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Pablo

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Pablo is Currently Reading

Pablo is currently reading

Novelas Ejemplares II

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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(25%)
— Sep 05, 2026 11:33AM

Sep 05, 2026 11:33AM

Pablo is currently reading

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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(38%)
— Sep 09, 2026 09:37AM

Sep 09, 2026 09:37AM

Pablo rated a book it was amazing

Open and Async: The collaborative software development playbook for remote and distributed teams

by Ben Balter (Goodreads Author)

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Pablo said: " The book I would love to read when I joined GitHub, or earlier when I started working remotely, or earlier when I started at the software industry. The book that every new Hubber should be given the very first day of onboarding.

It tells the origin of The book I would love to read when I joined GitHub, or earlier when I started working remotely, or earlier when I started at the software industry. The book that every new Hubber should be given the very first day of onboarding.

It tells the origin of inner-source, how to build proprietary software the way open source software is built, bringing the practices that worked for people who never met in person, who doesn't speak the same language, who have few or no overlapping of working hours.
Then why not applying these concepts to company management? To any other activity you organize, say a conference? Ben does it applying his technical background, and I love all his metaphors, e.g. meetings are like synchronous blocking calls in code, or you're building the operating system for your team.

Ben makes a great work at identifying the core principles, which are condensed even on the title: Open and Async. Once you read the book, the 3-word title is a pointer to every concept on it, like the 3 first words of a song you've memorized, all makes sense now. And it works better because this is not dark magic. This is something you already do when contribute to open-source, when planning with friends (WhatsApp groups, rare calls, meetings for fun) and with tools you're already familiar with, so it feels so natural.

I'd enjoyed reading the examples and stories which are extracted from real GitHub own history, so nothing speculative there, just real stuff. Disclaimer: I work at GitHub since 2020 though I never worked close to Ben. I've still learnt and enjoyed so much from Ben's distilled experience. This is a playbook on running a company that, as a matter of fact, it's AI ready.

Ben glorifies my old motto: use commit message for the why, the code already says the what and the how, but Ben expands this principle by orders of magnitude to a system of communication. As a side effect, this sets up the org (any kind of org) for the AI, which will find all the documentation in a well structured way.

As a fan of pair programming, I use it very often in an async-first environment,ñ. Ben's thesis is not against pairing, but about not having to pair to make progress, about putting in place other mechanisms to avoid blocking, and then fallback or use or even enjoy pairing when it fits.

There are so many good quotes, but my favorites:
- Async is the operating system; remote is the hardware.
- Share demos, not memos. More prototypes than decks.
- Speak like a human: you can be professional without being formal.
- Chat is for now, issues are for later, email is for outsiders.
- Your hiring process is your culture.
- Without trust, transparency feels like surveillance. Openness without safety is just exposure.
- Open: The best answer is a URL.
- Open: The risk isn't that someone will question your decision. It's that no one will. ...more "

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(71%)
— Jul 18, 2026 10:20AM

Jul 21, 2026 07:52AM · see review

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