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The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, management consultants, executives, and entrepreneurs, featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.

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Toptal core team members share their experience, expertise, and perspectives on the Toptal Edge Blog

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Meal Kit Industry Blues: How Can Blue Apron Lift Its Malaise?

In the past five years, Blue Apron has brought meal kits to the masses and commands a 40% market share in the USA. Yet all is not rosy; its financial losses have continually accelerated and it has ceded 17% of its market share in the past year.

Amazon buying Whole Foods on the eve of its 2017 IPO could have just been bad luck, or prescient signs of what’s to come for Blue Apron. This article looks at ways that the business can get its house in order and win back the Millennial kitchen.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Michael Yarmo

Michael Yarmo

Mike’s an expert in the consumer goods and logistics space. As a PE investor he has sold and invested in a range of businessess

Quick Wins in the Enterprise With Salesforce AppExchange

AppExchange offers some solid wins for any company using Salesforce.

In this article, Freelance Salesforce Developer Fahad Munawar Khan explains how easy it is to get up and running with Salesforce AppExchange, and reveals some apps that are must-haves for any enterprise looking to boost their productivity.

5-minute readContinue Reading
Fahad Munawar Khan

Fahad Munawar Khan

Fahad is a Salesforce Certified Force.com Developer and web developer since 2011, including being a senior dev for clients like Honeywell.

From Solving Equations to Deep Learning: A TensorFlow Python Tutorial

TensorFlow makes implementing deep learning on a production scale a breeze. However, understanding its core mechanisms and how dataflow graphs work is an essential step in leveraging the tool’s power.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Oliver Holloway demonstrates how TensorFlow works by first solving a general numerical problem and then a deep learning problem.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Oliver Holloway

Oliver Holloway

Oliver is a versatile full-stack software engineer with more than 7 years of experience and a postgraduate mathematics degree from Oxford.

How to Build an Effective Design Framework (Includes a Free Sketch UI Framework)

Design frameworks help designers work more efficiently by utilizing reusable UI components. We shed light on how to create and use one using Sketch symbols (includes a free Sketch UI framework).

10-minute readContinue Reading
Wojciech Dobry

Wojciech Dobry

Wojciech is a product designer and web designer with eight years of experience. He’s passionate about typography and sound design.

2017 Holiday Spending Forecast: Will Be Better Than Expected

Retail investors have had a rough year. The SPDR S&P Retail ETF has underperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 30 percentage points. From eCommerce shifts to higher gas prices, there are plenty of arguments to be made against retail. Yet, there are a couple reasons to be jolly heading into the holiday season that few are talking about.

In this article, Elizabeth Hanano, CFA suggests that low expectations combined with lesser-known tailwinds indicate it may be time to dip a toe back into the retail pond.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Elizabeth J. Howell Hanano, CFA

Elizabeth J. Howell Hanano, CFA

Elizabeth began her career as an equity analyst and brings a deep understanding of how to unlock value within companies, big and small.

Test-driven React.js Development: React.js Unit Testing with Enzyme and Jest

Any piece of code that has no tests is said to be legacy code according to Michael Feathers. Therefore, one of the best ways to avoid creating legacy code is using test-driven development (TDD).

While there are many tools available to create unit tests in JavaScript, in this post, we will use Jest and Enzyme to create a React.js component with basic functionality using TDD.

7-minute readContinue Reading
Alonso Ayala Ortega

Alonso Ayala Ortega

Over the last decade, Alonso’s Oracle certifications and full-stack work have lately turned toward QA automation and sharp BDD solutions.

The Wealth of Nations: Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds

Since their emergence in the early 2000s, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) have been met with both curiosity and trepidation, existing somewhere between return-maximizing asset manager and clandestine government agency.

This article takes us into the $7.4 trillion world of the SWF, shedding light on objectives, ambitions, and mandates as well as allocation strategies.

13-minute readContinue Reading
Orinola Gbadebo-Smith

Orinola Gbadebo-Smith

Ori an investor cum entrepreneur with experience across M&A, PE, VC and startup operations. He most recently founded a VC-backed startup.

Great Questions Lead to Great Design: A Guide to the Design-thinking Process

Great designers help teams and stakeholders make better decisions by using questions to identify opportunities, reveal underlying needs, and understand user context—all of which lead to better designs.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Jorge Juan Perales

Jorge Juan Perales

Jorge Juan has designed successful digital products for over a decade. He loves fast-moving teams and delivering great value to users.

Are Corporate Responsibility Efforts Profitable?

Financial purists have long questioned whether corporate, environmental, and social initiatives benefit the bottom line and how to quantify their impact.

In this article, we put aside motive—of genuine altruism or self interest—and philosophical debates around moral obligation. Instead, we examine the results of studies around whether corporate responsibility initiatives positively impact profitability, examples of companies that have implemented such measures successfully, and recommendations for those looking to do so.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Melissa Lin

Melissa Lin

Melissa has worked in ECM, tech startups, and management consulting, advising Fortune 500 companies across multiple sectors.

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