João Alves
@joaoqalves.net
67 followers 27 following 66 posts
2x Dad. Husband. Head of Engineering @Adevinta. Building abistama.com and rotahog.com Opinions are my own. Writes in PT/ES/EN/CAT
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joaoqalves.net
3. (Contd) We need, as an industry, to make sure we get the most out of the available tools, and be proficient with them. So, this is a more cultural/people’s problems. And these are harder than vibe coding itself.
joaoqalves.net
3. Finally, there’s a cultural change. A lot of great SWE, even on HN, despise the idea of having someone writing code for them. “It’s bad code”, etc.
joaoqalves.net
2. When you work for a bigCo, there are tempos. Approvals, budget, licenses… All of this makes the adoption of these tools a bit slower than wanted.
joaoqalves.net
1. (Contd) Debugging, reproducing bugs, aligning requirements, observability, setting up good cloud infrastructure, etc is still there.

I think there’s also room to improve it with LLMs but we must also acknowledge we’re in the early days, although it does not seem so.
joaoqalves.net
1. It’s not the same a brand new codebase vs a big, existing one. Context management helps, but you also need to invest a lot on it. Especially legacy projects. Bear in mind that producing code is part of the job of a Software Engineer but not the biggest chunk, especially in legacy apps.
joaoqalves.net
One of the comments I received in HN was this one. My post aimed at sharing my personal experience and not work-wise. Still, there are a lot of things to unpack.
joaoqalves.net
I also learned how to "ping-pong" with ChatGPT in terms of producing good PRDs and identifying areas where there are weak spots, such as tests.

Read it here : bit.ly/48ieyVB
joaoqalves.net
I’ve spent three years "vibe coding" with LLMs. Shipping side projects I’d never have had time to build otherwise. In terms of implementation, I agree with @iagolast and I don't feel it's "magic" anymore, but I do feel a lot more productive. Full post below.
joaoqalves.net
Does anyone else notice how the trend of responding to "Oh, layoffs at company X. I'm sad for you" with "At company Y, we're hiring" feels a bit off? Companies often discuss "empathy" and then...
joaoqalves.net
I built a Slack-to-Jira support bot a while ago. It sat on the shelf: useful, but not perfect.

Instead of letting it rot, I cleaned it up and open-sourced it. Inspired by @dhh, Omarchy, and the reminder that you can just share your work.

Wanna know more about it? 👇
joaoqalves.net
Built with Kotlin + Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Redis, and deep Slack/Jira integrations. Multi-tenant, configurable per reaction, etc.

github.com/abistama/su...
GitHub - abistama/support-hero
Contribute to abistama/support-hero development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
joaoqalves.net
I’m open sourcing Abistama’s support hero! 🦸

⚡ Emoji → Jira tickets
🤖 AI-powered summaries
📊 CSAT surveys
🔗 Slack & Jira integration

The biz model failed, but maybe it helps your team. Repo in the post below 👇
joaoqalves.net
The Zero Interest Rate Period (ZIRP) encouraged Engineering Managers to prioritize their team’s happiness and feelings almost like a union representative. That is not the job. These folks are having a hard-time the post-ZIRP era.
joaoqalves.net
The two main blockers for AI use in sales, marketing, and non-tech departments are:

* Data access: Lack of APIs or costly beyond standard reports/dashboards.
* Credit card access: Limited by company systems. People need self-sufficiency to test niche tools.
joaoqalves.net
The other day, I had the chance to have a conversation with @agilestateofM about DevOps, Platform Engineering, SLIs, SLOs and more. It’s meant for people that are start looking into all of this. >>>
joaoqalves.net
🚩"Not a 9-5 job" in a job post: is it a red flag? Some roles, such as those at OpenAI or Anthropic, require extra hours but offer career growth, equity, or a mission-driven impact. Effort can be a choice, not a trap, if the upside’s real. Read more: bit.ly/3HIJKlw
joaoqalves.net
"If yogurts have expiration dates, why don't your nodes?". Simple, to-the-point article by @danielillu on keeping an eye on old K8s nodes and leveraging things like "node TTL" from auto-scalers like Karpenter.

medium.com/learnings-f...
If Yogurts Have Expiration Dates, Why Don’t Your Nodes?
When was the last time you checked the “freshness” of your Kubernetes nodes?
medium.com
joaoqalves.net
One of Slack’s major moats is to have access to a stream of conversations in a business. AI and LLMs that build atop these and generate meaningful summaries, documentation, etc are a big threat to their business. Alas, new rate limits.
joaoqalves.net
One way to understand the inflation we’ve seen in the last few years is to see football players’ transfers. The bottom raised by a lot. What before was 2M now it’s 5M€. 5 is now 10. 10 is now 20. The ceiling didn’t move much, though. Paying 100M+ is still rare.
joaoqalves.net
Just published: "Five opinions I’ve kept, let go, and picked up as a software builder and leader"

Typed languages, CD, writing culture? Still worth it.
Scala? Test pyramids? Preprod parity? Not so much.
New lessons? Support, momentum, brag docs.

bit.ly/4mEzxXw
joaoqalves.net
Buying domains, building side projects, and finishing them are three different hobbies. I’m on the first category. Ask me anything.