Posts by Allen Cheung
The Surreal Urban Sprawl of City: Skylines
Simcity 2000 was a hell of a game for a 10-year old. It introduced me to the idea of using computers for simulation. That there’s wonderful complexity in the interaction of systems. And that cities, even in a super-simplified…
Review: Little Rice — Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream
I’ve read my share of books and articles on the current economic and political phenomenon that is China. I’m interested in part because of my own ethnicity and complex relationship with the country, and in part because its…
Google Photos has Won
A year ago, I was trying to use a handful of services manage my private photos collection. Each service had its plusses and minuses, but since most were cheap and/or free, the right strategy was to redundantly use all…
The Greener Grass on the Management Side
In modern tech companies, there’s a dual career ladder structure for software engineers: they can either progress more technologically (as senior and lead engineers) or advance on the management side (as engineering managers and directors). The best companies ensure…
How Culture Matters
I really like this quote from Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar Schein, courtesy of this article from Stratechery contrasting cultures from familiar tech companies: If one wishes to distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leadership…
No Shortcuts to Software Development Experience
Software startups, once their engineering organizations reach a certain size, put together a career ladder for their engineers. It usually comes at a point where there’s enough diversity in abilities that a distinction is useful, for straight-forward things like…
