Thanks Sunil for these references. Definitely very useful. In the past, I've only used React-Admin. But some of these panels look a lot better! If I may, I'd also suggest giving a look at Appsmith an OSS project that allows you to build admin panels & dashboards very quickly. Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Appsmith. :)

These days, I almost exclusively use Postman to write the API spec before I even start to write the first line of code. Since postman also generates a good looking UI from the spec, it's much easier to share that documentation within the team for feedback and comments. I've also experimented with writing Protobuf files. The advantage that Protobuf provides is that also allows me to create shared data types and map entity objects across the domain. Unfortunately, Protobuf doesn't have a good documentation generator. Maybe, my next weekend project? :P

To make my day easier, I'd appreciate: A great team that I can learn from and debate ideas with. Most of non-working day is devoted to hunting articles to read. If folks on the team share their insights on articles/books, it's a huge bonus. An fellow engineer on the team that I can rely on for skillsets that I don't posses. For example, I don't like doing frontend development. If I work with a good frontend engineer, it's a huge bonus for me. Table stake features in my day-to-day life are: A good laptop that works well. A reliable and fast internet because npm install sucks the life out of you on a low bandwidth connection. :P

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. This is a great philosophy to maintain and it doesn't just apply to reading books. It applies to other things such as your exercise routine, financial investments & general career advice etc. If you're doing what everyone else is doing, why would you expect to get ahead and beat the curve?

Glad you found it useful!

Thanks Syed Fazle Rahman . I'm considering it but for the moment, I prefer having all my content version controlled. Hence, my personal and the company website/blog is hosted via Github + Netlify. I'm not sure if this is a feature worth solving for a platform like yours. But this sense of control is why I self-host most things and try to amplify the content on various platforms.

For a new-age cloud company, I'd expect the following in the free plan: Ability to setup a server quickly and for free. It can be a small server (512 MB). Ability to store some data in a S3-equivalent storage system. Again, I'd assume they would limit the data storage in the free plan. Ability to access and manage DNS. I would expect full control on the DNS even in the free plan. Be able to host a static website from the distributed storage directly. This would be a very smart move if available in the free plan. If they offer blog / site templates, that's killer. Git repository and direct hosting via GitOps. This is similar to the Heroku workflow and it's a great crowd puller. I'd assume they would put this in their free plan. I understand that most providers already give this in their plans. Hence, this list may be a biased one.

That's a great question! To begin with, I'd say, take a look at the developer survey by StackOverflow here . That's the global trend. Most of the points that you listed are table stake offerings by any company for any candidate in any role. Some of the things that would excite me as a developer would be: The actual role / responsibility in the job. What would I be doing? Why is it challenging? Is this a large problem that I'd still be solving 5 years down the line? If yes, sign me up. What's the sort of people in the workplace? Who can I learn from? Will your job be a step up for me in life? Or will I stagnate there because it's very hard to find a job if I tell other that I work at this company? Basically, can you provide me a great place to be from ? What's the culture? Does the company's or co-workers values fit mine? If everyone has an aggressive demeanour (nothing wrong with this btw) but I'm a shy, reserved person, this is not a fit. So, what culture or values do you promote and more importantly practice in day-to-day life? Hopefully, this gives you another perspective to hiring your next engineer. All the best!

Thanks a lot Richard Uie for the sage advice. I agree that no UI is ever complete. In your opinion, are there any characteristics of UI codebases that make modification faster/easier? Do you think frameworks allowing you to drag & drop components or connect them to backend systems allow quicker iterations?

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! Was this a customer facing app or an internal dashboard? Do you think any of this would have changed had it been an internal app with only internal users? Also, would love to hear your opinions on drag & drop dashboard builders. Honestly, I just see them as an extreme case of component re-use. Would love to hear your views on this.