cnj

It never occurred to me that Goodhart's law could be applied to betting, but here we are :)

I predict that Anthropic will clamp down on the heavy agentic use of Claude Pro, the cost gap between Claude Code and this approach is HUGE...

Anyway, I'm doing the same - one extra tip is to use the "project" feature of Claude Desktop to give your coding assistant some context - use it similar to .cursorrules.

The data exposure was discovered following an internal investigation conducted voluntarily by Kaiser Permanente. The company discovered that online trackers used on its websites and mobile applications were transmitting certain types of personal data when users interacted with its services.

I have respect for the individuals that started this investigation, and the ones that made sure this is publicly disclosed. This could have easily been swept under the carpet.

Actually, that they uncovered this on their own and publicly disclosed it sounds like they have an above-average privacy culture in place.

I know the odds that the person(s) who kicked off this investigation are reading this comment are very low, but if so: Kudos, well done!

Google Cloud boosted its operating profits to $395 million for the second quarter

From https://www.geekwire.com/2023/google-cloud-posts-second-stra...

Yes, Google has killed a lot of products... but none of those ever came anywhere close to turning such a profit!

Answering your technical question: Some companies let you deploy their "building blocks" onto multiple clouds (you typically choose the exact region/availability zone), and then also allow you to build proper multi-cloud deployments. There is usually no switch to flip, but these deployments (if properly setup) should tolerate if one region/cloud goes down.

Two examples from the top of my head:

Confluent Kafka: https://developer.confluent.io/courses/hybrid-cloud/intro/ MongoDB Atlas: https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/cluster-config/multi-clou...

For higher level services, I can't think of an example. For the examples above, you're still thinking at VM level, whereas you typically don't do that if you purchase a higher level service.

Reading the "Our Process: De-Extinction of the Dodo bird" section, I couldn't help but to think of https://xkcd.com/2501/ ...

I think your criticism of the term is somewhat valid, in the end these are just back-ends with APIs :)

However, the point the platforms are trying to make is that their APIs have been written with the explicit purpose of building a frontend ontop of them later on.

A lot of the old-school platforms have some APIs as well, but they are meant to e.g. import products or export orders. They are not meant to implement a frontend on top of, because they have a frontend engine as part of their monolith, and many functions you need to write a proper frontend will not be available through their APIs.

So the term "headless" means "we have APIs, and they are designed for you to build a frontend on top of".

Full disclosure: I work at commercetools, another player in the space.

The movement towards "headless", API-first platforms has a lot of steam. So much so that older platforms (e.g. Salesforce) are jumping on the bandwagon to stay relevant in the market.

That said, I know there are a lot of startup-focussed readers on HN. This trend is for larger companies who want to really own their customer experience, including their own frontend. You'll have more flexibility, and using an API-first platform will be a lot less work than writing your own backend, but... it's still more work.

If you are small, you need a quick MVP etc. going with a Shopify or BigCommerce is the faster way to start selling. Once you've got a good stream of revenue and you're feeling these platforms are too rigid, looking for an API-first platform is a good idea!

commercetools | 100% Remote (European Union) | Full-Time | Principal Engineers

I am the Director of Tech Leadership at commercetools and I am looking for Principal Engineers interested in contributing to the fast growth of our leading customizable API first (GraphQL & REST), Cloud-native (AWS & GCP), Headless Commerce SaaS processing more than $1mio revenue per hour depending on the time of the day.

If you're a trusted leader who is passionate about modern technologies, naturally curious, alway eager to share your knowledge and thriving in an international scale-up learning environment, then we'd love to build the future of multi-channel eCommerce with you!

Some of our global benefits include:

- Work Anywhere: Up to 60 days/year from a country different from your base country

- Open Learning & Development Budget

- ct Academy: Regular internal training sessions

- Flexibility: Morning person or night owl? We believe in outcome and motivated employees

- Mindset & Growth: A diverse, creative workspace with an international culture & learning environment

To apply:

- Principal Engineer - Cloud Architecture (m/f/x): https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/5263785003

- Principal Engineer - Reliability (m/f/x): https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/5034096003

To check all our open vacancies: https://commercetools.com/careers/jobs

In my experience, a week-long rotation is much more grueling than a daily rotation. Having to stay home for a single evening/night has much less impact for me than having to do it for a whole week.

