👋🏻 Hello, Fellow Tech Enthusiasts!
As November is almost over, let’s take a moment to reflect on what’s happening in the IT Industry and look into Ralabs’ journey so far.
📊 Focus & Insights
- A recent Lviv IT Cluster study shows the IT market’s growth at -5% annually. In contrast, Ralabs has seen a 22% increase in revenue, with our most substantial gains in the last quarter of the previous year, aligning us with our Q3 2023 revenue levels.
- With many companies planning their 2024 budgets, there’s a noticeable boost in interest in our services. Some leads are keen to secure a vendor now for projects in Q2, 2024.
- We’ve rejoined the Lviv IT Cluster Learn more, reaffirming our commitment to being part of a community that shapes the broader industry.
👩🏼💼 HR Updates
Our team’s English proficiency has significantly improved. Given that most of our clients are native speakers, we’ve invested heavily in enhancing our colleagues’ language skills. After all, clear communication is essential.
📈 Business Development
- We’re excited to announce a new project with major investments, with development set to start soon. This month, we’ve added 12 new opportunities, which we’re working to convert into successful deals.
- Our website redesign is progressing, and we’d value your feedback – Ralabs Website
💻 Coding Insights
- I’ve tested OpenProject as a self-hosted Jira alternative and found it quite effective.
- I was also looking for an open-source and self-hosted CRM, and I found a great candidate – com.
- I’ve been contributing to the matrix.org Synapse project, which, unfortunately, is ending its development and support. Read more.
- Reflecting on my engineering days, I recall the challenges of rebasing commits. Here’s an insightful article on potential pitfalls – Rebasing – What Can Go Wrong.
- Considering a new font for your IDE? Check out Monaspace.
- For those creating diagrams for estimates or proposals, here’s a guide on best practices – Drawing Software Architecture Diagrams.
🤖 AI Developments
- Ralabs’ co-founder Roman has published an article on privately run GPT models – Read here.
- GPT-4 Turbo was just released, learn more here. Here are the main features:
- Extended Token Limit: Handles up to 1 kB tokens (around 300 book pages), allowing for in-depth conversations and large document processing.
- JSON Response Support: Offers structured data output in JSON format, useful for application integration.
- Updated Knowledge Base: Knowledge cutoff extended to April 2023, ensuring current information across various fields.
- DALL-E 3 and Image Input: Integrates with DALL-E 3 for image generation and accepts images as input for enhanced multimodal capabilities.
- Advanced Text-to-Speech: Features a new text-to-speech tool with six diverse voices.
- Whisper v3 Integration: Includes Whisper v3 for accurate speech recognition.
- Fine-Tuning Program: Allows users to customize the model for specific needs.
- Copyright Shield: Offers legal protection for data breaches or intellectual property issues.
📚 Books and Reading
- Why Nations Fail: by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson on Amazon.
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb: by Richard Rhodes on Amazon.
- An interesting publication on what it’s like to get acquired by Google – Read here.
💡 Thoughts
- I feel like we, as humanity, are on the edge of something as big as the Internet or airplane invention. The big difference is that previous breakthroughs were almost like garage projects (the last one for sure), but AI is 100% driven by big corporations. Those who have access to data will succeed in making the most out of it.
🔍 Other Noteworthy Mentions
- Our quarterly volunteer day, typically on a bank holiday, allows colleagues to work and donate their earnings to Ukraine war relief funds. In October, we raised nearly $7,000.
- My morning routine has evolved into a habit. I’ve been considering developing something like this – Patterns Habit Tracker.
- NASA recently sent a software update to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, to fix a data transmission glitch – Full story.
Remember to:
- Subscribe to my socials: Twitter, LinkedIn
- Subscribe to Ralabs LinkedIn
- Check our 10×12 Referral Program
If you found this update helpful, please feel free to share it with others.
Lastly, as a company deeply rooted in Ukrainian values, we humbly ask for your support in standing with Ukraine during these challenging times. Every contribution makes a difference.
Support here
Stay safe and connected,
Best,
Andrew
