InfoQ Homepage Culture Content on InfoQ
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Avoid Being an "Ivory Tower" Architect: The Relationship between Architects and Their Organisation
In a recently published episode of Armchair Architects, the speakers discussed the relationship between software architects and the rest of the organisation. They detail how a successful architect can impact others by switching between going into the trenches and zooming into a tree and then being able to zoom out and estimate if that tree still fits into the forest.
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Sustainability for Software Companies: Reducing Impact by Deciding What Not to Do
Small and medium-sized companies can contribute to sustainability with emissions reduction, mental health offerings and inclusion. To support sustainability, software engineers can think about “what not to do” to reduce complexity and make solutions smaller, resulting in a smaller carbon footprint.
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Learnings from Spotify Mobile Engineering’s Recent Platform Migration
Recently, Spotify Mobile Engineering Team elaborated on their experience with a recent platform migration. Working on an initiative under the Mobile Engineering Strategy program, the team migrated their Android and iOS codebases to build with Bazel, Google’s open-source build system.
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Microsoft Open-Sources Agricultural AI Toolkit FarmVibes.AI
Microsoft Research recently open-sourced FarmVibes.AI, a suite of ML models and tools for sustainable agriculture. FarmVibes.AI includes data processing workflows for fusing multiple sets of spatiotemporal and geospatial data, such as weather data and satellite and drone imagery.
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Hybrid Working Matters to All Generations
A number of recent surveys explore the current state of hybrid and remote working. The results reinforced the preference for hybrid working, identified the importance of finding ways to stay connected when not in-person and showed how the driving factors for work have evolved. The in-person workforce is feeling under-appreciated and many are at risk of leaving.
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Building High-Trust and High-Performing Teams at Shopify in a Remote World
Jesse McGinnis spoke at QCon San Francisco on building high-trust and high-performing teams at Shopify in a remote world. He started by pointing out his talk on high-trust teams in a remote world.
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Hybrid Leadership is an Issue of Equity and Inclusion
Lena Reinhard spoke at QCon San Francisco on Successful Leadership in Hybrid Environments, in which she explored why hybrid working is attractive for companies and employees, the risks and challenges associated with hybrid working, and why leadership in hybrid environments is fundamentally an issue of equity and inclusion.
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Google 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report Finds Strong Culture Predictive of Strong Performance
Google has released their findings from the 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report. This year's report focused on security with a specific emphasis on the software supply chain. The report found a broad adoption of the inspected practices with organizations that have a high-trust, low-blame culture leading the way in both security and operational practices.
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Building an Effective Platform by Focusing on End-to-End Workflows
Platform engineering teams need to focus on building end-to-end workflows versus individual tools according to Naphat Sanguansin, CTO at Prodvana. A focus on workflows will help to abstract away the complexities of running services and allow for application engineers to focus on their product.
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Office Design for Hybrid Workplaces
With the shift from remote to hybrid work, organisations are rethinking office design with an understanding that what worked (or didn't work) in the pre-pandemic world does not work today. Office space needs to be redesigned to accommodate different ways of working and collaborating.
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Trust-Driven Development: Building Cognitive and Emotional Pillars
Trust-driven development uses authenticity to build a safe environment for people to operate. To build trust we need to focus on two main pillars of trust – cognitive and emotional. We need to be brave, have courage, and give people access to our authentic selves.
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Green Software Development: Terminology and Climate Commitments Explained by Microsoft at Devoxx UK
As a side effect of the accelerated move towards the cloud, the software industry is contributing more and more to global warming. Companies have taken on different commitments: Net-Zero, Carbon Neutral, etc. Asim Hussain, Green Cloud Advocacy Lead @ Microsoft deciphers them during the Devoxx UK keynote. Understanding them will help developers move the needle for each type of commitment.
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How Software Affects Climate Change, and What Software Engineers Can Do about It
There are huge amounts of software running everywhere on the planet - and this software consumes energy when it is running. Unfortunately most of the energy world-wide is still being produced by burning fossil fuels. Software engineers can improve the software so that it uses less energy to do its job, then less energy needs to be produced by burning fossil fuels, which is better for the climate.
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Scaling Software Architecture via Conversations: the Advice Process
Andrew Harmel-Law recently published an article describing a decentralised, scalable software architecture process based on the "Advice Process". The Advice Process promotes software architecture by encouraging a series of conversations driven by an empowering, almost anarchistic, decision-making technique. It comprises one rule - anyone can make an architectural decision.
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How Organisational Culture and Psychological Safety Fosters Our Creativity
Organisations need to create the right conditions and culture for creativity to flourish so as to stay relevant, compete and thrive for the future. An addiction to burnout and fixation on productivity can stifle creativity. What’s needed is psychological safety, inclusion, experimentation, growth mindsets and allowing thinking time.