Gergely Orosz writes the #1 technology newsletter at Substack, called The Pragmatic Engineer. He started his career as a software developer in the U.K., spent three years at Skype, and followed that role with four years as an engineering manager at Uber before deciding to leave big tech and work for himself. Gergely began pursuing his newsletter full-time in September 2021 and in just one year has amassed 200,000 subscribers. He now makes more money than he did at his salaried tech job, and with freedom and flexibility. In today’s podcast, Gergely shares why he left his well-paying job at Uber, how he got his first 1,000 subscribers, why this kind of work can be stressful and lonely (but ultimately rewarding), and why it takes hard work to build authority and become a great writer. Working solo can be challenging, and in this episode, both Lenny and Gergely offer tips for structuring your unstructured time and finding your focus.—Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/leaving-big-tech-to-build-the-1-technology—Where to find Gergely Orosz:• Website: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/• Newsletter: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• Lemon.io: https://lemon.io/lenny• Eppo: https://www.geteppo.com/• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny—Referenced:• Gergely’s books: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/books/• Centered: https://www.centered.app/• The Pomodoro technique: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryancollinseurope/2020/03/03/the-pomodoro-technique/• Coding Horror: https://blog.codinghorror.com/• How to Achieve Ultimate Blog Success in One Easy Step: https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-achieve-ultimate-blog-success-in-one-easy-step/• A Comment Is an Invitation for Refactoring: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/a-comment-is-an-invitation-for-refactoring/• Kent Beck’s website: https://www.kentbeck.com/• Steve Yegge’s famous rant on Google vs. Amazon: https://www.alexanderjarvis.com/steve-yegges-famous-rant-on-google-vs-amazon/• Stevey’s Tech Talk: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZfuUWMTtMcC1DZF6HxJhqsGrBXu8Jzi7—In this episode, we cover:(04:32) Gergely’s background(07:19) The Pragmatic Engineer, growth and current subscribers (08:59) Compensation with a subscription-based newsletter vs. his salaried position at Uber(10:55) How the onset of Covid and layoffs at Uber prompted Gergely to start his newsletter(23:10) What he did immediately after leaving Uber(25:41) The day-to-day of writing a newsletter(35:08) Tips for productivity(41:19) Gergely’s favorite parts of entrepreneurship (43:15) The downsides of solo work(50:39) Why Gergely stopped making long-term plans(54:30) How to get started writing a newsletter(1:04:48) Key advice on building a successful newsletter—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Gergely Orosz is back for our annual year-end update on the tech market, writ large. How is hiring? Has AI really changed the game? What about that OpenAI fiasco? We also talk in-depth about Gergely’s self-published book, The Software Engineer’s Guidebook, which has been four years in the making. Join the discussionChangelog++ members get a bonus 19 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!Sponsors:Neon – The fully managed serverless Postgres with a generous free tier. We separate storage and compute to offer autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage. Socket – Secure your supply chain and ship with confidence. Install the GitHub app, book a demo or learn more Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. Featuring:Gergely Orosz – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, WebsiteJerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, WebsiteShow Notes: The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter The Software Engineer’s Guidebook Anthropic Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

This week we’re back talking to Gergely Orosz — this time not quite about the insane tech hiring market, but more so the flip side, the 180, the not so good tech hiring market, the layoff market and what you can expect. There’s a lot of FUD out there, so hopefully this show gives you a lens into what’s really going on, and what to really expect. Maybe more so, how to keep your job or find a new job. We come to this topic with great compassion and great understanding, so please…there is a community here for you. There’s a lot of people in our Slack. Call it your home, it’s free to join and everyone is welcome. Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at changelog.com/square to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you. Sentry – Working code means happy customers. That’s exactly why teams choose Sentry. From error tracking to performance monitoring, Sentry helps teams see what actually matters, resolve problems quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend. Use the code CHANGELOG and get the team plan free for three months. InfluxData – With its data collectors and scripting languages, a common API across the entire platform, and highly performant time series engine and storage, InfluxDB makes it easy to build once and deploy across multiple products and environments. InfluxDB’s new storage engine allows developers to build real-time applications even faster and with less code. Sign up for the InfluxDB Beta program to give it a try. Featuring:Gergely Orosz – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, WebsiteAdam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, WebsiteJerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedInShow Notes: The Changelog #464: This insane tech hiring market PragmaticEngineer.com Wired.com: Despite Big Layoffs, Tech Workers Are Still in Demand Layoffs.fyi Adyen Fast.co Which one of these will be the biggest “unicorn” failure ever? Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Listen to James Stanier, Director of Engineering at Shopify, and Gergely Orosz, author of 'The Software Engineer's Guidebook,' discuss topics like transitioning into management roles in the software engineering industry, establishing expectations and goals in management relationships, mastering stoicism in leadership, and exploring software engineering management books and training programs.

Gergely Orosz joins the hosts to discuss the tech hiring market, the impact of AI on software development, Neon's serverless Postgres for developers, OpenAI's success and leadership, Socket's solution for security concerns with open source dependencies, hiring trends in the tech market, the rise of social media influencers, and a conference with fake female speakers teased for future discussion.