Want to know if your startup idea is valuable or not? Read on...
The formula for calculating the value of your product, the secret to becoming more productive, an amazing deep dive into Tinder's architecture, and many more.
Hello fellow readers 👋
This week I was quite blown away learning about Hormozi’s value equation for assessing value of products. I even used it to have ChatGPT calculate the value of this newsletter 😆.
Really solid short articles this week, without further ado, jump to reading them 🤓
I read this book 3 times. Here are the main takeaways
The IndiePreneur
Often, short book reviews fail to provide much value. However, this one shares a mathematical formula to calculate the value of your product 🤩 There are some other good tactics there, like offering guarantees to your customers, but Hormozi’s value formula is eye-opening. It feels like it can be applied to compare the value of product increments not only of full products which makes it generally applicable as well (not just for founders).
Audience: Engineering Managers/Product Managers
Value: Learn how to compare value of products
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
The easy road to become a TOP performer software engineer: Simplifying productivity
Strategize Your Career
You know that feeling when you open your TODO list on Monday and feel instantly demotivated by the sheer size of the list? You blast through half of it by the end of the day and still feel bad because it is not empty. Fran shares super practical advice that will help you both with prioritizing the most impactful tasks from that TODO list and feeling good at the end of each workday.
Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Organize your work to be/feel more productive
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
How Tinder Recommends To 75 Million Users with Geosharding
ByteByteGo Newsletter
Ever wondered how Tinder works under the hood? This article explains the system design that facilitates Tinder’s unique use case. It starts with a brief history of when Tinder simply stored data in Elastic Search. It then takes you on the system design adventure that led them to 20x performance improvement through concepts like Geosharding, Multi-Index Elastic Search setup, and time zone-based shard distribution 🤯 Pure gold 🌟
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn system design lessons from Tinder’s architecture
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟
Using fake deadlines without driving your engineers crazy
Leading Developers
Don’t you hate those fake deadlines? You work your ass off, the delivery date comes, you complete everything, and… nothing happens. This article tells you why fake deadlines (or deadlines) in general are important and why you should use them. You will also get five don’ts for working with fake deadlines.
Audience: Engineering Managers
Value: Learn how to use fake deadlines properly
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Euro Top Tech Jobs - Week 27
The European Engineer
This week Nicola brings us 30 top-paying remote roles and a few hand-picked from his top-paying roles catalog as well. Must-read for engineers looking for remote job opportunities
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Find a high-paying remote role
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
EP141: How to Ace System Design Interviews Like a Boss?
ByteByteGo Newsletter
4 byte-sized system design infographics this week.
Checklist for system design interviews you can start using today.
Primer on Scalability, Availability, Reliability, and Performance.
Lear all network communication methods - Uni/Broad/Multi/Anycast
Ever wondered how Visa makes money?
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: System Design interview checklist you can use
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
The simple secret of AMAZING developers
Tech Books
In this newsletter, Orel reviews James Clear’s bestseller Atomic Habits. The article will give you a few strategies to replace social media scrolling and Netflix binging with reading.
Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Stop scrolling Instagram and work on yourself instead
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
3 main soft skills a Tech Lead needs to develop
Engineering Leadership
The article is all about those important soft skills that techies struggle with.
Active listening
Building strong relationships and
Giving and getting feedback.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Improve your soft skills
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Introducing the DX Core 4
Engineering Enablement
The article introduces a prescriptive set of four metrics to use for measuring developer productivity. If you want to find friction/bottlenecks in your engineering organization these are metrics to use as a baseline.
Audience: Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about the latest productivity metrics
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
The Hidden Value in Slow Progress
Besides Code
This article is all about that famous saying “Go slow to go fast”. Next time when you get stuck on a difficult task and get frustrated for not making progress read this article.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how to embrace difficult/frustrating tasks and grow from them
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
Notion: going native on iOS and Android
The Pragmatic Engineer
In this podcast episode, engineers from Notion talk about Notion’s mobile app in detail. Their small mobile team of only 11 engineers handles 10M app users 🤩 so the guys definitely know what they are talking about.
Audience: Software Engineers/Mobile Developers
Value: Learn about mobile development
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
My secret to being optimistic 99% of the time
The IndiePreneur
This brief article talks about how to reduce anxiety by simply asking yourself “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”.
Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Reduce anxiety when making critical decisions
ToT Rating: ⭐
Why Leetcode Is So Popular
The Developing Dev
The majority of engineers I know hate Leetcode and algorithmic coding interviews. This article looks at Leetcode from another perspective and argues why, considering the alternatives, it can actually be good.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Why do Leetcode-like interviews make sense?
ToT Rating: ⭐
16 Engineering Roles Shaping the Tech Industry
The Hustling Engineer
This is a nice overview of all engineering roles. It can be useful if you are not familiar with some of the roles in tech.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about all engineering roles
ToT Rating: ⭐
Impostor syndrome, Spotify model, and the three pillars
Refactoring
In this edition of “Monday Ideas” Luca shares five types of impostors. It is interesting to check out if you identify with some of those. He also talks about what makes effective teams and about Spotify’s engineering team model.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn which type of impostor are you
ToT Rating: ⭐
10 Best Software Architecture Resources for 2025
Javarevisited Newsletter
Do you want to know everything about software architecture? This article provides a great starting point.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about software architecture
ToT Rating: ⭐
Managing up
Refactoring
The article covers four topics for managing up (having an effective relationship with your manager). The first two are free, and the last two are paywalled. For the third topic, look up 3-P updates and add “People” to it to get 4-P updates. The fourth one might be easily Google-able.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about managing up well
ToT Rating: ⭐
8 signs that you have a good manager
Engineering Leadership
The article covers four topics for managing up (having an effective relationship with your manager). The first two are free, and the last two are paywalled. For the third topic, look up 3-P updates and add “People” to it to get 4-P updates. The fourth one might be easily Google-able.
Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about managing up well
ToT Rating: ⭐
Is "Java Concurrency in Practice" still relevant in the Era of Java 23?
Javarevisited Newsletter
Java Concurrency in Practice is one of those fundamental Java books that you must read as a Java developer. It gives you rock solid understanding of the hardest concept to grasp in Java - multithreading. However, with JRE 23 and virtual threads, the question is should you still read it? This article says yes, read it to find out why.
Audience: Java Engineers
Value: Learn about multithreading
ToT Rating: ⭐
How To Anticipate and Come Out Ahead In Reorgs
The Uncommon Executive
If you are part of many companies that had some sort of re-org this year read this article to learn how to position yourself well after the reorg.
Audience: Engineering Managers
Value: Learn riding the reorg waves
ToT Rating: ⭐