The Overflow #141: High-velocity and burnout

Welcome to ISSUE #141 of The Overflow! This newsletter is by developers, for developers, written and curated by the Stack Overflow team and Cassidy Williams. This week: the link between high velocity and burnout, the legal repercussions for vampires, and the layer at the top of the Z axis in CSS.

From the blog

Does high velocity lead to burnout? That may be the wrong question to ask. stackoverflow.blog
High velocity compared to what?

Open source and accidental innovation stackoverflow.blog
The more open a system is to new contributors, the more chance that an accidental meeting will benefit everyone involved.

Why AI is having an on-prem moment (Ep. 476) stackoverflow.blog
The home team discusses how Instagram’s evolving platform has alienated some creators, why AI and machine learning are moving on-premises, and why Amazon’s acquisition of the company behind the Roomba is striking from a privacy perspective.

How does your engineering team compare to the competition? promotion
Software delivery has never been more critical to the success of business in every industry. With the growing challenges of complexity, how can engineering teams succeed? Download and read the complete State of Software Delivery report here.

Interesting questions

What is the significance of reaching major version 1.0.0? softwareengineering.stackexchange.com
A brief introduction to semantic versioning.

Could a human in a spacesuit survive a Skycrane landing on Mars? space.stackexchange.com
It’s never a good sign when the answer depends on your definition of “survive.”

I witnessed massive cases of corruption and cheating in my university. Now what?  academia.stackexchange.com
The perils of educational technology and remote learning writ large.

If vampires were real, what would one who broke into someone’s home to drink their blood be charged with? law.stackexchange.com
What you do in the shadows could have criminal repercussions.

Links from around the web

Why React re-renders www.joshwcomeau.com
The React re-rendering process is difficult to understand, even for the most seasoned developers. Here’s a good walkthrough.

Types of barcodes and their usage scanbot.io
Did you know there are different types of barcodes? Turns out how they work is pretty interesting.

Meet the top layer: a solution to z-index:10000  developer.chrome.com
Who among us hasn’t written a CSS rule for a massively high z-index?

State machines II blog.yoshuawuyts.com
In case you’re still not convinced, here’s another write-up about why state machines are a good thing.

A blast from the past: The pros and cons of being a software engineer at a BIG tech company.