The Pragmatic Engineer.
@pragmaticengineer.com
Big Tech and startups, from the inside. Highly relevant for software engineers and managers, useful for those working in tech. The #1 technology newsletter on Substack. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/about
The book 'Frictionless' by Nicole Forsgren and Abi Noda is out - read two full chapters and the story behind (re)writing this book in today"s issue:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/frictionle...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/frictionle...
Frictionless: why great developer experience can help teams win in the ‘AI age’
Exclusive excerpts from the newly-released book ‘Frictionless’, by Nicole Forsgren and Abi Noda.
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
December 10, 2025 at 6:12 PM
The book 'Frictionless' by Nicole Forsgren and Abi Noda is out - read two full chapters and the story behind (re)writing this book in today"s issue:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/frictionle...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/frictionle...
We talked with 40+ devs building MCP servers to figure out the on-the-ground realities of building and using MCP - the good and the bad)
Some surprising findings: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp-deepdive
Some surprising findings: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp-deepdive
December 10, 2025 at 3:02 PM
We talked with 40+ devs building MCP servers to figure out the on-the-ground realities of building and using MCP - the good and the bad)
Some surprising findings: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp-deepdive
Some surprising findings: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp-deepdive
Impact-driven promotions almost always (eventually) lead to promotion-driven development. Little wonder it's so widespread throughout Big Tech and larger companies.
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/preparing-...
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/preparing-...
December 9, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Impact-driven promotions almost always (eventually) lead to promotion-driven development. Little wonder it's so widespread throughout Big Tech and larger companies.
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/preparing-...
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/preparing-...
Reposted by The Pragmatic Engineer.
The only newsletter I actually pay for. Highly recommend.
The Pragmatic Engineer Black Friday deal is live!
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
November 27, 2025 at 11:26 PM
The only newsletter I actually pay for. Highly recommend.
The Pragmatic Engineer Black Friday deal is live!
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
November 27, 2025 at 7:54 PM
The Pragmatic Engineer Black Friday deal is live!
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
Get a year-long subscription for $120 (instead of $150). A sub gives you access to all deepdives, The Pulse, and resources for software engineers and eng managers. Available till Monday.
Get it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/0ea36188
45+ gift ideas and inspiration for the tech workers in your life (and maybe yourself) this holiday season:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/copy-holid...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/copy-holid...
Holiday gift ideas for techies
Gift ideas and inspiration for the tech workers in your life (and maybe yourself) this holiday season
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:36 PM
45+ gift ideas and inspiration for the tech workers in your life (and maybe yourself) this holiday season:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/copy-holid...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/copy-holid...
What caused the AWS outage that felt like it took down half the internet on Monday?
It started with a race condition in DynamoDB's DNS propagation, which ended up setting the dynamod.us-east-1.amazonaws.com DNS to empty.
A deepdive and more details: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/aws-outage-u...
It started with a race condition in DynamoDB's DNS propagation, which ended up setting the dynamod.us-east-1.amazonaws.com DNS to empty.
A deepdive and more details: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/aws-outage-u...
October 24, 2025 at 2:43 PM
What caused the AWS outage that felt like it took down half the internet on Monday?
It started with a race condition in DynamoDB's DNS propagation, which ended up setting the dynamod.us-east-1.amazonaws.com DNS to empty.
A deepdive and more details: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/aws-outage-u...
It started with a race condition in DynamoDB's DNS propagation, which ended up setting the dynamod.us-east-1.amazonaws.com DNS to empty.
A deepdive and more details: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/aws-outage-u...
How does the Claude Code team build Claude code? Today's deepdive covers this.
An interesting take from them: "Mockups feel like a thing of the past when you can build 5-10 working prototypes per day."
The full article: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-claude...
An interesting take from them: "Mockups feel like a thing of the past when you can build 5-10 working prototypes per day."
The full article: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-claude...
September 23, 2025 at 6:42 PM
How does the Claude Code team build Claude code? Today's deepdive covers this.
An interesting take from them: "Mockups feel like a thing of the past when you can build 5-10 working prototypes per day."
The full article: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-claude...
An interesting take from them: "Mockups feel like a thing of the past when you can build 5-10 working prototypes per day."
The full article: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-claude...
How do tech companies measure the impact of AI on software dev? Here's how GitHub, Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, Monzo, Atlassian, Adyen, Booking and Grammarly do it:
More details on 9 other companies+trends in today's deepdive w @lauratacho.com at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-tech-c...
More details on 9 other companies+trends in today's deepdive w @lauratacho.com at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-tech-c...
September 16, 2025 at 8:02 PM
How do tech companies measure the impact of AI on software dev? Here's how GitHub, Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, Monzo, Atlassian, Adyen, Booking and Grammarly do it:
More details on 9 other companies+trends in today's deepdive w @lauratacho.com at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-tech-c...
More details on 9 other companies+trends in today's deepdive w @lauratacho.com at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-tech-c...
With the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) role trending in discussions, here's our deepdive from a month ago in @pragmaticengineer.com on the origins of the role, how it looks at Palantir, OpenAI and Ramp, and why the role is so hot *now*:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-de...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-de...
