Toptal Blog

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.

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

Featured in

World-class articles, delivered weekly.

Share buyback schemes, if executed poorly, can be disastrous for shareholders and company stakeholders. Using three examples from the UK market, reasons for failure are explored with some suggested remedies for managers making capital allocation decisions.

11-minute readContinue Reading

Jamie Mariani

Jamie has helped raise more than $18 billion in equity for growth, M&A, and distressed situations with clients such as France Telecom.

Flutter Tutorial: How to Create Your First Flutter App

Google’s Flutter mobile SDK only recently made it to version 1.0, but it is already catching up with React Native in terms of market share. Flutter is also used to develop apps for Google’s upcoming Fuchsia OS.

In this article, Toptal Java Developer Nemanja Stosic demonstrates how to create a simple messaging app using Flutter and Firebase.

9-minute readContinue Reading

Nemanja Stošić

Nemanja has worked for startups and corporations, notably Microsoft. He’s an Agile/Scrum expert and has worked as a team lead and mentor.

Partners in Design: A Guide to Client Empathy

Being empathetic is not a selective practice. Designers know how to use empathy to uncover the behaviors and needs of a user. Those same methods and techniques can be used in client relationships.

7-minute readContinue Reading

Jay Oldaker

Jay is a UX and product designer for venture-backed startups and Fortune 500s, with work featured in books and publications across the web.

Share buybacks have become a popular financial tool for cash-rich businesses that are running short on sufficient projects to invest in. Three case studies are presented here that demonstrate when share buyback schemes are successes.

9-minute readContinue Reading

Jamie Mariani

Jamie has helped raise more than $18 billion in equity for growth, M&A, and distressed situations with clients such as France Telecom.

Do the Math: Scaling Microservices Applications With Orchestrators

Automatically scaling container deployments in a microservices-based app architecture is downright luxurious…once it’s set up. But what’s the best way to tune an app’s orchestration parameters?

9-minute readContinue Reading

Antoine Hamon

Antoine has done DevOps for microservice architectures since Docker was in beta and helped design the ecosystem for Cryptobox.

Design Tool Showdown: Adobe XD vs. Sketch (2019)

Since its introduction in 2017, Adobe XD has matured when compared to its rival, Sketch. Looking at Adobe XD vs Sketch, is it time for a change?

8-minute readContinue Reading

Sérgio Estrella

With over a decade of experience, Sérgio has been working with teams in several areas such as education, enterprise, sports, and more.

Creating Success: A Guide to Product Manager KPIs

For product managers, KPIs are a powerful tool. They quantify team progress, the progress of the product, and the overall business. Product management KPIs include specific metrics associated with the product, customers, and the overall process in bringing a product to market.

12-minute readContinue Reading

Laurie Harvey

Laurie turns ideas into results. She creates multi-million-dollar businesses in secure network and cloud service delivery.

Card Sorting: Better Information Architecture by Aligning With Users' Mental Models

Users shouldn’t need insider knowledge to find what they’re looking for on the web. Card sorting lets designers create intuitive UX by organizing content the way customers do in their minds.

6-minute readContinue Reading

Micah Bowers

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

Modern WordPress Development Workflow with the Roots Stack

WordPress development relies on tried and tested technologies and techniques. This allows for good backward compatibility but also causes many developers to stick to legacy solutions for far too long.

In this article, Toptal WordPress Developer Stefano Ginella introduces us to the Roots stack and explains how it can help WordPress developers harness the latest front-end technologies.

12-minute readContinue Reading