Additionally, the impact on personal live of being Oncall on the weekend is bigger. At commercetools, we recognize this by paying more for an Oncall day on the weekend (200 EUR on Fri/Sat/Sun) vs. a day during the week (150 EUR).

commercetools | Remote | Full-Time | Frontend / Javascript / NodeJS, Scala, Python, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), Engineering Managers, Principal Engineers Check all the open roles: https://commercetools.com/careers/jobs

For my team, I'm looking for a Principal Engineer Service Quality and a Principal Engineer Performance!

We recently crossed the threshold of 100 engineers, and are setting up a tech leadership track to enable us to grow further. By being one of the first Principal Engineers, you’ll shape the role itself and the tech leadership culture together with the Director of Tech Leadership, who you’ll report to.

Principal Engineer Performance: https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/5072392003 Principal Engineer Service Quality: https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/5034096003

I stumbled upon this post the other day, maybe you'll find it helpful: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/an-aws-free-tier-bill-sho...

We at commercetools have remote Scala roles open both in Europe and the US (EST timezone only, though): https://commercetools.com/careers/jobs

Yes. We migrated from Rackspace to GCP. When I joined the company, it was clear Rackspace was loosing the cloud race, but back in 2012/2013 it was a strong contender.

Sometimes one adopts a technology too early...

We had a longer selection process between AWS, GCP and Azure. AWS was difficult because some of our customers see Amazon as a competitor. However today we also offer the option to run on AWS. GCP won over Azure.

commercetools | Remote | Full-Time | Frontend / Javascript / NodeJS, Scala, Python, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), Engineering Managers, Principal Engineer Incident Response

Check all the open roles: https://commercetools.com/careers/jobs

For my team, I'm looking for a Principal Engineer Incident Response!

We recently crossed the threshold of 100 engineers, and are setting up a tech leadership track to enable us to grow further. By being one of the first Principal Engineers, you’ll shape the role itself and the tech leadership culture together with the Director of Tech Leadership, who you’ll report to.

As the Principal Engineer Incident Response, you’ll work on challenging technical problems of an ambitious product. Depending on the time of the day, we process more than $1 mio revenue per hour. Every minute of downtime is costly for our customers, and our best features are useless if our services are not up. You’ll help new and existing product teams to detect incidents before our customers do, respond to them effectively, and most importantly learn and improve from every incident.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/5034096003

One book I haven't seen mentioned so far is Elastic Leadership - https://www.elasticleadership.com/

I like that it's quite hands-on, and that it also explicitly focuses on HOW to get teams out of a bad state.

If your team is doing perfectly fine right now, it may not be the best book to pick up, but when things spiral downwards, I can highly recommend it.

commercetools | Remote (EU and US) or in an office (Germany: Berlin, Munich. US: Durham) | Scala Software Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers | https://commercetools.com

commercetools is building a headless commerce for large brands and enterprises. It’s 100% cloud-native and completely API-first. Check https://diginomica.com/lego-moves-headless-e-commerce-improv... for a success story.

We handle between 500 million to 1 billion API calls a day.

We're an international team and our business is growing fast. We've joined the Unicorn club last month: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/13/commercetools-raises-140m-...

Check https://commercetools.com/careers for all open roles.

EU Remote:

Backend Engineer - Pricing Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4586157003 (No previous Scala experience required!)

Senior Scala Engineer - Checkout Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152903003

Scala Engineer - Stores and Channels Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4681433003

Search Backend Engineer https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4672688003 (No previous Scala experience required!)

Site Reliability Engineer - Deployment Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4669111003

US Remote:

Scala Engineer https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152070003

Site Reliability Engineer - Deployment Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4669111003

Site Reliability Engineer - Cloud Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4709065003

commercetools | Remote (EU and US) or in an office (Germany: Berlin, Munich. US: Durham) | Scala Software Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers | https://commercetools.com

commercetools is building a headless commerce for large brands and enterprises. It’s 100% cloud-native and completely API-first. Check https://diginomica.com/lego-moves-headless-e-commerce-improv... for a success story.