September 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
With the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) role trending in discussions, here's our deepdive from a month ago in @pragmaticengineer.com on the origins of the role, how it looks at Palantir, OpenAI and Ramp, and why the role is so hot *now*:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-de...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-de...
State of the software engineering job market in 2025: Big Tech has started to hire more software engineers.
Also: tenure at Big Tech has dramatically increased since the 2023 layoffs (surprising!)
A lot more details in today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-t...
Also: tenure at Big Tech has dramatically increased since the 2023 layoffs (surprising!)
A lot more details in today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-t...
September 2, 2025 at 5:02 PM
State of the software engineering job market in 2025: Big Tech has started to hire more software engineers.
Also: tenure at Big Tech has dramatically increased since the 2023 layoffs (surprising!)
A lot more details in today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-t...
Also: tenure at Big Tech has dramatically increased since the 2023 layoffs (surprising!)
A lot more details in today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-t...
Interesting findings in The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 Survey:
- JIRA: the single-most mentioned tool.. mentioned more than any language/IDE/other
- Even though the survey was taken by developers, Figma is more used than Kubernetes or Cursor (!)
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pragma...
- JIRA: the single-most mentioned tool.. mentioned more than any language/IDE/other
- Even though the survey was taken by developers, Figma is more used than Kubernetes or Cursor (!)
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pragma...
August 19, 2025 at 3:56 PM
Interesting findings in The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 Survey:
- JIRA: the single-most mentioned tool.. mentioned more than any language/IDE/other
- Even though the survey was taken by developers, Figma is more used than Kubernetes or Cursor (!)
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pragma...
- JIRA: the single-most mentioned tool.. mentioned more than any language/IDE/other
- Even though the survey was taken by developers, Figma is more used than Kubernetes or Cursor (!)
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pragma...
How do you build a great SDK?
@quentin.pradet.me has been building and maintaining SDKs for a decade. In today's deepdive he walks through the most common approaches in the industry.
Surprise: LLMs not a great fit for this kind of work!
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-g...
@quentin.pradet.me has been building and maintaining SDKs for a decade. In today's deepdive he walks through the most common approaches in the industry.
Surprise: LLMs not a great fit for this kind of work!
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-g...
July 29, 2025 at 5:38 PM
How do you build a great SDK?
@quentin.pradet.me has been building and maintaining SDKs for a decade. In today's deepdive he walks through the most common approaches in the industry.
Surprise: LLMs not a great fit for this kind of work!
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-g...
@quentin.pradet.me has been building and maintaining SDKs for a decade. In today's deepdive he walks through the most common approaches in the industry.
Surprise: LLMs not a great fit for this kind of work!
Full: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-g...
OpenAI's biggest-ever launch happened on 25 March: releasing ChatGPT Images.
100M new users in the first week
700M images generated in 7 days
1M new users/hour signing up at peek
The eng team told us how exactly they pulled it off. All the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/chatgpt-im...
100M new users in the first week
700M images generated in 7 days
1M new users/hour signing up at peek
The eng team told us how exactly they pulled it off. All the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/chatgpt-im...
May 13, 2025 at 4:02 PM
OpenAI's biggest-ever launch happened on 25 March: releasing ChatGPT Images.
100M new users in the first week
700M images generated in 7 days
1M new users/hour signing up at peek
The eng team told us how exactly they pulled it off. All the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/chatgpt-im...
100M new users in the first week
700M images generated in 7 days
1M new users/hour signing up at peek
The eng team told us how exactly they pulled it off. All the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/chatgpt-im...
What is it like to build humanoid robots, as a software engineer? Today's deepdive goes into the software side of this industry-but before we do, we need to talk about hardware. With Sandor Felber, formerly Humanoid Robot Learning Researcher at MIT:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/humanoid-r...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/humanoid-r...
April 29, 2025 at 7:09 PM
What is it like to build humanoid robots, as a software engineer? Today's deepdive goes into the software side of this industry-but before we do, we need to talk about hardware. With Sandor Felber, formerly Humanoid Robot Learning Researcher at MIT:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/humanoid-r...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/humanoid-r...
The Pragmatic Engineer crossed one million subscribers!
This is an improbable milestone. Today's deepdive covers the history behind it, who reads the publication, why it might be so popular, and what's next: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/one-million
This is an improbable milestone. Today's deepdive covers the history behind it, who reads the publication, why it might be so popular, and what's next: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/one-million
April 22, 2025 at 3:00 PM
The Pragmatic Engineer crossed one million subscribers!
This is an improbable milestone. Today's deepdive covers the history behind it, who reads the publication, why it might be so popular, and what's next: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/one-million
This is an improbable milestone. Today's deepdive covers the history behind it, who reads the publication, why it might be so popular, and what's next: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/one-million
Tech interviews feel like they are at inflection point: a lot of approaches and interview types that worked fine until now seem to be breaking down.
Could we be heading back to pre-pandemic hiring practices? Today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-hirin...
Could we be heading back to pre-pandemic hiring practices? Today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-hirin...
April 15, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Tech interviews feel like they are at inflection point: a lot of approaches and interview types that worked fine until now seem to be breaking down.
