Blogs / Personal blogs

Philip O'Toole

philipotoole.com

Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them

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Databases & Data 5Systems & Performance 3Software Engineering 3Life, Learning & Writing 2Open Source 1Programming Languages 1

1

Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

I work as an Engineering Manager at Google, and my teams practice a simple habit - we book all meetings to start at five minutes past the hour (or half hour). This works better than trying to finish five minutes early. Meetings often don't finish on time, and the impact is highest with back-to-back meetings.…

2

Talking to LLMs has improved my thinking

I’ve been surprised by - and enjoy - one aspect of using large language models more than any other. They often put into words things I have long understood, but could not write down clearly. When that happens, it feels less like learning something new and more like recognition. A kind of “ok, yeah" moment.…