Your last work shapes what people notice most, whether it’s a sturdy app or a wobbly update. This article explores staying aware and motivated to deliver meaningful work, especially in software, through practical steps and team support.

Your last work is what counts

§ Navigate changes 🏄‍♂️

Discover the human edge in empathy, creativity, intuition, and purpose, where we surpass AI. Learn practical solutions to overcome challenges like AI reliance and isolation to thrive in a tech-driven world.

Human edge in AI world

This page outlines how developers can connect to and utilize Brainery's extensive knowledge base and AI-driven capabilities. By integrating a straightforward MCP configuration, you can seamlessly access powerful insights directly within your existing development tools and workflows.

Access the brainery

Discover why a personal second brain is still valuable in the AI era. Learn how it curates knowledge, sparks creativity, and complements LLMs for deeper insights.

Why build a second brain when AI can think for us?

An overview of Brainery's architecture, detailing how it ingests, processes, and transforms data from diverse sources into a dynamic knowledge base.

Architecture

What’s the point of being human if AI thinks for us? Explore how emotions, creativity, relationships, and purpose make humanity unique in an AI-driven world.

The point of being human if AI can think?

Does using AI make you pretend to know? Learn how a second brain helps you truly understand by curating and connecting knowledge, not just querying AI.

Does AI make you pretend to know?

See how Brainery changes your reading game, helping you learn more and find new things to read, all in a smart loop.

Reading after brainery

This guide explains how we organize content in our Memo using a Zettelkasten-inspired system, from fleeting notes to playbooks. Learn how to contribute and build our connected knowledge base.

Content arrangement in Dwarves Memo

Explore comprehensive guides on AI foundations, prompt engineering, model training, retrieval, evaluation, AI agents, security, and real-world applications of large language models for effective AI development.

§ LLM

Latest study and application of Prompt engineering

§ Prompt Engineering

The official Brainery build-log. We're detailing our process for creating a 'second brain' designed for continuous learning and insight generation. Covers motivation, system design, and practical data-to-wisdom strategies.

§ Brainery 🧠

A collaborative workspace for organizing and reviewing team proposals, ideas, and significant changes through structured RFC documents

RFCs

Productivity

000 RFC template

Open Source

Software Quality

Liquidity

This article shares a workflow for making slide decks with Overleaf and ChatGPT. It solves issues like slow content creation using ChatGPT and formats with Overleaf’s themes. It includes examples, tips, and a Dify automation for engineers.

Create slides with Overleaf and ChatGPT

Note about using Go extension interface pattern

Go extension interface pattern

In Go, packages serve as the basic building blocks for creating modular, reusable, and maintainable software.

Package first design

Go’s use of git repository paths as package identifiers is a unique and powerful feature. Unlike most languages that rely on centralized package repositories, Go links directly to git paths.

Go import design: using git repo path

In an age where Large Language Models like ChatGPT offer instant access to a universe of information, it raises the question, does our own personal knowledge base still hold any value, and is building a personal knowledge base still a legitimate thing to do?

Build your knowledge base

Things about automata that devs should know

Automata

A quick note on How does Go achieve type safety when it enables generics

How does Go achieve type safety when it enables generics?

Quick note on error handling patterns in programming languages

Error handling patterns

Why Hollywood and gaming struggle with AI

Founder liquidity is a secret that founders and investors don't want you to know

≈ Founder liquidity

The last tech cycle is ending, and we're already in the new normal. We are not in the best shape to compete with certain competitors, especially with a new market meta emerging. We are now in a future of new automation paradigms via AI and assets are moving on-chain.

Navigating changes

Here's the culture test created during the market challenges of late 2024. It is designed to highlight and reinforce the cultural values at Dwarves Foundation. It’s a chance to reflect, share, and show how you fit into our team.

The culture test

A guide to the Non-Disclosure, Non-Solicitation, and IP agreements you signed when joining Dwarves.

NDA & Agreements

Understanding your NDA & other agreements

The process when an employee offboard from the team.

Offboarding

Forget the typical tech industry churn. Here's how you can actually build a lasting career and master your craft at Dwarves Foundation.

Making a career

How we blend software consulting with an open learning community where tech enthusiasts share knowledge, collaborate, and grow together.

As a community

Dwarves as a community

An exploration of the cyclical nature of AI development, tracing the rise and fall of new technologies within the field, and how this pattern has repeated throughout history.

A grand unified theory of the AI hype cycle

This year’s Echelon X in Singapore was a bustling hub of innovation, bringing together around 10,000 participants. Along with visiting SPGroup, our team also attended Echelon X to have a better understanding of how the tech and startup ecosystem is heading.

