The false dilemma, DALL-E API, and building teams in a remote world
Raz Tirboaca 
Reject the false dilemma
It’s easy to lose sight of things when everything around you says, “We’re screwed.” Starting with the layoffs this week and finishing with the stock market return, it seems like tech jobs are not a good choice anymore. That the tech industry was in a bubble that just popped, and it’s a smaller industry than we thought.
And here it is, the false dilemma. The binary, black-or-white thinking that our brain loves so much in hard times. Reject it!
Let’s remember why technology is beautiful, necessary, and unstoppable. For the first time ever, you can virtually tour the full interior of Khufu’s Pyramid at Giza, Egypt. Go inside the Great Pyramid and while there, remember what made you excited about technology to start with. That excitement is still there—keep making 👣
TOOLS
🗣️ WhatsApp launched Communities, a discussion feature for groups of up to 1,024 people. Communities like neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces can now connect multiple groups together under one umbrella to organize group conversations.
🤖 OpenAI released the DALL-E API for public beta, allowing companies to now integrate the AI-image generator into their products. The API has three capabilities: users can generate an image, edit a part of the image, and also generate multiple variations of the image. Usage is priced per image output, based on size.
🧑💻 Tech industry forgot that A/B tests and metrics are not product vision or the end goal. The problem with tests is that they only work for micro changes but never for real meaningful improvements. Redesigns, new products, new direction, new methods will always perform bad initially because it changes things, which is the point.
🙌 Google increases storage for Workspace Individual from 15 GB of storage to 1 TB. On top of it, they added a newsletter feature directly backed into GMail. Workspace Individual costs $9.99 per month.
📊 Chart.js is a simple, yet flexible, open-source JavaScript library for designers & developers. The documentation is top and it can be used with ES6 modules, plain JavaScript, and module loaders. What I like about it is the configuration options for design and animations tweaks.
TEAM
🤝 Jesse McGinnis spoke at QCon San Francisco on building high-trust and high-performing teams at Shopify in a remote world. He pointed out that:
There are three areas of focus—first, focus on trust, second first impressions, and third good digital conversations.
The first step is to focus on trust. Trust is the foundation of a high-performing team, whether you are in-person or remote—more important remote! Trust as humans are foundational before trust as a team can emerge. To make it work, McGinnes points out:
I cannot state enough how important facilitation is. You really need to establish a space of safety, openness, and honesty if you want this to work. If you do that, you are going to reap some beautiful rewards.
First impression matters, aka onboarding. Onboarding has always played a critical role in the cultural setting, even more so in a remote setting. McGinnes claims that onboarding could bring the tools to make that better. With onboarding, an organization provides information about when they can reach out or to whom. In addition, there are tools to navigate through the digital sea. And that brings it to McGinnes’ third major takeaway: Care more about onboarding.
MARKET
🫦 Creative tools 2.0. Looking at Figma’s acquisition price ($20B) or Canva’s latest valuation ($40B at the last round), it has now become clear that one can build huge companies in creative software.
🐬 Twitter’s new verification system will cost $8 per month, offering priority in replies and search, fewer ads, and other tools. Musk said the move is “essential to defeat spam/scam” and will help Twitter fund creators.
👙 Victoria’s Secret will buy Adore Me for $400m with plans to incorporate the D2C lingerie brand’s digital shopping experience. I know someone reading this right now and smiling—congrats Andrei!
Thanks for reading! See you again next week 🫶