Random thoughts

2025-11-05

• These are goated websites, design so good:
  • confest.im
  • datakra.sh
• git cherry-pick is goated.
• I don't care so much for a clean branch history.
• The squeeze technique works! re: tongs

• One piece of software engineering research that I think is so insightful and true is that you ship your org chart. I think instead of trying to avoid that, you should make sure your org chart is what you want shipped.

  Towards this, I think How to build silos and decrease collaboration (on purpose) is a good idea.

  I also think multiple repositories are typically bad. I think for deployment they seem fair, but by and large, I shouldn't have to switch between repositories to implement a feature.

  A. The actual switching is a lot of friction.

  B. Keeping things consistent becomes it's own project, instead of for free.

  C. I can't simultaneously update the repos, meaning that for a perfect migration, I have this added complexity of making sure that when I change repo 1, repo 2 still works.

• Is there a space for unhealthy workers / workaholics in a healthy workplace? I fear not, since I think it creates an undue pressure on others. Perhaps this is an inefficiency in our systems. Or maybe it's locally inefficient (you don't extract the max utility out of a worker) but globally efficient (you have less burnout).
• I hope you don't mind me reading my blog while I talk to you. It's not because my blog is really interesting, or that you're not that interesting, but that I think there may be some really fun stuff to talk about in my blog, that we can discuss.
• I read Jumbo's 2024 financial statement today. Some thoughts:
  • The main pages are:
    • pg. 153: A summary of the income statement
    • pgs. 165 - 182, 204 - 208: Notes relevant to income statement
  • This is my first time reading such a financial statement. They are surprisingly accessible!
  • I typically think of supermarkets as very low margin businesses. Their net revenue result is about 3.3% of their total revenue, so this is about right in my estimation.
  • When I initially saw "Selling expenses", I thought it to be marketing mostly. It includes marketing, but the majority of this category is employee benefits! So I suppose employees get some sort of discount here? And what about the deals that Jumbo runs, is that accounted here or somewhere else? Perhaps such "marketing expenses" are paid by the franchises? But then I'm wondering what a franchises' margins are now.
  • Still not sure what Impairments / Reversal of Impairments are. I will buy a coffee for someone that explains this to me!

• This house is made of spit.

  

  Thank you @larss for sharing!