About Sarah
Sarah is a Distinguished Engineer, and Area Tech Lead for AI and the Web Ecosystem for Chrome at Google. She's formerly Sr. Director of Engineering at Google, leading the Core Infrastructure teams that power Google apps (Search, YouTube, Workspace, Cloud, etc) on the Web, Android, iOS, Multiplatform, Experimentation, and Client Observability. She was Incident Commander for Core Developer Infrastructure at Google and led the Search mission for Core Developer, modernizing and innovating Google's internal tech stacks for the age of AI. Sarah Drasner is an award-winning Speaker, and she was formerly VP at Netlify and Principal at Microsoft Azure. Sarah is an instructor at Master.dev, and has written two books.
Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great
I love this book because it dissects exactly how companies stay true to their values, and the typically unexamined reason that straying in the name of profit is shortsighted at best.
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Someone Send Help
I'll admit it, I have a problem. I used Lovable, a tool that builds websites and web apps just by chatting with an AI, to create the new REFACTR site and my personal site, and now I can't stop. Every small annoyance is suddenly a website: a movie and show tracker so I can remember what I'm watching across seventeen streaming services, a family recipe box, and a site my mom and I use to research which countries we might flee to if this one stays on fire. These aren't MVPs I'm turning into startups, just tiny monuments to problems I was far too lazy to solve manually.
Awesome GitHub Copilot
This is one of my favorite things I got to work on during my time at Microsoft. Awesome GitHub Copilot is an open-source, community-built collection of agents, instructions, skills, and plugins for making Copilot match how you actually work, plus a Learning Hub of guides to go deeper. If your AI coding tool feels generic, start here, and contribute your own agents or best practices with the community.
→ VisitThe Predator's Table
Kim's new book came out Aug 1, and it'll be on top of my coffee table as soon as I get it in the mail. Kim's a friend and a mentor on this topic, and I trust how directly she takes on the hard things. This book turns her focus on how the people and systems that exploit others get a seat at the table, stay protected, and keep operating no matter who's in the room. It names what keeps happening and why. If you're new to her work, you can also check out her last book, Profit Without Oppression, a straight-no-chaser blueprint for dismantling the systems white supremacy built, and her previous REFACTR talks.
→ VisitGarbage World
I try to share picks that make me sound smart. This one does not. Garbage World is home to the Bitch Sesh and Garbage Sesh podcasts, where two funny comedy ladies, Casey Wilson and Danielle Schneider, talk all things Bravo (Real Housewives, The Valley, Summer House), plus Love Island, celebrity gossip, true crime, scams, astrology, and even the weird things that happen to your body as you get older. It's a community explicitly built for garbage people like me 🙋🏾♀️. They've also got a very unhinged Discord full of affectionately named "bougie bitches" doing watch parties for every trash TV show, plus tips, advice, and recommendations. If you're secretly (or not so secretly) a trash person, join me in Garbage World.
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It's a Celebration!
It's Leo season and in true Leo fashion, here's your reminder to find ways to celebrate yourself! Did you try something new? Accomplish something that would have been hard for you just a year ago? Whatever it is, acknowledge your growth and treat yourself!
Atlanta Tech Week Reads
In honor of Atlanta Tech Week coming up and a few good friends with recent book launches (looking at you Kim and Kamau!), I created this list to showcase local authors and thought leaders.
→ VisitWhy Baratunde Thurston Fired ChatGPT — and What he Learned
Baratunde is an Emmy-nominated storyteller, writer, and host of Life with Machines. This week he joins Jessi Hempel to talk about what it actually means to have agency over AI in a moment when the rules and norms are still being written, and the choices we make now will shape everything that comes next.
→ VisitAvatar Aang: The Last Airbender Movie
For long-time fans of the original animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, this is a welcome, nostalgic continuation of the series.
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Things that should scare you… The CTO's Patient Bet
Perspective on AI going beyond its talk in scary ways — bypassing limits and safeguards, and how some leaders are responding.
→ VisitWhat if you're not supposed to have a long-term plan?
Lenny's podcast always delivers, and so does Molly Graham (her podcast is great too). It's time to update career path expectations and conventional advice on having a plan. Enjoy!
→ VisitUsing AI for different things; how to get started
Good overview ideas on how to get started using AI, especially for non-technical things!
→ VisitFrom the Community
Recommendations from the people who show up.
Data Storytelling 101
Christine Jiang breaks down how to turn raw data into a clear, compelling narrative — a skill that matters as much as the analysis itself when trying to get stakeholders to actually act on insights.
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Elizabeth Jamison
The Worlds I See
Memoir by Dr. Fei-Fei Li, creator of ImageNet, without which neural networks would not have gained popularity. Tells the story of her journey to being a key figure in the computer vision field alongside the history of AI.
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clipart studio
This website is craft. It's small, nimble, and incredibly fun. Clip out PDFs and make art, see the gallery!
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