High-value employees are a major assets for a strong company. Losing a high contributing team member could leave a void and impact the team’s morale and workflow. Investors are also concerned by high turnover rates, especially amongst the senior executives. Groupon had trouble retaining their senior executives, which contributed to an 85% drop in their value a year after going public. It’s clear we want to retain high-valued employees, but is employee loyalty the way to achieve retention?

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It’s not always clear why we need need a personal website. But here’s the truth: we are a product (a brand) with unique skills to offer to prospective employees and customers. A website is an effective medium to let the world know who we are, what we are capable of, and what our values are. Building a personal website has never been easier these days with tools like Hugo.

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If you asked me to give you three facts about myself, I would tell you (1) I’m a evening and weekend entrepreneur, (2) when I start working on something I enjoy, I can’t put it down, and (3) I love coffee. This a formula for disaster because I have a full time job that I have to show up to by 9AM and I’m a normal human person who needs at least 6 hours of sleep.

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I’ve always lived by the “Separation of Concern” principle when it comes to software design. Recently, I’ve came to love a new design pattern for web apps called the isomorphic web app that sacrifices some of the simplicity of a SPA with a backend API for a significant boost in performance.

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JavaScript is one of the most popular and versatile languages today. You can build anything in JavaScript: from full stack web apps, to cross platform mobile apps, to cross platform desktop apps. Here are some useful algorithms and syntax in JavaScript to help you be productive in JavaScript right away. No set up necessary. Just open up your browser’s console (hit Cmd+Shift+C if you are using Chrome and Mac) and start typing.

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The average completion rate of Online Open Course (MOOC) certification programs is abysmally low. A report published in 2016 by researchers at Harvard and MIT based on 4 years of data indicated an average certification completion rate of just 5.5%. This does not discredit MOOCs to be a good source of quality education content for those looking for good information to improve their understanding for a particular subject; however, the depressing statistics underlines a deeper concern with the ineffectiveness of using a college curriculum to steer people’s professional development.

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Xiaoyun Yang

Software Engineer. Climber. Snowboarder.

Software Engineer

New York