Echelon X Singapore 2024: Where innovations meet inspiration

A collection of thoughts, principles, and experiences that define our culture beyond what's written in the handbook. These articles explore different aspects of how we work, make decisions, and build a community of exceptional engineers.

📜 Culture Notes

Discover how ICY, our community token, rewards contributions and builds engagement within the Dwarves ecosystem. Learn how you can earn, use, and benefit from this innovative web3 experiment.

🧊 ICY Token

This page explains our knowledge base, which is basically our team's shared brain where we keep important stuff. Using it helps us work smarter together and makes sure we don't lose good ideas or lessons learned.

Knowledge base

Our second brain

Stock option plan

Partnering with Dwarves is not just a collaboration, it's a strategic investment in trust, network and business growth. Being our partners mean sharing opportunities, resources, connections and scaling up together.

Partners network

We helped Droppii upgrade their e-commerce platform with a new user-friendly version that makes dropshipping easier for businesses. Working together, we built Droppii for Business v3.0 with a better dashboard, simplified content management, and improved business tools that led to positive user feedback and stronger market position.

Droppii

Helping Droppii build a better dropshipping platform that users love

A comprehensive guide to who we are, how we work, and what we believe

📔 Handbook

Dwarves handbook

Our commitment to ethical standards and compliance

Compliance

We're a team combining tech skills, problem-solving, and clear communication. We help businesses overcome challenges by finding root causes, creating practical solutions, and working closely with clients to implement them effectively.

Consulting team

WALA

Quality exists in every piece of work. We thrive to deliver the best because we can.

Manifesto

A collection of notes for everything we do and operate at Dwarves. This is where we keep our internal notes.

Home

Spring internship 2019

Here's our draft internal map/v0 for 🧊 $icy play, based on our current activities at this borderless software firm...

$icy play

Service feedbacks

What skills that an engineer should have in order to work with client effectively?

How to work with clients

Design sprint mostly applied to the Exploration phase. Friday is usually Education event or Lab projects at Dwarves Design, learning and continuous professional and personal development are in the core of our DNA. No one wants to settle, everyone wants to take the next step forward.

Design sprint

We use the AARRR framework to measure and optimize every phase of a product by optimizing it through the insane focus on one metric at a time.

aarrr

Lean canvas is an adaptation of Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder which Ash Maurya created in the Lean Startup spirit (Fast, Concise and Effective startup). Lean canvas promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. It focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics, and competitive advantages.

Lean canvas

Dwarves Index

In this update, we are excited to share the real journey of growth and transformation that our team has embarked upon, as we continue to strive to become a more skilled and knowledgable software team.

The stage of growth at Dwarves

Explore efficient techniques for handling concurrent workloads in Go, including worker pools, fan-out/fan-in patterns, pipelines, and semaphores. This guide provides practical examples, code snippets, and insights into implementing these patterns, discussing their benefits and potential drawbacks. Learn how to improve performance, scalability, and resource management in Go applications while avoiding common pitfalls like deadlocks and excessive resource consumption.

Approaches to manage concurrent workloads like worker pools and pipelines

I would like to introduce to you our new initiative called **OGIF**, Oh God It's Friday. Moving forward, our Friday Showcase will have a broader range of topics to discuss and share.

OGIF

These red flags are things we don’t want to see in our peeps. Even when you think they are improper, don’t waste your time with a wrong group of people.

Red flags

Growth is our universal language

Focus on shipping when you are struggling with what to do next to be better as a software engineer. When you ship something new, users will try out your build and give you feedback.

Focus on delivery

In a recent post I wrote "Inner Circle", I expounded on the importance of contribution and value in relation to a person's work or performance.

Are you helping?

As we enter a new year, I want to reflect on the role that software has played in my life. For Dwarves 2.x, our goal has always been to be a borderless software firm. As we move into 2022, we are one step closer to achieving this goal. We strive to operate in new and efficient ways, different from the rest. Some of us are working with our peers to help ship their software, while others are building their own projects and striving for excellence. We are all making our way towards achieving excellence in our field.

Happy 2023

The concept of an "inner circle" within a company is not a new one, and at Dwarves, a software company founded by a group of engineers, this idea holds a significant value.

The inner circle

We measure what matters at Dwarves through MMA (Mastery, Meaning, Autonomy). This framework helps us evaluate growth while creating a culture where everyone can thrive and contribute meaningfully.

A step-by-step guide to setting up your @d.foundation email alias to send and receive mail directly within your personal Gmail account.

Configure your company email

How we balance remote and office work at Dwarves

Hybrid working

You need 3 upvotes to pass probation

We like the idea of labeling teams by what they deliver. Hence, the next chapter of Dwarves will be based on five angles.