We handle between 500 million to 1 billion API calls a day.

We're an international team and our business is growing fast. We've joined the Unicorn club last month: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/13/commercetools-raises-140m-...

Check https://commercetools.com/careers for all open roles.

EU Remote:

Backend Engineer - Pricing Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4586157003 (No previous Scala experience required!)

Senior Scala Engineer - Checkout Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152903003

Scala Engineer - Stores and Channels Team https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4681433003

Search Backend Engineer https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4672688003 (No previous Scala experience required!)

Site Reliability Engineer - Deployment Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4669111003

US Remote:

Scala Engineer https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152070003

Site Reliability Engineer - Deployment Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4669111003

Site Reliability Engineer - Cloud Infrastructure https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4709065003

commercetools | Germany (Berlin, Munich or Remote), EU (Remote) or US (Durham or Remote) | Software Engineers - Scala, NodeJS | Engineering Managers | Product Managers | Full-Time | https://commercetools.com

commercetools is building a headless commerce for large brands and enterprises. It’s 100% cloud-native and completely API-first. Check https://diginomica.com/lego-moves-headless-e-commerce-improv... for a success story.

We're an international team and our business is growing fast. It's an exciting time to join and make an impact!

https://commercetools.com/careers

commercetools | Germany (Berlin, Munich or Remote), EU (Remote) or US (Durham or Remote) | Software Engineers - Scala, NodeJS | Engineering Managers | Product Managers | Full-Time | https://commercetools.com

commercetools is a visionary headless commerce platform best suited for microservices architectures. It’s 100% cloud-native and completely API-first.

We're an international team and our business is growing fast. It's an exciting time to join and make an impact!

https://commercetools.com/careers

commercetools | Germany (Berlin, Munich or Remote) or US (Durham or Remote) | Software Engineer - Scala | Full-Time | https://commercetools.com

commercetools is a visionary headless commerce platform best suited for microservices architectures. It’s 100% cloud-native and completely API-first.

We're looking for Scala Engineers for several teams. Help us expand our GraphQL and REST APIs, or help us scale our platform to the next level.

We're also looking for Engineering Managers, SREs and Product Managers.

https://commercetools.com/careers

commercetools | Germany (Berlin, Munich or Remote) or US (Durham or Remote) | Software Engineer - Scala | Full-Time | https://commercetools.com

We're building a cloud-native eCommerce API for large enterprises. We received funding late last year: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/commercetools-raises-145m-....

We're looking for Scala Engineers for several teams. Help us expand our GraphQL and REST APIs, or help us scale our platform to the next level.

For insights into what we built and how we're using Event Sourcing at Scale, check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWR6g64fA6M

Scala Engineer (Germany): https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152987003

Scala Engineer (US): https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools/jobs/4152070003

And more positions, including descriptions of individual teams, here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/commercetools

commercetools | Berlin or Munich, Germany | Software Engineer - Scala | Full-Time, Onsite | https://commercetools.com

We're building a cloud-native eCommerce API for large enterprises. We received funding late last year: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/commercetools-raises-145m-....

We're looking for Scala Engineers for several teams. Help us expand our GraphQL and REST APIs, or help us scale our platform to the next level.

For insights into what we built and how we're using Event Sourcing at Scale, check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWR6g64fA6M

We also have open positions for SREs and others: https://commercetools.com/careers

Once the decision has been made to move their products off of Amazon [...]

There is another valid decision: Diversify your channels and sell on multiple platforms. This way, you're not completely dependent on Amazon anymore, but still present on the biggest eCommerce marketplace.

Sell on your own shop (and, if you do marketing, direct it there) but also on Amazon, eBay and probably other marketplaces that work well for your niche.

This can be done with Shopify and probably most of the other solutions listed in the post as well.

