Alex Ponomarev - Alex Ponomarev (Page 13)

21 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Requirements Are Made to Be Broken

I was talking to a fellow software developer recently, and he was complaining about how imperfect the development process is. His main point of complaint was that he’s constantly

20 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

The Quest for the Holy Grail of Project Management Systems

It could be me, but none of the off-the-shelf project management tools work for us. They’re either overly complicated like Jira or too simplistic and lack the functionality and

19 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

Xano: Can You Really Build Real APIs With No Code?

Today, I tried Xano, a backend-as-a-service platform enabling users to build apps without writing code. With it, you can create a REST API powered by a fully-fledged database and connect

18 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Is Remote Work Here to Stay?

I was recently interviewing a software developer, let’s call him John. John was struggling to balance his work and personal life. He had to move to another city because

17 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

CTO Skills: Much More Than Just Being a Great Engineer

Today, I’ve stumbled upon a 2017 interview with Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and CTO of Airbnb. In it, Blecharczyk discusses his background as an entrepreneur and how he became involved

16 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

When Off-the-shelf Products You Depend on Shift Gears and Target Enterprise

Airtable, a code-free software company once valued at $11.7 billion, has announced layoffs of 27% of its workforce, or 237 people. This is part of a plan to refocus

15 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Art Behind the Apps: Why Software is a Creative Act

Building software products is a creative process, much like painting, writing, or any other art form. This became clear when I recorded an extremely short screencast demonstrating a product our

14 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

The Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand of Project Management

I have a friend. Every message she writes begins with “URGENT! IMPORTANT!”. I’m not kidding. She does that because she learned that if she doesn’t add those words

13 Sep 2023 · 6 min read

Why We Ditched Material UI for the Long Haul

The house I rent right now near Ericeira, Portugal, has terrible plumbing for heating. Very few people care about heating in Portugal because winter here lasts only a few months,

12 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

Why Product Development Turns Into Herding Cats As Tech Teams Grow

Have you ever noticed how things can look so perfect from a distance but less ideal upon closer inspection? It’s like planning a vacation and choosing a hotel based

11 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

Overemployment: Genius Hack or Unethical Practice?

Santiago Valdarrama shared a story on Twitter yesterdat about an employee he had to let go. The employee was secretly working two full-time jobs at the same time. Santiago had

10 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Auto Industry is Sacrificing Your Privacy And Why You Should Care

A few days ago, the Mozilla Foundation released the results of its research about data privacy in modern cars that they’ve conducted for their “Privacy Not Included” guide. The

9 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Myth of the 10x Engineer Building Products in 10 Days

The open-source software community is a beautiful thing. As a kid, I was amazed by the universe of software available to play with and learn from. In the early 2000s,

8 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Perils of Putting Everything on One Square

Have you heard already that Square is down today? This major outage has put thousands of businesses at a standstill. Founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square

7 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Rat Race: The Dangers of Short-Sighted Employee Productivity Metrics

In 2011, the film Moneyball brought data-driven decisions into the spotlight. The 2003 book by Michael Lewis told the story of Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager. Beane assembled

6 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

Custom or Off-the-Shelf ? Choosing Which Way To Go Is Like Shopping For A Campervan

We’ve all faced this dilemma before — do we invest in an expensive, custom-built solution or go with a cheaper, off-the-shelf option? It’s a question that gives every builder

5 Sep 2023 · 4 min read

The Context Switching Catastrophe: How to Save Your Engineering Team from Burnout

It was the perfect storm. One of our lead engineers, Alex, had finally settled into coding a complex new feature that customers had eagerly awaited for months. Thirty minutes into

4 Sep 2023 · 3 min read

Why Your Engineers Can’t Do It All: Building a Data-Driven Dream Team

Acme Inc., a mid-sized retailer with 50 stores, wanted to use all the customer and sales data they had accumulated over the years. The CEO envisioned using analytics to optimize