0 1
A job in Big Tech is a career goal for many software engineers and engineering managers. So what leads people to quit, after working so hard to land these roles?
on Wed, 7PM
How to debug large, distributed systems: Antithesis
0 2
A brief history of debugging, why debugging large systems is different, and how the “multiverse debugger” built by Antithesis attempts to take on this challenging problem space
on Wed, 6PM
The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech
0 1
In tech, switching jobs almost always comes with either a financial or a title upside. However, it doesn’t always come with both. Switching for higher compensation can result in a “lower” title, like going from Senior Software Engineer to SWE 2 or VP Engineering to Senior Engineering Manager. This
on Tue, 3PM
The Pulse #114: What does Trump’s win mean for Tech?
0 1
More influence for Musk and VCs, potentially reversing Section 174, pro-crypto, uncertainty for Big Tech, and more. Also: a third embarrassing security issue for Okta in two years
on Nov 7
Promotions and tooling at Google (with Irina Stanescu, Ex-Google)
0 1
In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Irina Stanescu, a seasoned engineer with over 14 years in software engineering and engineering leadership roles at tech companies like Google and Uber.
on Nov 6
How to become a more effective engineer
0 1
The importance of soft skills, implicit hierarchies, getting to “small wins”, understanding promotion processes and more. A guest post from software engineer Cindy Sridharan.
on Nov 5
Paying down tech debt: further learnings
0 0
In a counter-intuitive observation: by making small, non-functional improvements, you gain more confidence in a new codebase, and can start to move faster.
on Nov 4
Hiring software engineers and engineering leaders from Big Tech (Part 1)
0 0
A dive into why hiring Big Tech talent can be a bad idea for startups, a look at cases when it works, what makes it hard to recruit from Big Tech, and how to do it
on Oct 30
State of the software engineering job market in 2024
0 0
A deep dive into job market trends, the companies and cities hiring the most software engineers, growth areas, and more. Exclusive data and charts
on Oct 22
Did Automattic commit open source theft?
0 0
The maker of WordPress took 2M customers from its biggest rival: has a red line been crossed?
on Oct 18
The Pulse #111: Did Automattic commit open source theft?
0 0
The maker of WordPress took 2M customers from its biggest rival: has a red line been crossed? Also: OpenAI’s impossible business projections, top AI researchers making more than engineers, and more.
on Oct 18
Interesting startup idea: benchmarking cloud platform pricing
0 0
A team of 3 developers built a neat platform called Spare Cores that makes cloud instance pricing more transparent. A deepdive on how exactly they did it.
on Oct 18
Interesting startup idea: benchmarking cloud platform pricing
0 0
A team of 3 developers built a neat platform called Spare Cores that makes cloud instance pricing more transparent. A deepdive on how exactly they did it.
on Oct 17
Efficient scaleups in 2024 vs 2021: Sourcegraph (with CEO & Co-founder Quinn Slack)
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On today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Quinn Slack, CEO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, a leading code search and intelligence platform.
on Oct 10
What is Reliability Engineering?
0 0
A history of SRE practice and where it stands today, plus advice on working with reliability engineers, as a software engineer. A guest post by SRE expert and former Googler, Dave O’Connor
on Oct 9
Bug management that works (Part 1)
0 0
Finding and triaging bugs, fixing bugs on the spot instead of ‘managing’ them, and how to make time for bug fixing
on Oct 2
Software engineers training software engineers
0 0
What is it like to teach software engineers, full time? Reuven M. Lerner has done this for 15 years, and shares his hands-on learnings – including how to teach efficiently
on Sep 30
Becoming a Full-Time Creator as a Software Engineer: Controversial Advice
0 0
I'm a full-time creator. With remote work becoming more common in tech, I get more messages from people asking: how can they do what I do?
on Sep 27
0 0
Simon is one of the best-known software engineers experimenting with LLMs to boost his own productivity: he’s been doing this for more than three years, blogging about it in the open.
on Sep 25
The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast | Gergely Orosz | Substack
0 0
Software engineering at Big Tech and startups, from the inside. Deepdives with experienced engineers and tech professionals who share their hard-earned lessons, interesting stories and advice they have on building software. Especially relevant for software engineers and engineering leaders:...
on Sep 25
Paying down tech debt: further learnings
0 0
Using tech debt to get into the flow, and big rewrites needing heavyweight support.
on Sep 21
The Product-Minded Software Engineer
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Product-minded engineers are developers with lots of interest in the product itself. They want to understand why decisions are made, how people use the product, and love to be involved in making product decisions. They're someone who would likely make a good product manager if they ever decide to give
on Sep 13
AI Tooling for Software Engineers: Rolling it out company-wide (Part 3)
0 0
Why are some companies not using GenAI yet? Also: AI guidelines and practical approaches for embracing LLM tools for software development on the individual developer, and organizational level
on Sep 10
10 Engineering Challenges Due to the Nature of Mobile Applications
0 0
I've been noticing that while there's a lot of appreciation for backend and distributed systems challenges, there's a lot less empathy for why mobile development is hard when done at scale. Building a backend system that serves millions of parallel customers means building highly available and...
on Sep 8
0 0
A guide for reducing tech debt effectively, and how to develop a mindset that welcomes the short-term benefits of eliminating it. A guest post by principal engineer Lou Franco
on Sep 4
Leading Effective Engineering Teams: a Deepdive
0 2
What makes software teams effective, and how do the TL, EM and TLM roles differ? An excerpt from Addy Osmani’s new book: Leading Effective Engineering Teams
on Sep 2
0 0
The team behind Artifacts - an innovative new way to interact with Claude - shares how they built this innovative feature in just three months with a distributed team. Exclusive details.