Could we be heading back to pre-pandemic hiring practices? Today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-hirin...
Could we be heading back to pre-pandemic hiring practices? Today's deepdive: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-hirin...
What is the MCP Protocol, and why is it spreading so rapidly across IDEs, with all major ones having added support (Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Zed, Cline and Neovim)?
Today's deepdive goes into just this: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp
Today's deepdive goes into just this: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp
April 8, 2025 at 4:31 PM
What is the MCP Protocol, and why is it spreading so rapidly across IDEs, with all major ones having added support (Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Zed, Cline and Neovim)?
Today's deepdive goes into just this: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp
Today's deepdive goes into just this: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/mcp
Today's free deepdive is about the reality of tech interviews (and tech interviewing) in 2025. By Evan King and Stefan Mai (formerly at Meta, currently cofounders at Hello Interview, and getting a good pulse of the current market thanks to this):
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-realit...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-realit...
April 1, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Today's free deepdive is about the reality of tech interviews (and tech interviewing) in 2025. By Evan King and Stefan Mai (formerly at Meta, currently cofounders at Hello Interview, and getting a good pulse of the current market thanks to this):
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-realit...
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-realit...
Have you been hearing how "AI will replace software engineers"? Is it true?
We talked with software engineers who not only are not "replaced" but picked up a new skillset working with LLMs. Building amazing things.
A deepdive... into reality: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-enginee...
We talked with software engineers who not only are not "replaced" but picked up a new skillset working with LLMs. Building amazing things.
A deepdive... into reality: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-enginee...
March 26, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Have you been hearing how "AI will replace software engineers"? Is it true?
We talked with software engineers who not only are not "replaced" but picked up a new skillset working with LLMs. Building amazing things.
A deepdive... into reality: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-enginee...
We talked with software engineers who not only are not "replaced" but picked up a new skillset working with LLMs. Building amazing things.
A deepdive... into reality: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-enginee...
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
Please help out by taking this 5-15 minute survey:
forms.gle/hoK7TtaH1hx3...
Please help out by taking this 5-15 minute survey:
forms.gle/hoK7TtaH1hx3...
March 18, 2025 at 5:59 PM
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
Please help out by taking this 5-15 minute survey:
forms.gle/hoK7TtaH1hx3...
Please help out by taking this 5-15 minute survey:
forms.gle/hoK7TtaH1hx3...
Imagine interviewing a candidate who looks like a very strong coder. Almost extending an offer. But turns out, the candidate is a deepfake.
This actually happened with a startup called Vidoc Security - twice!
Deepdive with all the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
This actually happened with a startup called Vidoc Security - twice!
Deepdive with all the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
March 11, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Imagine interviewing a candidate who looks like a very strong coder. Almost extending an offer. But turns out, the candidate is a deepfake.
This actually happened with a startup called Vidoc Security - twice!
Deepdive with all the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
This actually happened with a startup called Vidoc Security - twice!
Deepdive with all the details: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-fakers
Today's deepdive looks at 20,000+ data points to understand compensation ranges for software engineers in the US, UK and India.
Here are details for India - the first time this data is ever published. Data courtesy of Levels.fyi
See all data: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal
Here are details for India - the first time this data is ever published. Data courtesy of Levels.fyi
See all data: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal
March 4, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Today's deepdive looks at 20,000+ data points to understand compensation ranges for software engineers in the US, UK and India.
Here are details for India - the first time this data is ever published. Data courtesy of Levels.fyi
See all data: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal
Here are details for India - the first time this data is ever published. Data courtesy of Levels.fyi
See all data: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal
Today's deepdive: Robotics for software engineers. A deepdive with Sandor Felber, Humanoid Robot Learning Researcher at MIT.
A walk through on how a typical enough robotics projects goes from planning, through development to shipping.
Read it here:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/robotics
A walk through on how a typical enough robotics projects goes from planning, through development to shipping.
Read it here:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/robotics
February 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Today's deepdive: Robotics for software engineers. A deepdive with Sandor Felber, Humanoid Robot Learning Researcher at MIT.
A walk through on how a typical enough robotics projects goes from planning, through development to shipping.
Read it here:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/robotics
A walk through on how a typical enough robotics projects goes from planning, through development to shipping.
Read it here:
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/robotics
Exciting announcement: paid The Pragmatic Engineer subscribers now have access to:
- 12 months of Perplexity Pro ($200 in value)
- 3 months of Kagi Ultimate with ($75 in value)
Read more about details, and how to claim these: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/free-kagi-...
- 12 months of Perplexity Pro ($200 in value)
- 3 months of Kagi Ultimate with ($75 in value)
Read more about details, and how to claim these: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/free-kagi-...
January 27, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Exciting announcement: paid The Pragmatic Engineer subscribers now have access to:
- 12 months of Perplexity Pro ($200 in value)
- 3 months of Kagi Ultimate with ($75 in value)
Read more about details, and how to claim these: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/free-kagi-...
- 12 months of Perplexity Pro ($200 in value)
- 3 months of Kagi Ultimate with ($75 in value)
Read more about details, and how to claim these: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/free-kagi-...