Łukasz Chrząszcz

Rejected a senior, hired a junior

Why technical knowledge is not an excuse for not being a team player

We work so hard to boost our technical knowledge, that we sometimes forget to improve soft side as well. Being a team player, communicating clearly and helping others can get you further than tirelessly coding and tackling tasks.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Why you should care about performance review

Uncovering the hidden benefits of taking reviews seriously

Performance reviews might seem like a chore, but they hold the key to unlocking your career potential. Learn why putting effort into your self-evaluation can lead to promotions, raises, and a deeper sense of purpose in your work.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Monday, May 20, 2024

5 tips how to read and learn from books

Practical strategies for effective reading

Discover how simple changes to your reading habits can have a profound impact on your knowledge and personal growth. This article offers practical tips for efficiently absorbing information and sharing it with others, enhancing both your learning and your professional presence. Dive into the strategies that will help you make the most of your reading time

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Sunday, January 21, 2024

My thoughts on Corporate Rebels

Personal insights on making work meaningful

Feeling stuck in your 9-to-5 routine? 'Corporate Rebels' offers a breath of fresh air with insights and practical advice on shaking things up for the better. Get inspired to make your work life a source of happiness and growth and read my thoughts after reading the book.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Thursday, October 5, 2023

My thoughts on Culture Map

Navigating Multinational Leadership: Insights from "Culture Map" by Erin Meyer

Explore the captivating world of multicultural leadership. Discover surprising cultural insights, personal experiences, and valuable tools from Erin Meyer's "Culture Map" that can transform the way you lead and collaborate in diverse global teams.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Sunday, September 10, 2023

My thoughts on Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs

Cracking the Code of Software Engineering Challenges

Explore "Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs," a must-read for software engineers at all levels, as it unravels the intricacies of decision-making in coding, making it an indispensable companion on your journey through the dynamic world of software development.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Sunday, August 20, 2023

My thoughts on Atomic Habits

How Atomic Habits could be used by a software engineer?

We as software engineers are usually highly interested in technical topics, but usually neglect soft-skill part our work. I've discovered that learning such skills might benefit my day-to-day work even more than learning yet another technology. Let's see how we could use knowledge from Atomic Habits!

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Wednesday, March 29, 2023

How to assign partitions to your consumers?

Introduction to Kafka assignors

Integrating with Kafka usually starts with subscribing your consumers to Kafka with default configuration and it just works. However, after working a while with Kafka you will encounter various "weird" behaviors originating from rebalancing settings such as chosen assignor implementation. Let's see how different assignors work and what are their pros and cons.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Friday, January 7, 2022

How to test the application's integration with Kafka?

Example of testing application's integration with Kafka for both sunny-day scenarios and failure cases.

After introducing Kafka to your application you want to test it properly. For sure you want to write some integration tests with real Kafka working underneath. What is more, you probably want to test not only sunny-day scenarios but failure cases as well. How to achieve that? Let us discover how Testcontainers and Toxiproxy fit in with Kafka in your application's integration tests!

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Sunday, September 6, 2020

How do transactions work in Apache Kafka?

Happy path of an application performing "consume, transform, produce" in a single transaction.

Do you need an exactly-once guarantee in Apache Kafka? Transactions enable you to achieve it, but how does it work under-the-hood? Let's skim through the happy path in the code and find out.

Posted by Łukasz Chrząszcz on Sunday, December 1, 2019