Software engineering leader with solid product know-how and a focus on people. Generalist. Treble dad.
Lisbon, Portugal
Joined January 2008
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Pinned Tweet
Inception xitter.cf/hugocf/status/64280006…
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
Amusing - I'm hearing a comeback of XP (Extreme Programming) practice.
In the early 2000s these used to be popular (championed by @KentBeck). Then died down. They are now surging again.
XP practices like small releases, frequent integration, and constant customer input!
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
behind the scenes of the new tab bar menu I designed for Linear:
as always, it's a prototype that exposes a bunch of sliders
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
xitter.cf/IamJoshJackson/status/…
Something that we all need to recognize is that engineers end up making 50%+ of the product decisions by volume.
There's no practical way PMs and designers can specify every single edge case, all the subtleties of the look and feel and interactions. Every animation latency, the perf tradeoffs, out-of-order execution, partially complete states, user input edges, etc.
If you're not actually writing the code, you're necessarily painting in broad strokes. I might decide who the ideal user persona is, but that's just 1 single high-impact decision. At the quality level we want to deliver, we need every single stroke and every decision to count.
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction.
I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
We promise we aren't trolling.
ALT Internet ‘trolling’ most likely comes from fishing rather than bridge-guarding creatures. 'Trolling' refers to fishing by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat. So when people ‘troll,’ they are fishing for responses.
ALT Which means internet 'trolls' are so-named because of the fishing action of the verb!" The connection to the mythical goblin, while often appropriate, seems etymologically coincidental.
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
A few months ago, we changed the way we address bugs @linear. We prioritized bugs over everything else. If you have bugs assigned when you wake up in the morning, you don't do anything else before they are addressed.
This approach felt scary and quite radical, but our theory was this: Every software product has defects and the amount of defects being found is somewhat constant. We want to build a product that is of the highest quality, so eventually all bugs will be addressed. This means that the amount of work required to tackle bugs is the same regardless of whether you address the immediately or whether you prioritize feature work and tackle bugs in bulk between feature work.
And this made it obvious that the better alternative is to prioritize bugs over everything else. The cost for doing this was that we had to spend a month or so to bring down the backlog of bugs, but once the backlog was eradicated, there was no additional cost to this approach.
Now, if we or a customer finds a bugs, it usually gets fixed the very next day.
You certainly should consider doing this at your software company.
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
Where's the line between #patriotism and #nationalism? How can you tell you've entered the danger zone?
Full conversation with @ianbremmer available on bit.ly/BremmerYNH . (Filmed in March 2024)
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
A subtle England penalty shootout innovation (since 2021) is their deliberate, structured & functional use of social psychology.
Here, Saka is picked up by John Stones after his penalty, to swiftly welcome him back in the team.
What did England do and why did they do it?
1/7
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
Elon Musk fired 80% of Twitter (6500 people) and everyone thought that Twitter was doomed.
He was right. Everyone was wrong.
It’s the management masterclass of the decade and every entrepreneur must understand why it worked 🧵:
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
Koan #31
“I can’t do it.”
“Everything you can do now, once you could not do.”
And the student was enlightened.
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
For more advice see my new book Excellent Advice for Living amzn.to/3mQL4c4 #excellentadvice
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
“figure out what you’re good at without trying, then try” is one of my all-time favourite sentiments — you’ll never get tired of doing what feels fun and easy to you, so why not *try* to make what you do indefinitely (your vocation) something you would do forever, with pleasure?
Hugo Ferreira retweeted
Startup vs Big Company Dynamics
Startup
• Observation: Users want a new feature.
• Designer (60 min later): Here are some figma prototypes.
• Engineer: We can ship this by the end of the week.
Big Company:
• Observation: Let’s discuss our observations when Suzy’s back; targeting end of month.
End of Month: Bob should really be in this meeting, let’s reschedule.
• Meeting: Users want this feature. We’ll need Jessica's buy-in.
• Jessica Meeting: Presented six weeks of research for the new feature.
• Jessica: This can fit into our H2 planning.
• H2 Kickoff: Remember users want this feature?
• Product Manager: Will draft a product brief that will be ready for H2's second cycle.
• Designer: Drafted designs in Figma, ready for the next review.
• Design Review: Why this feature? Should we prioritize X instead?
• Outcome: Feature sidelined. Cycle repeats.
**Note** This isn’t subtweeting but the reality of software development at scale. Whether you're a startup or a big company, it’s crucial to streamline to avoid this. Success breeds complexity, but no startup is immune.