Douglas Gresham
@douglasgresham.bsky.social
Software engineering manager, liberal, occasional casual speedrunner.
Linkdump: douglasgresham.co.uk
Linkdump: douglasgresham.co.uk
I developed a reputation for saying "no" at work, which has never sat well with me. I wrote something about what I now do instead: medium.com/@douglas-gre...
A Better Way Of Saying No: “Help Me Understand”
In 2020, you may recall we had something of a global pandemic. One of the many consequences of this is travel — especially air travel —…
medium.com
December 18, 2025 at 12:49 PM
I developed a reputation for saying "no" at work, which has never sat well with me. I wrote something about what I now do instead: medium.com/@douglas-gre...
Reposted by Douglas Gresham
These ridiculous mega-projects like "datacenters in space" (doomed by thermodynamics) make a LOT more sense when you realize they're massive Ponzi schemes designed to transfer wealth from pension funds to VC's through "fee stacking."
It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.
It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.
“.. Skeptics believe the technical risks are being underestimated and say space-based data centers won’t be competitive on cost, especially if power and other constraints ease on the ground.”
@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/tech/bezos-a...
@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/tech/bezos-a...
December 11, 2025 at 9:29 AM
These ridiculous mega-projects like "datacenters in space" (doomed by thermodynamics) make a LOT more sense when you realize they're massive Ponzi schemes designed to transfer wealth from pension funds to VC's through "fee stacking."
It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.
It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.
Today's recruitment agency spam is utterly shameless.
"I’m working with a candidate at first-stage interview at <your company>. While strong, I believe there are higher-caliber candidates at the same price point with experience at <companies>. Would you be open to partnering to access top talent?"
"I’m working with a candidate at first-stage interview at <your company>. While strong, I believe there are higher-caliber candidates at the same price point with experience at <companies>. Would you be open to partnering to access top talent?"
February 11, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Today's recruitment agency spam is utterly shameless.
"I’m working with a candidate at first-stage interview at <your company>. While strong, I believe there are higher-caliber candidates at the same price point with experience at <companies>. Would you be open to partnering to access top talent?"
"I’m working with a candidate at first-stage interview at <your company>. While strong, I believe there are higher-caliber candidates at the same price point with experience at <companies>. Would you be open to partnering to access top talent?"
I wrote a thing about how permitting bad metrics/KPIs in your software engineering teams will inevitably force out any good ones. With some fun diversions into currency debasement, fraud and the nature of survival advantages :)
douglas-gresham.medium.com/5e19d6fd5405
douglas-gresham.medium.com/5e19d6fd5405
Bad metrics drive out good
Impact. The magic word Big Tech uses to describe core job expectations, with Google going so far as to rename its rating descriptors based…
douglas-gresham.medium.com
November 26, 2024 at 6:35 PM
I wrote a thing about how permitting bad metrics/KPIs in your software engineering teams will inevitably force out any good ones. With some fun diversions into currency debasement, fraud and the nature of survival advantages :)
douglas-gresham.medium.com/5e19d6fd5405
douglas-gresham.medium.com/5e19d6fd5405
Reposted by Douglas Gresham
Foursquare just open sourced their 100 million place point of interest dataset! Some notes on poking around with it using DuckDB (it's Parquet files on S3) simonwillison.net/2024/Nov/20/...
Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community
I did not expect this! > [...] we are announcing today the general availability of a foundational open data set, Foursquare Open Source Places ("FSQ OS Places"). This base layer …
simonwillison.net
November 20, 2024 at 6:08 AM
Foursquare just open sourced their 100 million place point of interest dataset! Some notes on poking around with it using DuckDB (it's Parquet files on S3) simonwillison.net/2024/Nov/20/...
Welp, that's my account at The Old Place nuked. Feels odd, even though I'd basically stopped using it for over a year now.
Maybe I should be, like, more active here. Got a couple of bits of writing rattling around my brain, maybe I'll try that . . .
Maybe I should be, like, more active here. Got a couple of bits of writing rattling around my brain, maybe I'll try that . . .
November 7, 2024 at 7:51 PM
Welp, that's my account at The Old Place nuked. Feels odd, even though I'd basically stopped using it for over a year now.
Maybe I should be, like, more active here. Got a couple of bits of writing rattling around my brain, maybe I'll try that . . .
Maybe I should be, like, more active here. Got a couple of bits of writing rattling around my brain, maybe I'll try that . . .