:

your team
your manager
your organization

archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/visi...

Availability: Incident Investigation I saved my favorite topic related to Availability for last this month: Incident Investigation. It is near and dear to my heart, having changed careers to...

What are your thoughts on this? Is this a good approach? Is it over the top?

If you want to read more, I wrote about it in this week's Balanced Engineer Newsletter. You can check it out here:

archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/avai...

If you like it then please share and subscribe! 😁

Before working in software I worked in occupational health and safety (OHS). Investigating software incidents borrows a LOT of concepts from OHS.

As they should!

OHS has developed this process because it's saving human lives.

I think there is more we can borrow to further reduce incidents... 🧵

Availability: Dependency Management January Theme: Availability Last week we talked about SLOs, SLIs, and Error Budgets. Check it out if you missed it! Today we are going to talk about...

Happy Monday! It's MLK Jr day, are you doing anything to celebrate?

Today in The Balanced Engineer Newsletter we are chatting about dependencies and their impact on availability:

archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/avai...

Check it out if you're into #webdevelopment !

A quick read that is full of info! Looking forward to more graphics in the future

Availability: SLOs, SLIs, and Error Budgets January Theme: Availability Last week we talked about availability and how it’s measured here. Check it out if you missed it! Today we are going to talk...

Another edition of The Balanced Engineer Newsletter, your resource for quick and informative notes for generalist software engineers! This week we talk about Availability and SLOs

Read and subscribe here: archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/avai...

Availability: How is it measured? This edition dives into software availability, its measurement, and why it's crucial for success.

Are you a generalist software engineer interested in leveling up?

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The Balanced Engineer Newsletter just launched, focused on bringing you quick and informative learning resources to help you become a balanced generalist software engineer.

archives.balancedengineer.com/archive/avai...

Just a few hours of work with @astro.build today and I have a landing page for my upcoming side project. Easy peasy!

balancedengineer.com