Karachi Wala Developer

After a year long break - Im back with an update on Gemini and Gen AI taking over. In this episode I talk about the over all impact of Gemini and LLMs and how can we use them better in our daily lives.

I had a great chat with Lamak, who works at one of the startups in Karachi called Bazaar Tech. We discussed several interesting topics including team structures, full stack development, performance reviews and more! Thanks Lamak for taking time out for this episode of EngineeringLeadershipPakistan.

I had a great chat with Asadullah about his time in Airlift where he was an engineering manager leading a specific team. We talked about several management related topics, from the values at Airlift, life there as an engineering leader,  performance management, hiring, engineering productivity and more! 

You can also watch this on the KarachiWalaDeveloper Youtube channel.

This is the first episode of the all new series where I will be interviewing Engineering Leaders in Pakistan. We will be talking about leadership topics like CTO roles, hiring, performance reviews, feedback and more. In this episode we have Hunain Kapadia from Smart Benefits sharing about this experience building the some awesome tools in the insurance space.

Software Engineers require instructions in order to build apps and tools. And most of us don't know what these instructions should look like. One of the ways these instructions can be shared is in the form of user stories, and it's not just about writing a bunch of text, but comprehensive check list of how this should be structured so the right information can be given to the builder. Ofcourse its a two way effort Product and Engineering need to work closely to build up such requirements so they make sense from a functionality perspective, and a technical perspective.

This session is based on the article linked below:

https://martinfowler.com/articles/product-backlog-building-canvas.html

Google, or any of the FAANG companies for that matter, are an awesome place to work. When I started by bachelors - I was thinking of graduating and then getting a job there, or build a pathway to a job there. However by the time I graduated, my mind set had changed. In this episode I explore my thoughts and reasoning on what changed my mind and why I havnt applied since.

With startups going bust left right and center, high inflation and a global recession - are startups still the right choice to be at? In this episode I talk about the difference between the companies treating engineering teams as a profit center vs a cost center, to show why startup engineering teams as usually a better choice even if there is a slightly higher risk being there.

In this episode I break down a good engineering culture using two different culture tests from the web. We take a deep dive into the technical side of the culture first, followed by the work and management culture. How does your company score - what is the one thing you would change in your company to make it a better experience?

Javascript is one of my favourite languages out there. Im not sure if it just the familiarity with the language (have been using it since age 10) or the fast pace of change in the language space or the fact its being used on space craft - I think its a useful skill to have for anyone working in the software industry. Check out my rant on what makes JS so awesome according to me!

As programmers we work hard all day to ensure we build the best products in the best technical way possible, and if that work isn't shipped to customers right away, we are unable to generate any value of it for the company / product. DevOps plays a critical role in our organisations today, and ensure we have an efficient production line shipping features to our customers is a part of it. In this episode we review how we can better understand and measure performance of our software delivery and what does it take to compete with the best out there.