This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.
@rafaacioly shared some helpful tips on what to include in an interview:
There's this repo. called "Reversed interview", it has a bunch of nice questions to ask in many different languages, e.g:
- What are the tasks I would do on a usual day?
- Are there any specific goals for me?
- Do you have any concerns about my application? <--- this is gold!
- How will you evaluate my performance at the end of the trial period?
Tech:
- How do you monitor projects?
- Do you have some higher level documentation? (ER diagrams, database schema)
Team:
- Who sets the priorities / schedule?
- Walk me through a typical sprint on this team
- How big are the teams?
The repository link: github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview
@abdisalan_js doesn't have a simple answer for their favorite database — and that's awesome!
It really depends!
ACID Transactions + clear schema and enforced relationships between schema? PostgresQL or MySQ (probably just postgres haha)
Analytics + Performance for querying business logic? A Columnar Database.
Need to store documents? MongoDB or S3
Need super high performance? Cassandra
Need just key-value store? Use CouchDB or DynamoDB if you got the $$
When it comes to learning vs doing, @jessicaward is all about balance
One more suggestion: don't try out too many new technologies, frameworks, tools at once.
You will likely spend too much time learning, not enough time doing, and you'll lose motivation.
Learning is great, but in reasonable amounts.
Food replicators and holodecks? Reason enough for me, @rentecjeremy!
I love Star Wars... but as far as living in a universe, I'd much rather live in the Star Trek universe. Star Trek is more about exploration, science, and discovery. Star Trek has food replicators and holodecks - which would improve one's quality of life drastically.
Nothings keeping you from programming the holodeck to give you a Star Wars-esque experience without actually having to live in the Star Wars universe.
As @brandinchiu says, startup life has pros and cons — but above all else, you need to look after yourself.
Understand your worth.
Being successful as a startup is hard. More fail than succeed, which means you need to operate with that mindset.
Especially for newer developers, it can be easy to get "stuck", feeling like you owe the company something if you've been with them from the start.
But sometimes you just need to know when it's time to walk away. Very often newer startups will trade pay for equity or other incentives. But you cant pay bills with equity, and cool benefits like snacks and beer can't be put away for retirement.
If you don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, don't be afraid to walk away. You need to look after yourself too, and sometimes that means making the hard choices.
See you next week for more great comments ✌
Top comments (2)
Great comments, @rafaacioly , @abdisalan_js , @jessicaward , @rentecjeremy , and @brandinchiu ! Thanks for giving the community and me a lot to think about! 🙂
I was really hoping my "John the Mod" from SLC Punk comment would make the list this week. We need more people in tech who can "move freely among the tribes" to better empathize and communicate with other departments/disciplines. I've seen lots of backend devs who can't relate to frontend devs, IT, DevOps, etc., and FEDs who can't relate to backend, designers, etc. Tunnel vision, and disproportionate sense of self importance in relation to others, are far too prevalent.