Toptal Blog

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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Crafting a Strong Product Business Case

More than half of IT projects and products fail. The biggest causes of these failures are resource misallocation and misalignment with business goals. Expertly crafted product business cases can help to mitigate both of these problems.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Greg Prickril

Greg Prickril

Greg is a product strategy consultant and trainer with 20 years of experience shipping digital enterprise products at IBM, Microsoft, and SAP.

An Intro to SQL Window Functions

SQL window functions are calculation functions similar to aggregate functions but, unlike normal aggregate functions like “group by,” have access to individual rows and can even add some of their attributes into the result set.

In this article, Toptal Freelance SQL Developer Neal Barnett explains the benefits of SQL functions, describes when you’d use them, and gives you real examples to help with the concepts.

6 minute readContinue Reading
Neal Barnett

Neal Barnett

Neal Barnett has over 20 years’ experience administering and developing databases. He loves analytics tools like Power BI and Tableau.

State of the Venture Capital Industry in 2019 (with Infographic)

Over the past decade, venture capital funding has risen by 17% annually to a figure $254 billion. What factors have contributed to this surge and what do they mean for the industry going forward?

25+ minute readContinue Reading

Toptal Talent Network Experts

Age Before Beauty – A Guide to Interface Design for Older Adults

As people age, there are certain physiological and cognitive changes that are almost inevitable. Designers need to understand these changes to effectively master interface design for older adults.

9 minute readContinue Reading
Sergey Polyuk

Sergey Polyuk

Sergey has 4+ years of experience designing for mobile. Staying on top of design trends, he brings a fresh approach to all of his projects.

.NET Unit Testing: Spend Upfront to Save Later On

Unit testing sometimes sounds like an unnecessary expense, but it is a powerful, yet simple tool. Unit tests allow you to identify and rectify weaknesses with relatively little effort. In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Nickolas Fisher takes you on a quick tour of unit testing and explains why you can’t have too many unit tests.

12 minute readContinue Reading
Nickolas Fisher

Nickolas Fisher

Nickolas specializes in large scale enterprise web apps, payment gateways, software architecture, and Windows services.

Exploring Multimodal Design–An Adobe XD Tutorial

Design tools like Adobe XD can be used by designers to prototype multimodal designs that improve the user experience through interaction mechanisms such as voice, touch, and haptic feedback.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Frederik Goossens

Frederik Goossens

Frederik is a technical and creative thinker with 8+ years of experience in user experience design, user research, and business analysis.

Ruby Algorithm Documentation with AsciiDoc and Knitr

A functional specification is a high-level design document created before implementation and serves as a true plan for the team.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Ruby Developer Alec Ten Harmsel walks us through prototyping an algorithm and creating a functional specification with the help of AsciiDoc and R for a Ruby on Rails project.

5 minute readContinue Reading
Alec Ten Harmsel

Alec Ten Harmsel

Alec ran an autonomous drone team in college before graduating to work on software in banking and construction management

From Allbirds to Patagucci: The Ultimate Guide to Finance Fashion

Having the right look has always been important in finance. As dress codes are relaxing and the gamut of careers are expanding, what should one wear? From Allbirds to Patagucci, a style guide for financial services.

9 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 A&M.

Mini Tutorial – Working with Figma Button Components

In Figma, UI Components are all-powerful and unbelievably versatile, but how do they work? We demonstrate their power by focusing on one of the most common UI elements of all—the button.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

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

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