Archives

#120 - may 24th 2015

Look

Examples of UI/UX, graphic performance, web design and flashy things.
Dreamteam design
Great use of the scrolling for an alternative navigation.

Use

Web applications, resources and tools, available for making our life easier or funnier.
iconate.js js
Transform icons with shiny animations.
Solved by Flexbox css3
Showcase of CSS problems easily solved by Flexbox.
Notism design
Share and collaborate on design and video work.
Awesome tool
A curated list of awesome lists.
Github Engineering ops
A new blog about what does it take to run and build GitHub.

Install

A selection of gems or applications updated during past week.
Oga rb
An alternative to Nokogiri.
ruby-spark rb
Ruby wrapper for Apache Spark.
persistent_open_struct rb
A faster implementation of OpenStruct.
Tacokit rb
A ruby wrapper for the Trello API.
Graylog 1.1 beta ops
Focus on usability and ease of management.
ClearLinux ops
A new cloud linux distro from Intel.

Read

From the blogosphere or news feeds ...
How to Dispel Ruby Magic and Understand Your Gems may 18 rb
source_location, bundle open, and gem pristine.
Building a Slack Clone in Meteor.js: Real-Time Data may 18 js
This is the second of a five-part series on building a Slack clone using Meteor.
Rails 5 - Much Faster Collection Rendering may 19 rb
Rails 5 speeding up rendering collections of cached partials.
Considerations on Bug Reporting in Teams may 19 tool
Having a system for bug reports in a team environment has a ton of benefits.
An Introduction to Vagrant may 20 tool
Make your local environment closer to the production.
A Field Guide to Docker Security Measures may 21 ops
Some of the ways to reduce or help manage the risk of running docker farms.
Graph Algorithms in Ruby may 22 rb
In depth dive into this weird graph algorithm.
The Final Steps to Mastering JavaScript’s 'this' Keyword may 22 js
The context of 'this' can be changed in a odd ways.
What you should know about collapsing margins may 22 css3
Collapsing margins: what they are and how they behave.
CD for infrastructure services may 22 ops
Lessons learned about continuously deploying infrastructure.
Working with files and folders may 24 rb
Quick review on File, Dir and IO.
Upload video files with progress bar may 24 rb
Using Rails, Paperclip and Javascript.

Watch

Screencasts and conferences videos, or other video feeds ...
So what’s the deal with Ruby refinements, anyway? (4m) may 20 rb
All about refinements.
The Soul of Software (47m) may 21 rb
Speaker starts with the premise that the Ruby wave may have peaked.
Build a Realtime Chat App with Ruby and Volt (9m) may 21 rb
Build a chat app in 9 minutes.
Links curated by mose (publisher), xenor, tysliu (editors) .

Rant

The random rant of the week by mose.

The side effects of recruitment

Recently I had to look for a new devops for our team. I have been handling technical recruitment at many occasions, and each time I have to explain my colleagues that I have a special process. The fact is, the technical sphere is a small one, we are all linked, more or less, to a community. Well, in my case, I always have had to recruit people in companies that were hiring the kind of people that commit on github, have some kind of community activity, at least. I guess that in huge companies where people are just a set of checkboxes, things go a bit differently.

But anyways, in my case, and probably in the case of all recruiters in modern and small businesses, it's not all about checkboxes and profiles. It's about personality, compatibility, and mindset. So when I first get a contact with a candidate, I invite him (or much more rarely, her), to a chat online, preferably on irc or whatever real-time discussion media is more fit (for a linux geek, if you can't go on irc, then there is a problem).

I noticed that during my past sessions of recruitment, I established contacts with very interesting people. By having an unformal discussion online, just chit-chating of what work we do and what we did before, it's kind of easy to get an idea of what is the kind of relationship you will have with your potential future colleague. But beyond that, it's all about making things personal. We are all unique. It cannot be computed, scripted, engineered in a way that non-technical people would be successful conducting that process. It takes a geek to recognize another geek.

At Gandi of course we have a HR person. But she usually appears at the very end of the process and not at the beginning. The peers are going to evaluate candidates, make their mind to see if they want to spend days and days collaborating with them. It matches with my way to do things, fortunately. If I have any doubt of the technical abilities on someone, I don't do stupid technical tests, I try to find other people that know the candidate and get third party feedback. If not, then I try to use a meetup in a community related to the speciality in question, so we can discuss and be around other people where some tangent discussion can happen.

At the end, if all goes well, then the candidate is going to enter the more formal whatever the company uses as a recruitment flow. But that's merely a formality. And after 20 years building up teams and recruiting people, I can affirm that instinct always wins, in my case. If I smell anything fishy in an unformal context, there is going to be problems. Well, the process is never perfect, it also can smell ok but stink after 3 months, too.

But the thing is that having those chats online with peers is pretty interesting. I learn a lot about how other companies work, how they handle their management, what kind of work conditions they have. Just because it's part of the contact process. So I'm not really in hurry to make a final decision because, to be honest, I just enjoy those contacts.

It certainly takes some time, I can't be in constant recruitment, but from time to time, it's very valuable. And not only for the effect of recruiting someone. It creates bonds with the industry, with people, with communities.

Green Ruby News was a feed of fresh links of the week about ruby, javascript, webdev, devops, collected by mose, xenor and tysliu every sunday.