Improving data processing efficiency using partial deserialization of Thrift

At Pinterest we’ve worked to greatly improve data processing efficiency. One quote that resonates with our unique approach is from writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Ultimately…

How I Work: The art of balancing

Tatramajjhattatā is the Buddhist word for neutrality of mind. It speaks about a balance that helps an individual keep their mind calm and healthy. This is crucial not only for individuals but also for eco-systems. Organisations are not any different and it is a microcosm of this complex infinite universe…

Affinity Design Principles

Alive, Empowering, Progressive, Unified We crafted our principles to provide the lens through which all our design decisions are made — from brand and marketing to product design, from the smallest pixel to…

The Final Call — The good and the bad of React Native

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash This blog is part of the Grofers React Native blog series. Through this series we attempt to share the journey of integrating React…

#HEREFORPRIDE

Pride isn’t a color or a flavor of the month. It isn’t the latest trend or showing the world you’re ‘woke’. It’s about representation and not just for the moment, but something that is an innate part of our value system and beliefs. At Dunzo, we have always strived to…

A Deep Dive into Airbnb’s Server-Driven UI System

By Ryan Brooks Background: Server-Driven UI Before we dive into Airbnb’s implementation of server-driven UI (SDUI), it’s important to understand the general idea of SDUI and how it provides an advantage over traditional client-driven…

Grilling Season On-Demand: Announcing our Partnership with Beyond Meat to Offer Limited-Edition…

Today we announced a partnership with Beyond Meat® to offer limited-edition grilling kits available exclusively at DashMart. Just in time for summer and July 4th, we conducted a consumer survey* which found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of Americans agree that grilling is a must-do activity this summer and more than…

Exploring Data @ Netflix

Supporting a rapidly growing base of engineers of varied backgrounds using different data stores can be challenging in any organization. Netflix’s internal teams strive to provide leverage by investing in easy-to-use tooling that streamlines the user experience and incorporates best practices. …

Setting Up Snowflake Secondary Roles with Tableau

At Pinterest, we heavily utilize Tableau for our enterprise analytics. In an effort to secure access of sensitive data to the appropriate business units, we moved the enterprise data into a Snowflake data warehouse. Using Snowflake as a data platform, we can create and manage…

Learning from Incidents at Expedia Group

Stories of failures leading to improvement Photo: Expedia Group Incidents at Expedia Group® (EG) provide a window into the inner workings and health of services across a sprawling technology stack. Whether it is legacy infrastructure in specific areas or newer platforms being produced to consolidate older architecture on, problems arise on a regular basis that rise up to the…

In Focus: Sancheeta Kaushal

Sancheeta is an engineering manager with the innovation team at grofers. She is an old timer who joined us way back in June 2015. Her work at grofers goes beyond her current team and you can find her organising events and forming communities in her free time. Here are some…

How To Export Medium Stats for Monthly Analysis

Learn how to generate and retain monthly stats on Medium Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash Medium™️ provides basic statistics for publications through the menu dropdown ‘stats’ option, which takes you to the stats page showing 30 or 90 day views and reads. These stats are a snapshot of the current numbers, but Medium does not provide a way to view them as a time series. …

Better Insights to Fuel our Restaurant Partners’ Success

Today, DoorDash is officially introducing the Insights Hub, a new tool in the Merchant Portal designed to give business owners more access to data and help them grow their off-premises business. Running a restaurant is challenging, there are many moving pieces, and it’s…

How we Roadmap in 2021

Why roadmap anyways (and how to do it well) I’ll admit it —…

Introducing Netflix Timed Text Authoring Lineage

By: Bhanu Srikanth, Andy Swan, Casey Wilms, Patrick Pearson The Art of Dubbing and Subtitling Dubbing and subtitling are inherently creative processes. At Netflix, we strive to make shows as joyful to watch in every language as in the original language, whether a member watches with original or dubbed audio, closed captions…

Trusting Metrics at Pinterest

Pinterest, like many tech companies, relies heavily on data to help inform decisions and power machine learning. This strategy fundamentally depends on the data being accurate. Over the years we’ve worked to improve the processes behind trusting core decision-making data and ensure metrics remain accurate. How Data Can Go Wrong …

Improving Vrbo Homepage Loading Experience

It’s not always easy to improve Performance and User Experience at the same time Photo by Christina Morillo. Used by permission. A couple of years ago the web platform at Vrbo™️ (part of Expedia Group™️) went through a complete re-architecture, since then the way that the homepage has loaded its modules has been the same. We had some rich SEO content that needs to be Server-Side Rendered and some personalized content…

DoorDash and Albertsons Companies Partner to Launch Unprecedented Access to On-Demand Grocery…

DoorDash, the nation’s leading last-mile logistics platform, and Albertsons Companies, one of the nation’s top grocers, announced today a new partnership to offer on-demand grocery delivery from nearly 2,000 well-known Albertsons banner stores across…

Celebrating Juneteenth: Our Commitment to Black Communities, Dashers, Entrepreneurs, and Employees

On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in the United States in Galveston, Texas received the news that they were freed more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the Civil War had ended. This week, Congress and the Administration took action to honor the importance of this day…

Modularising the Badoo iOS app

In my previous article, I explained how we singled out the chat functionality in our app for modularisation. Everything had gone well and we were preparing to roll out this experience to start work on modularising all of Badoo iOS app development. We even did a presentation on the approach…

How We Protect Pinners’ Passwords

Aalaa Satti | Software Engineer Amine Kamel | Head of Production Security At Pinterest, one method by which we ensure account security is through protecting Pinners’ passwords. Passwords can be problematic for a variety of reasons, including the fact that people tend to reuse their…

The Effects of Linking Dependencies on App Performance and Development

Can statically linked iOS Apps be both faster and smaller? Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels Four years ago we only had around five engineers working on the iOS Vrbo™ (part of Expedia Group™) app. We now have well over 30 active contributors maintaining a much larger codebase. As you can imagine, major changes were necessary from both an organizational and architectural standpoint to allow us…

DoorDash Celebrates Pride 2021

Pride Month honors the ability of every person to be their authentic selves. We celebrate the progress that has been made for LGBTQIA+ people, while acknowledging the work that still needs to be done. DoorDash is working to empower the LGBTQIA+…

Building an Inclusive Codebase

By: Michael Bachand, Amanda Vawter, Dan Federman, Jake Silver, Julia Wang, Mark Tai Code is our craft. At Airbnb, we view our code and product as a reflection of our values. Each developer imbues their work with a piece of themselves. We want…

Owning Your CODEOWNERS File

For when your CODEOWNERS file isn't working quite right Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash GitHub® CODEOWNERS files are a way to require pull request approvals from specific people before enabling merge. On the surface this is all very simple, but there are a number of gotchas that keep catching folks out. Pull Requests MUST contain the correct CODEOWNERS file A CODEOWNERS file is a lot like a .gitignore file and shares some…