“Open source maintenance fee” trialed by Wix Toolset, while the creator of uv offers paid, enterprise-only features for larger companies.| The Pragmatic Engineer
Observations across the software engineering industry.| The Pragmatic Engineer
Pulling 80+ hour work weeks – including weekends – is becoming the norm across AI startups, and is unlikely to stop while AI is so hot.| The Pragmatic Engineer
A study into the workflows of experienced developers found that devs who use Cursor for bugfixes are around 19% slower than devs who use no AI tools at all. One possible takeaway is that AI tools can be harder work than we’re led to believe.| The Pragmatic Engineer
Finally, relief: tax regulation hurting the US tech industry is striked off for good - for the most part, that is.| The Pragmatic Engineer
How are devs using AI tools at Big Tech and startups, and what do they actually think of them? This was the topic of my annual conference talk, in June 2025, in London, at LDX3 by LeadDev. To research, I talked with devs at: * AI dev tools startups:Anthropic, Cursor,| The Pragmatic Engineer
The internet has been speculating the past few days on which crypto company spent $65M on Datadog in 2022. I confirmed it was Coinbase, and here are the details of what happened.| The Pragmatic Engineer
The claim that the AI startup “faked AI” with hundreds of engineers went viral – and I also fell for it, initially. The reality is much more sobering: Builder.ai built a code generator on top of Claude and other LLMs; it did not build a so-called “Mechanical Turk.”| The Pragmatic Engineer
Today, Stack overflow has almost as few questions asked per month, as when it launched back in 2009. A recap of its slow, then rapid, downfall.| The Pragmatic Engineer
We might be seeing the end of remote coding interviews as we know them, and a return of in-person interviews, trial days and longer trial periods. Could hiring be returning to pre-pandemic norms?| The Pragmatic Engineer
We want to capture an accurate snapshot of software engineering, today – and need your help! Tell us about your tech stack and get early access to the final report, plus extra analysis| The Pragmatic Engineer
There are 35% fewer software developer job listings on Indeed today, than five years ago. Compared to other industries, job listings for software engineers grew much more in 2021-2022, but have declined much faster since. A look into possible reasons for this, and what could come next.| The Pragmatic Engineer
How has this uncertainty affected software engineers at the Chinese-owned social network?| The Pragmatic Engineer
The Pragmatic Engineer's YouTube channel crossed 100K subscribers. Celebrating with a giveaway of 100 books and newsletter subs: * 10x signed physical books (The Software Engineer’s Guidebook [in English or German - your choice!], Building Mobile Apps at Scale; winners get both; shipping is on me) * 90x e-books or audiobooks| The Pragmatic Engineer
Fresh data shows that the number of questions asked on StackOverflow are as low as they were back in 2009 – which was when StackOverflow was one years old. The drop suggests that ChatGPT – and LLMs – managed to make StackOverflow’s business model irrelevant in about two years’ time.| The Pragmatic Engineer
The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast covers software engineering at Big Tech and startups, from the inside. We do deepdives with experienced engineers and tech professionals who share their hard-earned lessons, interesting stories and advice they have on building software. After each episode, you’ll walk away with pragmatic approaches you can| The Pragmatic Engineer
Currently, Audible’s position is hurting audiobook authors. My audiobook isn’t on Audible due to a mix of their monopolistic pricing practices, and the company’s own complacency in how long they take to approve new titles.| The Pragmatic Engineer
The Pragmatic Engineer is the #1 technology newsletter on Substack. The publication cover topics relevant for those working at startups, scaleups and Big Tech. I (Gergely) am always looking for guest writers to cover interesting topics, coming from their hard-earned experience and expertise. The profile of the "typical" reader: * 85%| The Pragmatic Engineer
My experience with Carbon Ads and the revenue, in numbers. In 33 months of these ads running, they generated a total of $3,541 after 2.1M ad views. Read on for more detailed statistics.| The Pragmatic Engineer
I've worked at various tech companies: from "traditional" shops and consultancies, through an investment bank, to high-growth tech firms. I've also talked with software engineers working at startups, banking, automotive, big tech, and more "traditional" companies. This mix had a healthy sample of Silicon-Valley companies and ones headquartered outside this| The Pragmatic Engineer
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?| The Pragmatic Engineer
What companies follow an RFC-like process, and what are templates and examples to get inspiration from?| The Pragmatic Engineer
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| The Pragmatic Engineer
I write an independent newsletter on technology - The Pragmatic Engineer. Independence goes beyond just not having an employer. This is what it means for me: tl;dr: I don't take any form of payment to write about a company or product, or have a guest on my podcast. I| The Pragmatic Engineer
For 3 years straight, the DevTernity conference listed non-existent software engineers representing Coinbase and Meta as featured speakers. When were they added and what could have the motivation been?| The Pragmatic Engineer
I have recently been talking at small and mid-size companies, sharing engineering best practices I see us use at Uber, which I would recommend any tech company adopt as they are growing. The one topic that gets both the most raised eyebrows, as well the most "aha!" moments is the| The Pragmatic Engineer
This article was originally written in April 2021. In July 2024, I published an updated version with more data and new observations: The Trimodal Nature of Tech Compensation Revisited. Update: dozens of hiring managers confirmed this trimodal model applies to all global markets: from the US, through Asia to Latin| The Pragmatic Engineer
👋 This is Gergely, author of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. * Follow me * Message me * Send me industry news or observations Follow me You can follow me on the following sites: * My newsletter: The Pragmatic Engineer * On Bluesky: gergely.pragmaticengineer.com * On LinkedIn: Gergely Orosz * On Twitter: @GergelyOrosz * On YouTube: Gergely Orosz| The Pragmatic Engineer
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| The Pragmatic Engineer