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The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, finance experts, 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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Analyzing the Effects of Negative Interest Rates Across Five Economies

What happens when interest rates drop below zero - are you really paid to borrow money? Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Eurozone have all experienced negative rates and their experiences give pointers towards the effectiveness of such strategies.

12 minute readContinue Reading

Toptal Talent Network Experts

Build with Confidence: A Guide to JUnit Tests

In an age of continuous delivery, Java developers have to be confident that their changes don’t break existing code, hence automated testing. There’s more than one valid approach to it, but how can you keep them straight?

11 minute readContinue Reading
Nikhil Bansal

Nikhil Bansal

Nikhil (BTech) has automated finance sector code across everything from J2EE to Elasticsearch to Kafka. And, of course, all things AWS.

Why Small Words Matter: The Importance of Microcopy UX

Small words matter. Effective UX microcopy can help UX designers create digital products that are more useful, engaging, and simple to use. Here are several examples of good (and bad) microcopy.

6 minute readContinue Reading
Chintan Bhatt

Chintan Bhatt

Chintan is a user experience designer with over a decade of experience designing products for web, mobile, and other digital mediums.

How to Build a Role-based API with Firebase Authentication

Nearly every app requires an authorization system on top of an authentication system. We often need a fine-grained permissions model to allow only specific users to access certain resources while simultaneously restricting access for everyone else.

In this tutorial, Toptal Freelance Firebase Developer Joaquin Cid teaches how to build just such a system. Called role-based authentication, we’ll learn how to implement this system in an API using Node.js and Firebase.

15 minute readContinue Reading
Joaquin Cid

Joaquin Cid

Joaquin is a full-stack developer with over 12 years of experience working for companies like WebMD and Getty Images.

Looks That Thrill: Inside the Booming Beauty Industry

How has the beauty industry become extremely innovative? How did Glossier and The Ordinary approach (and crack) the problem of enticing consumers, building brand loyalty and creating unique experiences? The lessons are relevant for all DTC companies.

10 minute readContinue Reading
Natasha Ketabchi

Natasha Ketabchi

Natasha transitioned to venture capital after a career in banking built in prestigious firms such as JPMorgan and ESM.

Home Smart IoT Home: Domesticating the Internet of Things

By adopting the smart home, are we forfeiting the security and intimacy our home—our most personal space—has given us over millennia?

8 minute readContinue Reading
Kent Mundle

Kent Mundle

Kent is a globally recognized environmental designer who uses design to create innovative and transformative experiences.

Make Your App Profitable, Part 2 – Harnessing the Mobile Funnel

Subscription-based apps need a special approach when it comes to analytics. Learn how a variation on the traditional sales funnel helps you work with LTV, subscriber retention, and churn rates to make your app better—and more profitable.

10 minute readContinue Reading
Matthew Knippen

Matthew Knippen

Having built 60+ iOS apps since 2008 using Swift and Objective-C, Matthew is most known for going from idea to App Store within eight weeks.

Branding Is Dead, CX Design Is King

CX design encompasses EVERY interaction that a customer has with a business. By adopting a CX mindset, brand designers will learn to meaningfully engage customers at multiple touchpoints.

6 minute readContinue Reading
Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful engagement through branding, illustration, and design.

Creating Your First GraphQL API

GraphQL is a domain-specific language for data query and manipulation by Facebook. It is meant to replace the de facto REST standard in API creation.

In this article, Toptal Freelance GraphQL Developer Ioram Gordadze creates a GraphQL API from scratch, summarizing problems new GraphQL developers face. He also teaches us to rethink the standard methods used in REST APIs in a more GraphQL-friendly manner.

16 minute readContinue Reading
Ioram Gordadze

Ioram Gordadze

Ioram has designed and developed databases, API services, and more for both private and government organizations.

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