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Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz361k followers

Writing @Pragmatic_Eng, the #1 software engineering newsletter on Substack. Author of @EngGuidebook. Formerly Uber & Skype.

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1Sep 1, '24Ok Mullvad VPN is the example of security *by design*: The company does not store any form of data (no IPs, no logs.) They don’t even offer recurring subscriptions (!!) because doi31.1×3.1M20k1.4k12k
2Dec 13, '23A thing that is causing huge pain at many tech companies in the US - with little talk about it: An IRS tax code change in Section 174. This change eliminates the ability for busine27.7×2.8M5.9k9922.5k
3Apr 17, '24Made a larger credit card purchase on a US website with my EU card. Usually this prompts a second factor auth: but it didn’t happen. Net day I my bank blocks my card and does calls26×2.6M7.5k2641.2k
4Mar 12, '24I apologize but won't be amplifying startups whose mission is to fully replace software engineers with "AI devs." It's clear why VCs & investors love this idea; and why founder25.5×2.5M5.2k4741.3k
5Jun 6, '23The business model of Hindenburg Research is fascinating: They produce some of the best, in-depth investigative journalism, aiming to expose shady actors, which are *always* public22.2×2.2M5.2k8521.4k
6Nov 14, '25From a CTO at a startup: "We interview devs by giving them a task to build an app on the spot, from scratch (2x BE endpoints, some frontend.) They can use AI, ofc - and we dig into20.8×2.1M4.7k1981.8k
7Jan 6, '25Imagine having a $300K+ year job at Apple. Then notice Apple matches charity donations up to $10K/year and deciding… you want that additional $10K/yr. So you defraud Apple with a f19.1×1.9M19k1.7k2.6k
8Jun 16, '23Wow: Google IS killing Google Domains; selling it to Squarespace. This is 10 million domains sold. Millions of customers like me learn again (and again!) that you cannot trust Goog17.6×1.8M4.4k541353
9Jul 9, '25There was this engineer on my team a while back who was: a good dev, but not the best dev. Got everything done. But had zero ego, a very nice personality, and got along with *every17.3×1.7M15k5453.4k
10Dec 15, '23Turns out it’s not legal. The FTC is suing Adobe over it and it’s likely it will result in a massive fine. On top of all the lost customers for life, like me. Adobe is only the maj16.8×1.7M5k503572
11Nov 20, '24Did I see this right. The CEO of Zomato is hiring a Chief of Staff. It's an *unpaid* position for all of the first year, where the applicants needs to pay 2M INR (about $24,000) Te16.5×1.6M11k7801.2k
12Apr 16, '23Twitter’s idea of firing people in Europe is to lock them out of their account and call it a day. Employment lawyers are rubbing their hands, as this is not how it works. These emp15.8×1.6M6.2k658213
13Jan 23, '241. Yes it’s still operating 2. Before the 75% staff cut, this business generated ~$5B in revenue. After the cut it is likely to generate ~$2.5B 3. The savings from the firings are 15.7×1.6M5.7k499486
14Dec 21, '22Call me surprised. George Hotz is an experienced software engineer who volunteered to do a 12-week “internship” at Twitter to try and fix things. He seemed motivated and determined14.6×1.5M3.8k330348
15Jan 17, '23This is next level.Nikita: built an app called tbh where teens could compliment each other, anonymously. Facebook bought the app and shut it down. Nikita vested out, then built an 14.3×1.4M3.4k246416
16Dec 8, '23ChatGPT getting lazier and telling people to read the docs instead of answering questions like before - and the team not having pinned down what’s happening - is such an amusing ch14.1×1.4M6.8k641517
17Jan 20, '23We'll look back at this week as an inflection point when Big Tech lost its former attractiveness. It will be stories like Justin's, and the countless ones to be told, where many re13.3×1.3M7.7k801677
18Jan 12, '23JP Morgan bought student loan startup Frank for $175M in 2021, thinking they had 4M customers. In reality: customers were fake. The big story we should be talking about is how devs13.1×1.3M5.1k819547
19Sep 4, '25Amusing how 99% of people using LLMs forget how these things work: They are advanced probability machines. They generate the next most likely token (word) based in the input and th12.3×1.2M4.2k2751k
20Apr 12, '24I just realized how I’ve heard virtually nothing about the Vision Pro. I saw dozens of people on my feed pre-order it, unbox it, share first impressions. Now it’s just… nothing. No12.2×1.2M4.8k174266
21Mar 14, '25A good reminder why you can pick up GenAI - and you probably should. Real story: Small company, 5 devs. Last time they hired was 12 years ago. AI comes out: company wants to add AI12.1×1.2M4.6k2864.2k
22Feb 20, '23Now that app-based authentication is far more common, let's talk about a major sin Google is doing: They ONLY recommend using Google authenticator. Google authenticator is one of t11.8×1.2M3.9k5031.1k