The next leading chairs

2022 matched us with the 80th Dwarves. A notable highlight, and we're ready to have more. It's not easy to find people that has the same value. It takes true & solid seeks.

Road to 100

Hey, it’s Han and Nikki in your inbox again.

The future is blockchain and data

Thanh Pham leads blockchain initiatives at Dwarves Foundation with a focus on building web3 products. His mentorship emphasizes the importance of logical thinking and long-term value creation in blockchain development.

Thanh Pham

Meet mentor Thanh Pham

Tuan Dao is a Senior Frontend/Blockchain engineer with 4+ years of experience known for his technical expertise in React. His mentoring approach focuses on creating a supportive environment where apprentices receive personalized guidance to develop their technical and professional skills.

Tuan Dao

Meet mentor Tuan Dao

In today’s edition, job interviews need a makeover, the 4 stages of hiring at Dwarves, Dwarves apprenticeship 2022, other talking points

The stages of hiring at Dwarves

The Apprentice program is a six-month earn-and-learn training experience for aspiring software developers to gain professional skills working on real projects. Participants receive mentorship, develop technical and professional capabilities, and learn state-of-the-art engineering practices through hands-on work.

Apprentice program

The checklist shows the process of project handover

Project handover

The checklist shows the process of project initialization

Project initialization

Playbook

Dwarves playbook

Hey, it’s Han and Nikki in your inbox again. On behalf of the entire Dwarves team, happy 2022!

It's a wrap: 2021 in review

It's Han and Nikki from Team Dwarves. We're almost at the end of this year. While we know everyone is busy wrapping up 2021, we hope you're taking care of yourself and staying safe.

Engineering organizational structure

Strong relationships are core to our culture, and 1-on-1 meetings are how we build them. Managers meet with direct reports regularly (usually weekly) to connect. Here's how we do 1-on-1s and tips to make them count.

1-on-1 meetings

It's Han and Nikki from Team Dwarves. We're here with the fifth edition of our Dwarves Updates. October has been a wild ride for us as a company. Most of our effort was spent on rethinking growth paths for our engineers.

The path to growth at Dwarves

Here's another update from Dwarves for you. Throughout September, we have completed our bi-annual performance review.

Engineer performance review

This email is the third month we share about our journey to Software Craftsmanship.

Project compliance

We helped Tokenomy create a robust web platform and Android app that allows users to easily invest in cryptocurrency. Our work enabled them to launch on schedule, reach more customers, and establish themselves in the competitive crypto market.

Tokenomy

Building a modern crypto investment platform for Tokenomy

In a span of over 2 years, we tested multiple models of investment with 8 portfolio companies.2021, we are finally confident and ready. Dwarves Ventures is officially on the map with our Fund 1.

Dwarves Ventures Fund 1

It's Han and the Dwarves team again. Since June 2020, we've been planning on a new office/studio in Da Lat.

Da Lat office

We helped Momos, a pre-seed startup in Singapore, build their first MVP, a centralized data hub that simplifies online operations for food and beverage businesses through third-party integrations and data analytics.

Momos

Building a central hub for food and beverage businesses in Singapore

Hi, this is Han, the CEO of Dwarves Foundation. This month the Dwarves score 40th client that we have the honor to serve. And for that, we decide to launch the Dwarves updates.

Dwarves updates

We helped Setel expand their fuel payment app into a full-featured platform that makes refueling simple for Malaysian drivers. Our team built the conversion features that bring new users to the platform through deals, vouchers, and targeted marketing.

Setel

Building Setel's fuel payment super-app for Malaysian drivers

Our path with Basecamp didn't cross by accident. Years ago, we embarked on the Slack community and had it applied for internal communication. And project management on another tool, where documents & files are in G-suite.

Adjust the way we work in Basecamp style

Memo is where we share everything we learn, build, and think about product craftsmanship, engineering, and our culture. It's our commitment to learning in public.

Memo

Memo handbook

It all started when us, a couple of product people realized with our expertise in technology, our passion for outstanding software, we have the ability to uplift like-minded founders by helping them build and launch their startups. The idea became clearer when our network of makers, industry experts and investors broadened steadily.

Dwarves Ventures Fund 0

We helped Mudah.my switch from an outdated system to a modern, faster one that can handle more users and grow with their business.

Mudah

Upgrading Malaysia's largest online marketplace

We want to make impacts or influence people in some ways. That doesn't happen if we wait for the right moment because there isn't. Taking the shot means opening the door to mistakes and failures, and that's a good thing. We learn from them.

Han Ngo

Contributions