on Aug 27
A Software Engineering Culture Test
0 0
See a shorter, and updated version of this test here: The Pragmatic Engineer Test: 12 Questions on Engineering Culture [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pragmatic-engineer-test/]. I've talked with dozens of software developers about what they like and dislike about their workplace - team, and...
on Aug 27
The Pulse #104: The startup purge event is, unfortunately, here
0 0
Also: Sonos’ app rewrite was a disastrous YOLO release, similarities between AI companies and telco companies, what it’s like to test compilers, and more
on Aug 23
I Spent $5,000 Advertising My Free Book to iOS and Android Engineers
0 1
I released my first paperback book, Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges [https://www.mobileatscale.com/], a month and a half ago, which book is free [https://www.mobileatscale.com/] until 31st May as a PDF. I wrote this book with an unusual distribution model. I reached out
on Aug 15
Klarna’s AI chatbot: how revolutionary is it, really?
0 0
Klarna launched its AI chatbot, built in collaboration with OpenAI, which the company wants to use to eliminate 2/3rds of customer support positions. But is it as revolutionary, and as likely to replace jobs, as Klarna claims?
on Aug 8
How do AI software engineering agents work?
0 0
Coding agents are the latest promising Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool, and an impressive step up from LLMs. This article is a deep dive into them, with the creators of SWE-bench and SWE-agent.
on Aug 6
The biggest-ever global outage: lessons for software engineers
0 0
Cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike shipped a routine rule definition change to all customers, and chaos followed as 8.5M machines crashed, worldwide. There are plenty of learnings for developers.
on Jul 23
AI Tooling for Software Engineers in 2024: Reality Check (Part 1)
0 0
How do software engineers utilize GenAI tools in their software development workflow? We sidestep the hype, and look to the reality of tech professionals using LLMs for coding and other tasks.
on Jul 18
The Pulse #100: Large AI Players Snap Up Smaller Ones
0 0
Also: why dev tools ask for work email, the “Big Stay” phenomenon, ChatGPT usage stalls then recovers, and more.
on Jul 15
How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum
0 0
A survey of how tech projects run across the industry highlights Scrum being absent from Big Tech. Why is this, and are there takeaways others should take note of?
on Jul 12
0 0
The past 18 months have seen major change reshape the tech industry. What does this mean for businesses, dev teams, and what will pragmatic software engineering approaches look like, in the future?
on Jul 11
Coaches and Mentors for Engineering Managers and Engineering Leaders
0 0
I sometimes get asked if I do mentoring for engineering leaders - managers, directors or senior+ engineers. I cover topics relevant to these people in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter and share actionable advice. Sadly, I have no bandwidth for one-on-one mentoring on top of my...
on Jul 11
Trimodal Nature of Tech Compensation Revisited
0 0
Why does a similar position have 2-4x compensation differences, in the same market? A closer look at the trimodal model I published in 2021. More data, and new observations.
on Jul 7
The end of 0% interest rates: what the new normal means for engineering managers and tech leads
0 0
We’re likely to see a preference for flatter organizations, fewer managers, and a preference for the “player coach” leadership model. Some changes present new opportunities to shine as leaders.
on Jun 28
What’s Changed in 50 Years of Computing: Part 3
0 0
How has the industry changed 50 years after the ‘The Mythical Man-Month’ was published? A look into estimations, developer productivity and prototyping approaches evolving.
on Jun 26
What do GenZ software engineers really think?
0 0
Young software engineers discuss values, what frustrates them about working in tech, and what they really think of older colleagues. Responses to our exclusive survey.
on Jun 24
Inside Bluesky’s Engineering Culture
0 0
A deep dive into how a fully remote, open source-first, tech company is building a challenger social media platform. What can small teams learn from Bluesky about punching above your weight?
on Jun 6
Applied AI Software Engineering: RAG
0 0
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a common building block of AI software engineering. A deep dive into what it is, its limitations, and some alternative use cases. By Ross McNairn.
on Jun 3
Startups on hard mode: Oxide. Part 1: Hardware
0 0
What is tougher than building a software-only or hardware-only startup? Building a combined hardware and software startup. This is what Oxide is doing, as they build a “cloud computer.” A deepdive.
on May 24
The Pulse: Will US companies hire fewer engineers due to Section 174?
0 0
It’s rare that a tax change causes panic across the tech industry, but it’s happening in the US. If Section 174 tax changes stay, the US will be one of the least desirable countries to launch startups
on May 10
What is Security Engineering? Part 1.
0 0
A deep dive into the ever-changing field of security engineering; a domain that can feel intimidating to some software engineers. With Nielet D'Mello, security engineer at Datadog.
on May 4
Building Bluesky: a Distributed Social Network (Real-World Engineering Challenges)
0 3
Bluesky is built by around 10 engineers, and has amassed 5 million users since publicly launching in February this year. A deep dive into novel design decisions, moving off AWS, and more.
on Apr 23
Software Architecture is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design is Underrated
0 0
I had my fair share in designing and building large systems. I've taken part in rewriting Uber's distributed payment systems [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/distributed-architecture-concepts-i-have-learned-while-building-payments-systems/] , designing and shipping Skype on Xbox One and...
on Apr 19
Weekend maintenance kicks an Italian bank offline for days
0 0
It is now day five that Italian bank Sella has its apps and internetbank down, after a weekend systems update went south. The problem seems to be database-related: “something, something Oracle.”
on Apr 12