23Feb 19, '24My first manager at Uber started a GitHub page back at the time with resources to become a more proficient developer - ones he personally found helpful (he did not have a CS degree11.2×1.1M9.9k1.3k16k
24Aug 22, '24What is happening at Sonos is hard to believe. The company released a new app that is a big regression in reliability, usability and functionality vs the old one. Sales are falling11×1.1M4.7k3261.4k
25Jan 15, '25Interesting: Meta created React Native. It’s used (with components at least) in their flagship apps: Facebook (iOS, Android), Instagram (Meta Quest), Messenger (desktop). Google cr10.8×1.1M9.3k5582k
26May 24, '24Google Search is Google’s flagship product and cash cow. It’s the one property Google needs to keep relevant/trustworthy/useful. And yet, examples on how AI overviews are turning G10.8×1.1M5.7k4301.2k
27Jan 15, '24A massive “what really matters” for me was when in 2007, I snuck into an MIT CS class (probability theory) thanks to a friend. I expected to hear something profound. But the materi10.7×1.1M4.5k2791.5k
28Feb 17, '23"What if we took 2-3 months to rewrite the whole thing? Start from scratch, fix all the mistakes we know about, and we will have a clean state, all our problems solved." There's a 10.6×1.1M3.8k2831k
29Jan 4, '23An underrated way to attract great engineers to your company (drumroll) Have a great engineering blog. This means ENGINEERS write the blog, not content writers. And they give the "10.4×1M5k4462k
30Apr 11, '25From an eng manager at a full remote company: "We just fired an engineer after ~15 days on the job who lacked basics skills on the job but aced the interview - clearly, using cheat10.4×1M7k3322.8k
31Apr 23, '23In every company I worked at, once every year or two a new joiner on a team (often internal transfer) would do something so rare: Try out all our competitors, and create a comparis10.3×1M3.7k2051.5k
32May 23, '23All it takes for a company to lose you for life is to fool you once. I signed up to a monthly Adobe subscription, only to realized it was a *yearly* one paid monthly (?!) when I tr10.2×1M4.5k279232
33Apr 30, '24Google firing excellent software engineers with no explanation, just as its valuation reaches the all-time high: If this doesn't explain how the software engineering market is chan9.2×913k4k316844
34Mar 31, '24One of my best hires back at Uber Amsterdam was a dev from another country. Already had an intern offer elsewhere. “Why did you apply here?” “B/c this other company offered €500/mo9.1×905k4.4k260429
35Dec 21, '24I see so much FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about the future of sw engineering, mostly from non-devs. Along the lines of “soon anyone can spin off AI agents in bulk that act as hu9.0×895k6.2k3831.7k
36May 1, '25Here’s one reason Apple fought tooth and nail to disallow web payments for apps: Because Apple’s IAP is bad in many ways, and *so many* apps will move to web-based payments now not8.9×889k4.9k3381.7k
37Apr 23, '24Huge news for anyone working in tech in the US. Noncompetes are now banned: not just in California (like before), but nationwide. Very, very relevant for anyone at Amazon (which is8.9×881k7.3k1.4k1k
38Aug 8, '25Asked a few companies how they hire FDEs (forward deployed engineers). Head this article from @alexandr_wang referenced a few times as what worked well:8.8×876k7.2k4985.7k
39Apr 16, '25Interesting to reflect how much of an impact @xkcdComic has had on tech culture - expressing making (mostly) universal truths via simple to understand comics So many golden nuggets8.7×864k15k6682.3k
40Jun 1, '24Just heard of a utilities government company that is going bankrupt after their IT arm went all-in on Scrum and SAFe, rewrote a billing system, and that billing system got delayed 8.4×837k4k368937
41Nov 17, '23It was unclear who could possibly stop OpenAI from winning the AI race. We now have the answer: OpenAI themselves. The most shocking CEO firing in a decade or two.8.2×813k6k387295
42Jul 11, '24How Intuit takes care of its people: It's CEO advertises to the world that those they are letting go are not meeting expectations. You cannot make this up: it's from official Intui7.9×789k4k303548
43Jan 21, '23Substack launched analytics insights and: wow. Thank you to everyone reading @Pragmatic_Eng!7.7×767k1.4k23104
44Aug 27, '24I learned that car thefts have practically disappeared in Hungary in a decade (reduced by ~95%: from 7,000 thefts in 2012 to ~300 in 2023.) How? The police founded a unit specializ7.6×757k14k1.4k1.3k
45Jul 7, '25In 2025, my new washing machine / drying machine takes 3-5 seconds to “boot up” just so I can *select* the program In 1990 I remember our washing machine took 0 seconds to “boot up7.5×750k21k848400
46Aug 11, '23There’s this YouTube channel that releases maybe 1-2 videos per year but they are absolute bangers. It’s called KRAZAM and it’s the only one I set to get notifications for new vide7.2×717k3.5k2032k
