Career

It has been almost six years since my last post here. Six years! When I wrote about joining Facebook back in 2020, I had no idea it would be this long before I’d write again. Life got busy, priorities shifted, and the blog quietly went to sleep. Well, it’s waking up now. What happened since 2020 A lot has changed. Facebook became Meta, and I moved from software engineering into engineering management. I currently run a team in Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL), where we build the data infrastructure behind Meta’s generative AI efforts - web crawlers, synthetic data pipelines, and infrastructure for AI agents. ...

It has been a while since I last time wrote a post here, hence I wanted to update you on what is happening with the website (why the lack of activity) and what’s new in my life. And there is plenty! Joining Facebook When I wrote my last blog post here (October 2019) I was in a full-on Facebook interview preparation mode. I really enjoyed my time at Scott Logic, but Facebook has been my long time dream and I decided to try to get in one more time. ...

The first language I used to write a small program was Pascal. Since then I have worked professionally with Java, JavaScript, Groovy and a few more. Currently, I am learning a bit of Go in my spare time. In this blog post, I want to encourage you to learn a new language as well and provide you with a few ideas. The more you know the easier it gets First of all, I have noticed that the more languages you already know, the easier it is to learn new ones. I guess like with everything, you start seeing familiar patterns and solutions and in general- things start to make sense much quicker. ...

To be a good software developer you need to know some things very well. You can’t get away without actually knowing your programming language of choice, or learning good software development practices. Beside mastering some skills, you should also have a large amount of general, high-level knowledge. This blog post is about this knowledge. The concept of “Just in time knowledge” The idea behind “Just in time knowledge” (from this point JITK) is to be able to get the knowledge that you need, only when you need it. For example, actually learning how to use Kafka, only when you need to work with Kafka. ...

Writing CV is a bit of a game. You are trying to create a short piece of writing, focused on yourself, that will get you to the interview. Ideally, this short text will also help set you up for a successful interview and boost your chances of landing a job. I have screened hundreds of CVs over the past few years, here I want to share with you some advice on how to win the CV game. ...

You might have heard of the 10,000-hour rule. It supposedly takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master at something. This number will, of course, vary depending on what you are trying to master- some skills have a much higher bar than that, others may be easier. What is also important is the quality of that practice. In this blog post I will look at different ways you can carry out a deliberate practice as a developer. ...

Words like leadership and management are used often when discussing software projects. While they may sound similar, they are quite different and are often (but not always) performed by separate people. In this article, I will look closer at these two terms and explain why one is more difficult than the other. Leadership defined You could try to define leadership along these lines: Inspiring and motivating people to act towards achieving positive goals. They also protect and nurture the teams and individuals. ...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular Cloud solution out there. More and more companies are using it every day. It makes development easier, safer, cheaper and better. Since it is becoming an expectation for backend developers to be familiar with AWS (or other Cloud solutions) I compiled here some of the best resources and ideas for learning it. What does it mean to learn AWS? Before learning AWS, it is worth thinking what you want to get out of that learning. Are you more interested in designing solutions or actually working with some of the cloud services provided? AWS recognizes three key ways of learning AWS: ...

It seems that everyone wants to work remotely these days. Why wouldn’t they? There are some obvious benefits, such as reduced commute and working from the comfort of your own home. What is the impact on the team though? In this blog post, I focus on the impact on the team rather than individual benefits. Working from home – developers’ perspective It is no secret that developers really enjoy working remotely. The key reasons seem to be: ...

There are numerous articles out there talking about agile teams and how being agile will change your life/project. I agree with what Agile Manifesto proposes, but overall, I think that agile movement lacks scientific approach. In this article, I will apply my understanding of physics to “prove” and explain some of the agile phenomena. Before you get angry and start telling me that I am abusing here either physics and agile- take a deep breath and remember: ...