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: useful for those working in tech.
Supported by Our Partners • Sonar — Code quality and code security for ALL code. • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Augment Code — AI coding assistant that pro engineering teams love. — Kent Beck is one of the most influential figures in modern software development. Creator of Extreme Programming (XP), co-author of The Agile Manifesto , and a pioneer of Test-Driven Development (TDD), he’s shaped how teams write, test, and think about code. Now, w...
Supported by Our Partners • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sinch — Connect with customers at every step of their journey. • Modal — The cloud platform for building AI applications. — How has Microsoft changed since its founding in 1975, especially in how it builds tools for developers? In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer , I sit down with Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI at Microsoft. Scott has been with the c...
Janvi Kalra, an AI Engineer at OpenAI, shares her journey from traditional software engineering through internships at Google and Microsoft to her role in AI. She discusses her decision to join a startup like Coda, her framework for evaluating potential growth companies, and how she taught herself AI engineering by building projects and participating in hackathons. Janvi also offers insights from interviewing at 46 companies, explains what AI engineers do, and details her work on safety at OpenAI, highlighting the company's unique blend of speed and scale.
Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • Modal — The cloud platform for building AI applications. • Cortex — Your Portal to Engineering Excellence. — Kubernetes is the second-largest open-source project in the world. What does it actually do—and why is it so widely adopted? In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer , I’m joined by Kat Cosgrove, who has led several Kubernetes releases. Kat has been contributing to Kubernetes for several years, and o...
Varun Mohan, CEO of Windsurf, discusses the engineering challenges of building an AI-native IDE. He shares insights on evaluating LLMs, optimizing for latency, and fostering a culture of embracing failure. Mohan also explores how AI tools are transforming software engineering and the skills that will remain valuable.
Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • The Software Engineer’s Guidebook : Written by me (Gergely) – now out in audio form as well. — How do you get product and engineering to truly operate as one team? Today, I’m joined by Ebi Atawodi, Director of Product Management at YouTube Studio, and a former product leader at Netflix and Uber. Ebi was the first PM I partnered with after stepping into engineering management at Uber, and we both learned a lot tog...
Supported by Our Partners • Graphite — The AI developer productivity platform. • Sentry — Error and performance monitoring for developers. — Reddit’s native mobile apps are more complex than most of us would assume: both the iOS and Android apps are about 2.5 million lines of code, have 500+ screens, and a total of around 200 native iOS and Android engineers work on them. But it wasn’t always like this. In 2021, Reddit started to double down on hiring native mobile engineers, and they quietly re...
Dave Anderson comparte su experiencia como ingeniero y gerente en Amazon, revelando los niveles de carrera, el proceso de contratación, la cultura de frugalidad y el manejo de interrupciones. Discute la importancia de la gestión del rendimiento, las relaciones con los gerentes y por qué los ingenieros de Amazon son valiosos para las startups. También detalla su camino hacia la independencia financiera a través de la planificación y la escritura.
Supported by Our Partners • CodeRabbit — Cut code review time and bugs in half. Use the code PRAGMATIC to get one month free. • Modal — The cloud platform for building AI applications. — How will AI tools change software engineering? Tools like Cursor, Windsurf and Copilot are getting better at autocomplete, generating tests and documentation. But what is changing, when it comes to software design ? Stanford professor John Ousterhout thinks not much. In fact, he believes that great softwar...
Supported by Our Partners • Swarmia — The engineering intelligence platform for modern software organizations. • Sentry — Error and performance monitoring for developers. — Why did Meta build its own internal developer tooling instead of using industry-standard solutions like GitHub? Tomas Reimers , former Meta engineer and co-founder of Graphite , joins the show to talk about Meta's custom developer tools – many of which were years ahead of the industry. From Phababricator to Sandcastle and But...
In this episode, engineers Jonathan Kaufman and Noah Finer share the behind-the-scenes story of building Figma Slides, from its hackathon origins to a product used by millions. They delve into the unique engineering challenges, including building on Figma's infinite canvas, ensuring seamless multiplayer and interop across products, and the complexities of features like single slide view. The discussion also covers their tech stack (TypeScript, React, C++), innovative debugging and testing practices, release processes, and collaboration methods like Eng Crits.
Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • Vanta — Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. — Linux is the most widespread operating system, globally – but how is it built? Few people are better to answer this than Greg Kroah-Hartman: a Linux kernel maintainer for 25 years, and one of the 3 Linux Kernel Foundation Fellows (the other two are Linus Torvalds and Shuah Khan). Greg manages the Linux kernel’s stable releases, and is a maintainer of m...
Gautam Korlam, former Uber engineer and current co-founder of Gitar, discusses developer experience, internal tooling, and the impact of AI. He shares insights into Uber's unique engineering stack, including monorepos and SubmitQueue, and how they measured developer productivity. The episode explores the future of software development with AI, the rise of agentic AI, and the importance of focusing on system design and user experience.
In this episode, Balint Orosz, founder of Craft, discusses design-first software engineering, sharing insights from his experiences at Distinction and Skyscanner. Balint covers Craft's unique engineering decisions, the balance between customization and fear in frontend work, and the resurgence of local-first software. He also shares advice for frontend engineers and his experiences using GenAI for coding projects.
Cartoonist and former Google engineer Manu Cornet discusses the stories behind his famous tech comics, including the viral org chart and Google's product naming issues. The episode explores Google's culture, its approach to innovation, and Manu's experiences at Twitter before and after Elon Musk's acquisition and the mass layoffs. Manu shares insights into the tech industry, offering a humorous and critical look at corporate dynamics and engineering cultures.
Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS • CodeRabbit — Cut code review time and bugs in half • Augment Code — AI coding assistant that pro engineering teams love — How do you architect a live streaming system to deal with more load than it’s ever been done before? Today, we hear from an architect of such a system: Ashutosh Agrawal, formerly Chief Architect of JioCinema (and currently Staff Software Engineer at Google DeepMind.) We take a deep dive into vide...
Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS • CodeRabbit — Cut code review time and bugs in half • Augment Code — AI coding assistant that pro engineering teams love — How do you architect a live streaming system to deal with more load than it’s ever been done before? Today, we hear from an architect of such a system: Ashutosh Agrawal, formerly Chief Architect of JioCinema (and currently Staff Software Engineer at Google DeepMind.) We take a deep dive into vide...
Supported by Our Partners • Swarmia — The engineering intelligence platform for modern software organizations. • Graphite — The AI developer productivity platform. • Vanta — Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. — On today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Chip Huyen, a computer scientist, author of the freshly published O’Reilly book AI Engineering , and an expert in applied machine learning. Chip has worked as a researcher at Netflix, was a core developer at NV...
Supported by Our Partners • Formation — Level up your career and compensation with Formation. • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS • Vanta — Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. — In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Jonas Tyroller, one of the developers behind Thronefall , a minimalist indie strategy game that blends tower defense and kingdom-building, now available on Steam. Jonas takes us through the journey of creating Thronefall from s...
Supported by Our Partners • Sonar — Trust your developers – verify your AI-generated code. • Vanta —Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. — In today's episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I'm joined by Charity Majors, a well-known observability expert – as well as someone with strong and grounded opinions. Charity is the co-author of "Observability Engineering" and brings extensive experience as an operations and database engineer and an engineering manager. She is the cofounder an...
Supported by Our Partners • Vanta — Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. — In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Michael Novati, Co-founder and CTO of Formation. Before launching Formation, Michael spent eight years at Meta, where he was recognized as the top code committer company-wide for several years. The “Coding Machine” archetype was modeled after Michael at the company. In our conversation, we tal...
Supported by Our Partners • DX — DX is an engineering intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. • Vanta — Automate compliance and simplify security with Vanta. — In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I catch up with one of the best tech recruiters I’ve had the opportunity to work with: Blake Stockman, a former colleague of mine from Uber. Blake built a strong reputation in the recruiting world, working at tech giants like Google, Meta, and Uber. He also spent time with Y Com...
Supported by Our Partner DX → DX is an engineering intelligence platform designed by leading researchers — In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Sean Goedecke, Staff Software Engineer at GitHub. Sean is widely known for his viral blog post, “How I ship projects at big tech companies.” In our conversation, he shares how to successfully deliver projects in large tech companies. Drawing from his experiences at GitHub and Zendesk, Sean reflects on key lessons learned, and we ...
Supported by Our Partner DX → DX is an engineering intelligence platform designed by leading researchers — In today’s exciting episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I am joined by two members of the Notion mobile apps team, Austin Louden and Karn Saheb. Austin and Karn joined Notion in 2019 when Notion was revamping its mobile apps. Notion is a versatile productivity and collaboration platform that combines note-taking, task management, and knowledge organization into a single workspace. It is av...
Brought to you by: • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • Sevalla — Deploy anything from preview environments to Docker images. • Chronosphere — The observability platform built for control. — Welcome to The Pragmatic Engineer ! Today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Grady Booch, a true legend in software development. Grady is the Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM , where he leads groundbreaking research in embodied cognition. He’s the mind behind several object-orien...
Brought to you by: • Launch Darkly — a platform for high-velocity engineering teams to release, monitor, and optimize great software. • Sevalla — Deploy anything from preview environments to Docker images. • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. — On today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by fellow Uber alum, Sabin Roman, now the first Engineering Manager at Linear . Linear, known for its powerful project and issue-tracking system, streamlines workflows throughout th...
Brought to you by: • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • Sonar — Trust your developers – verify your AI-generated code. — 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. Now an engineering leadership coach, Irina helps tech professionals build impactful careers, teaches a course on influence, and shares insights thro...
Brought to you by: • The Enterprise Ready Conference on October 30th — For B2B leaders building enterprise SaaS. • DX — DX is an engineering intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. • ByteByteGo — Ace your next system design interview. — You may not be familiar with Bending Spoons, but I guarantee you’ve encountered some of their well-known products, like Evernote and Meetup. In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, we sit down with three key figures from the Italy-based start...
Brought to you by: • Paragon : Build native, customer-facing SaaS integrations 7x faster. • WorkOS : For B2B leaders building enterprise SaaS — 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. Quinn holds a degree in Computer Science from Stanford and is deeply passionate about coding: to the point that he still codes every day! He also serves on the board of Hack Club, a national nonp...
The first episode of The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast is out. Expect similar episodes every other Wednesday. You can add the podcast in your favorite podcast player, and have future episodes downloaded automatically. Listen now on Apple , Spotify , and YouTube . Brought to you by: • Codeium : Join the 700K+ developers using the IT-approved AI-powered code assistant. • TLDR : Keep up with tech in 5 minutes — On the first episode of the Pragmatic Engineer Podcast, I am joined by Simon Willison. S...