47Aug 8, '23It's now possible to block ChatGPT's crawler on any website you control. Added the block: it's a no-brainer. Why? ChatGPT cites no sources. It's a one-way relationship where OpenAI7.2×717k4.5k1.3k1.3k
48Feb 13, '25Don’t fall for speculation like this. Software developer job postings are back to where they were in ~2019, following the COVID boom (and zero interest rates!). You know what else 7.1×709k4.7k302852
49Jul 23, '25How it started: "AI vibe coding tools will replace devs!" How it's going: "Do this: - Provide it w a detailed spec - Break down tasks to small ones - Separate dev and prod envs - D6.8×672k6.4k4662k
50Jun 17, '24After having read it, I can say this is probably the best book to explain how ChatGPT (and LLMs) work (written by Stephen Wolfram, who excels at explaining complex topics simply, s6.7×662k4.2k3105.8k
51Jan 10, '24Salesforce firing 10% of staff, then having two truly standout quarters, then going on a hiring spree, then freezing hiring (easy to guess how Q4 2023 went!) is such a good example6.5×643k4.1k374479
52Jan 31, '24Whenever I see a UI like this I sigh: because I can tell whoever built it is an dev who doesn't care about their craft much. The card type can be inferred from the first few digits6.4×632k4.8k179702
53Jun 17, '25Outside of Google is there any large company NOT using Sonnet as their primary model for coding? Heard even Meta switched internally to it from Llama Anthropic pulled off something6.3×625k4k1381.2k
54Sep 19, '25Talked with the Claude Code team on how they build Claude Code. It feels I get a peek into the future, and I get why Dario said 6 months ago that 90% of code will be written by AI.6.1×605k3.9k1552.5k
56Mar 26, '25AI crawlers are wrecking the open internet. My small side project - techpays .com - used to generate below 100GB of traffic per month. It’s on Render where 500GB/month included, ab5.7×571k6.3k3621.4k
57Apr 29, '24As I was looking for applications that take up memory on my Mac, I was surprised to find about 6 Adobe Creative Cloud services running, talking ~500MB of memory. Not used Creative 5.6×559k4.5k98415
58Jan 13, '23Working in a large tech company, one thing I wish every team had (but barely any have it): A “map” of the teams that you depend on, that depend on you, and ones that are coupled to5.5×545k3.5k253776
59Jul 1, '23I have been increasingly surprised how Twitter kept - mostly! - functioning despite firing devs + devs quitting, not paying vendors & having trouble hiring experienced engineer5.4×537k4.2k384145
60May 27, '25Perplexity is at crossroads. If they continue this course: Today: Tomorrow:5.3×527k3.7k83377
61Dec 15, '24New book I’m starting to read. This years Spotify Wrapped was surprisingly disappointing and missed the fun in last years. I learned that the person behind much of Wrapped in previ5.2×521k7.6k5455.3k
62Apr 12, '25Tried to reserve 4 seats next to each other for a movie where there were a total of 5 seats remaining free in the row The web app did not allow booking seats to have an empty seat 5.2×518k8.2k145721
63Oct 29, '24How interesting: An Amazon engineer joining a startup using AWS: hits the ground running (has been using AWS throughout their time at Amazon) A Google engineer joining a startup us5.1×511k3.8k149672
64Jun 12, '25How is this happening: GCP major outage; Cloudflare major outage… at the same time! Never seen this before Their infra is fully independent AFAIK5.1×509k3.6k290817
65Oct 21, '25Some of the most unexpected fallouts of an AWS outage: 1. Postman stopped working: an API development tool built to be an alternative to simple tools like curl. 2. Eight Sleep cust5.1×508k4.9k211671
66Oct 21, '25So ridiculous. AWS didn't "break the entire internet." Companies that decided to build non-resilient systems depending on one single cloud region (aws-us-east-1) broke themselves. 4.6×453k6.5k376338
67Jul 18, '24I am still amazed at how Amazon Alexa employed so many engineers, invested so many years, had 100M users in 2019 already (3 years before ChatGPT)... ... and the service seems froze4.3×425k2.7k55314
68Apr 3, '24Love this Verge article. Used to have HP printers until HP introduced dark patterns: the cartridge more expensive than the printer / cartridge half full but printer refuses to prin4.1×411k3.9k314608
69Aug 14, '25Cannot believe that OpenAI is valued ~the same (at $300B) as Coca Cola ($303B) Just reflecting on the capital and time it required to physically get Coke brands to every corner of 4.1×405k5.1k253471
70Sep 3, '25Interesting observation from an eng manager: “As soon as I know some text is AI-generated: I lose all interest in reading it. For performance reviews, I asked people to either not 4.0×398k6.5k206650
