The “Silicon Valley” TV show was a brilliant HBO satire about companies and culture in The Valley. The third season of the show portrays a Steve Ballmer-like CEO who incessantly touts his oversimplified business diagram, which he calls “The Conjoined Triangles of Success”.
Low-code/no-code platforms are all the rage. In this post, I’ll provide an overview of the low-code movement including — what low-code is, what the benefits are, and what options are out there. I’ll also dive into why my company chose Salesforce as its low-code solution, and I’ll provide our lessons learned and limitations found.
WHAT IS LOW CODE?
CODE
Before we dive into what low-code is, let’s briefly talk about what traditional code is. As we all know, code looks something like this:
As you can tell by my blog posts, I am a huge fan of Google Workspace. In fact, back in 2016, I blogged about the advantages of Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365. When I joined LT Trust, we were a small company with little appetite for a major culture shift to Google Workspace. When the pandemic rolled around, we had to step up our collaboration game, but we had to do so quickly and smoothly. The early days of the pandemic were definitely not a good time to disrupt the company with a transition to Google Workspace. …
Salesforce is a fantastic platform to bring together all types of users — technology, business, partners, and customers. Since many businesses already use Salesforce, it provides a low-code solution without adding yet another platform to the enterprise. Sales and other business units love Salesforce, so engagement and adoption couldn’t be better. Also, Einstein Analytics provides the eye candy that users are gaga over.
However, Salesforce is not without its challenges and frustrations. For me, the biggest frustration has been with Identity Verification and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) in Customer Communities. …
Building team culture and camaraderie is difficult with virtual meetings. In lieu of face-to-face collaboration, we should look for ways to mitigate barriers to communication and innovation. Although it’s hard to put a dollar figure on it, there is something to be said for a fun and engaging work environment, even if it is virtual.
My coworker at LT Trust, Burke Johnson, came up with a great idea to use “background challenges” as a way to get remote participants engaged in productive and collaborative meetings.
Background Challenge Rules
The rules of the game are simple:
- Pick a background category (e.g. Favorite Car) —…
I’m a big G Suite fan, but lately, I have been frustrated with Google Meet/Hangouts. I understand that I should expect some limitations due to the fact that Google Meet is 100% browser-based, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. Meet’s user interface lacks intuitive usability. In addition, you cannot synchronously call a co-worker via Google Chat. My latest frustration is that Meet doesn’t support virtual backgrounds; however, I found the following workarounds.
These workarounds will depend on your operating system and whether you are using a green screen.
Windows without a Green Screen
Windows with a Green Screen
Mac without a Green Screen
Snap Camera — Has a lot of fun foregrounds…
This post is a continuation of a multipart blog series about Technology Leadership Spectrums. The values of technology leaders fall on a spectrum much like the beliefs of politicians fall on the left or the right of the political spectrum. In this installment, I’ll evaluate the opinions related to the means of team communication, the importance of efficient communication, and the value of on-site employees.
Means of Communication
REST API Examples
- Stripe — The de facto standard
- PayPal
- GitHub
- IEX Trading
- Coinbase
Verbs
- GET — read
- POST — create/add
- PUT — replace (complete update)
- PATCH — modify (partial update)
- DELETE — delete
Status Codes
REST APIs typically use conventional HTTP response codes to indicate the success or failure of an API request. This Hacker Noon post provides a good description of the major status codes. In addition, the following Coinbase examples are helpful:
- 2xx — Success Category
200 OK — Successful request
201 Created — New object saved
204 No content — Object deleted - 4xx — Bad Request Category
400 Bad Request — Returns JSON…
This post is a continuation of a multipart blog series about Technology Leadership Spectrums. The previous post discussed high-bar vs. low-bar recruiting. It also discussed hiring for professional experience vs. candidate characteristics and interviewing with empathy vs. apathy. This post takes it a step further and evaluates the use of assessment tests in the recruiting process.
As stated in the previous post, two of the most sought after candidate characteristics are aptitude and creativity. The most common way of evaluating these characteristics is via whiteboard coding challenges.
On the one end of the spectrum, employers don’t use any assessment tests…
This is the first of a multi-part series that I will be writing about Technology Leadership Spectrums. The values of technology leaders fall on a spectrum much like the beliefs of politicians fall on the left or right of the political spectrum.
In this installment, I’ll talk about recruiting and its “low-bar” and “high-bar” ends of the spectrum. I’ll also dive deeper into hiring for professional experience vs. candidate characteristics and interviewing with empathy vs. apathy.
Recruiting
John DiFini
Passionate about Software Engineering, Finance, and the technology tools that help us in those endeavors.