Disclaimer: I work for commercetools, an API-first eCommerce platform.

commercetools | Berlin or Munich, Germany | Software Engineer - Scala | Full-Time, Onsite | https://commercetools.com

We're building a cloud-native eCommerce API for large enterprises. We received funding late last year: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/commercetools-raises-145m-...

We're looking for Scala Engineers for several teams. Help us expand our GraphQL and REST APIs, or help us scale our platform to the next level.

We also have open positions for SREs, Frontend Engineers and others: https://commercetools.com/careers

Customers know this, and are often apprehensive about these types of deal negotiations, so they tend to only go through this process if absolutely necessary

Unfortunately, for big enterprises, this isn't true. They (as a company, maybe not the individual developers inside it) want to go through it. They're the ones who start the RFP process, and as the service provider, you'll either follow their process... or they'll buy from someone else, no matter how much better your API may be.

It depends on the scenario, but this isn't as insane as it may sound. It's less relevant for, say, a SMS API which is interchangeable, but if you provide an API service that is deeply intertwined with the processes in that enterprise, the company needs to evaluate the different providers. This process is time-consuming one way or the other... they might as well let the different providers do most of the work for them (which makes sense, because they know their services).

As for the price negotiation itself: I agree.

Also, an enterprise sales process and usage based pricing are not mutually exclusive! You absolutely can sell usage based pricing, and both parties hopefully get the benefits listed.

The advice on trying to pick one person per sentence and to keep eye contact with that person was most helpful for me. I either tended to flick between people quickly, or look at one person for a longer period of time.

Cool, this looks nice!

I'm currently mentoring new tech leads, and I'm using books heavily as a tool. I usually break a book into two or three parts which we discuss and try to apply to our every-day problems. It works quite well.

However the biggest challenge I had wasn't finding good leadership books, but narrowing my list of books down.

I currently read with my mentees:

- The Managers Path

- Elastic Leadership

- Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond

- Nonviolent communication

"Simply Said" is a good example for my struggle: I picked it because I needed a single book that covers written communication, presentations, body language, focus on the needs of the person communicated to etc.

There are surely better books for each topic individually, but picking a single one was tough!

It is allowed to write code on iOS.

There are several code editors for iOS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ios+code+editor and Apple has even published an own app for students to learn coding called Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ - it isn't a full-blown code editor, but it clearly allows you to write and run code.

And that is ignoring cloud/browser-based code editors. That execution model (write code local, run in the cloud) makes sense with mobile devices which have limited power supply. I personally don't want to spin up several docker containers on my iPhone ;)

commercetools | Software Engineer - Scala | On-Site | Full-Time | Berlin, Germany | https://commercetools.com/careers

We combine solving hard tech challenges you’d expect in a Silicon Valley startup with German work/life balance.

Our Backend-as-a-Service powers commerce in a wide range of industries, including automotive, robotics, gaming, on-demand printing, fashion and toys. We don’t run mom-and-pop stores - we excel for enterprise customers that need a commerce platform that is both customizable and yet highly scalable and reliable.

Some of the challenges you can help us with:

* Scaling a multi-tenant BaaS with heterogeneous traffic patterns. We continuously improve the performance of our code (written in Scala) as well as our persistence layer (MongoDB and ElasticSearch).

* Rework our data models where they aren’t suitable for our biggest enterprise customers. E.g. we need to support retailers with inventory across hundreds of stores.

* Multi-cloud, multi-region deployment: We offer our customers a choice between different cloud providers (including AWS and GCP) and regions.

* Adopt new technologies in our developer-facing products. E.g. we invest in GraphQL and CloudEvents, and participate in specification processes as well as Open Source projects.

We’re 150 people from 35 countries. We offer flexible work hours, home office and are parent friendly. I myself leave the office at 3:30pm three times a week to spend the afternoon with my son, and then spent another 2 hours working at home in the evening.

For the Scala job in our team see: https://commercetools-jobs.personio.de/job/41580 Feel free to message me if you have any questions at christoph DOT neijenhuis AT companyname DOT com (No recruiters, no agencies please.)