71Jun 29, '22As a tech lead or eng manager, you so frequently get request from above or from other teams to drop what you are doing and work on this thing they need, *now*. During my 4 years at3.8×07.7k1.2k3.9k
72Jun 6, '25I am getting SO tired of these posts from influencers: “We literally cloned an N billion-dollar company in 20 minutes with {vibe coding tool}. This changes the game forever.” No, y3.6×360k6.8k406527
74Jun 26, '25People outside tech starting to realize how quality software and typing/generating code fast are not correlated3.4×334k4.5k385677
75Jun 4, '25Now THIS is what a customer-centric app is. Most banks keep sending out warning emails about impersonation and scams. Any app can implement this capability with a little coding + b2.9×284k4.6k317624
76May 16, '25I am hearing SO many stories about people realizing coding with AI tools (aka “vibe coding”) is a game changer after “reviving” an old side project or idea on the side and making s2.7×264k4k130641
78Jan 19, '25"We've reduced our support load by 99.9% using AI" In reality... your customer can't get ANY support now I'm getting tired of these terrible AI bot rollouts... Example:2.6×258k5.4k438400
79Apr 10, '22What many sw engineers don't realize: The majority of jobs do not hire you to write the highest quality code or produce the cleanest architecture. They hire you to solve their busi2.6×07.8k1.1k962
80Oct 30, '21An eng created a fake CV with Instagram, Zillow, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Berkeley on it, all details being nonsense. Got 60% response rate. Reddit is going wild. Me, as a hiring ma2.4×04.8k9712.1k
81Mar 13, '22As it's been ~3 years, figured I'll answer "What caused the Uber Eats glitch that allowed ordering free food for a weekend in India?" This was an outage on my watch. Given Quora is2.2×04.6k1.2k1.4k
82Nov 13, '22This is what micromanaging from the top looks like, when the CEO *thinks* they can tell the source of the problem and how to fix it, just by looking at it. It’s incredibly frustrat2.2×08.2k736305
83Jul 3, '24A company that "gets" its customers: Cloudflare offers functionality to block AI crawlers, which give zero value to any site (in fact, take away value: the more they crawl, the les2.0×201k4.2k465433
84Jul 23, '22A reason I am anti "web3" is that the unregulated nature of this space means that non-accredited investors (aka people who are not rich) put money they cannot afford to lose. Then 1.7×04.3k720933
85Apr 8, '22Uber was founded in 2009, Datadog in 2010. 7 years ago, Uber was valued at $62B, Datadog at ~$150M. Today, Uber is valued at $63B, Datadog at $43B. Keep this in mind as you conside1.7×05.6k589660
86Jul 2, '22I’ve been saying exactly this. If you truly want to “bank the unbanked”, look to what UPI did in India, Pix in Brazil, M-Pesa in Africa - all in a few short years.1.7×04.9k785650
88Nov 5, '22“I don’t understand why X was laid off, and their manager also couldn’t tell them why.” With layoffs being more frequent, a thread about how who is let go is often decided, and why1.6×03.5k4841.5k
89Oct 30, '22For anyone trying to make sense of Musk having Twitter engineers print out their code and show it to Tesla engineers… my view is we don’t need to look far to see what is happening.1.6×04.1k1k436
91Jun 28, '22Can we acknowledge how ridiculous it is that startups and even individuals can bankrupt themselves... ... with an AWS bill? I cannot fathom why Amazon does not do anything meaningf1.4×04k549492
92Nov 18, '22Unless you operated large systems, it’s hard to appreciate both how they work, and how they break. Twitter won’t go down with a big b, and it won’t go down irreparable. Things will1.4×03.6k707539
93Jul 22, '22I always find it interesting when engineers from other companies join and bring some of their eng culture with them. I will never forget an iOS eng from Facebook on a another team 1.3×03.9k360514
94May 8, '22When people share how crypto can bring payments to underserved communities, I ask them if they heard of UPI which did this - but without blockchain. UPI has no fees, is secure, wor1.3×03.5k598586
95Jul 1, '22Wanted to get an Uber at the airport. After 10 minutes of every driver canceling (drivers now have unlimited cancels) wondered if there's a better way. And there was. Walked up to 1.2×04.6k299117
96Nov 21, '22Treat your career choices like you would invest your money. A friend had offers from companies A & B. My friend could not, for the life of him, understand how Company A made mo1.2×03.5k361744
97Feb 15, '22Google interviewing people: "Design a system that can scale to billions of users, with a p99 of 30 seconds for data replication. We ask questions like this because this is the type1.2×04.4k372240
99Nov 1, '22The amusing thing about the $20 for verified arguments is how it shows the mess of the business model Twitter has. There’s a social media site that charges ~$59/month for a gold ba1.0×03.3k342238

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