Hacker News Reader

The Pragmatic Engineer here :) And here is the list of side projects and their status I posted about you might have referred to [1]. I never posted about failed startup ideas.

As I wrote in another comment, this post is from late 2020, when I planned to start a startup, and when I had no idea I would be successful with my writing - it was maybe a month or two after publishing my first book. The context of this article was the skills I thought I'd use when going down the startup route.

On some assumptions of my recent writing:

> "I suspect a lot of the quotes where he says “I interviewed an engineer at ____ might be just be sourced from random Tweets"

When I write that I talked with someone at a company, it means I connected with them directly on various channels (e.g. over DMs, Signal, video call etc). I talk with lots of people, and incorporate some of these into the "The Scoop" articles and sometimes tweet about them (like this [2]). If I base something on a tweet, I'd share that. If I use something else as a source of information I share that as well.

If I come across things that are not true, I aim to correct it immediately (like this [3])

In my new career, integrity is the most valuable asset I have, and I aim to make it very clear when I share information that comes with directly talking with people, versus taking things from other sources.

> As with all content marketers selling advice, please take this all with a grain of salt.

Agree on this, and please see the context on when I wrote this article.

[1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1481195527467319297?...

[2] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1549867691346956288?...

[3] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1534884178428366848?...

Thanks for the additional context. However, this is the exact issue I was trying to point out:

> this post is from late 2020, when I planned to start a startup, and when I had no idea I would be successful with my writing - it was maybe a month or two after publishing my first book.

The title of the article implies that the content is advice for starting a successful startup for a software engineer. It literally uses the phrase “a startup”.

Then you read the content and it’s about marketing an ebook. The fact that this was written only a month or two after getting some sales of your ebook is exactly the problem I wanted to point out: There is always a kernel of wisdom or truth inside of Pragmatic Engineer content, but I’m usually left feeling like the headline was hyper-optimized for maximum clickbait value, but the content doesn’t quite deliver what the headline promised.

In this specific example, I click because I wanted to read an article about starting a startup as a software engineer. Instead, I got basically a 1-2 month retrospective on marketing an eBook on HN that doesn’t even explain why the book took off, other than perhaps luck. That’s the type of disconnect between headline and content that degrades the sense of trust very quickly.

Thanks for elaborating. You're right: the title is misleading. I changed the title to reflect what I meant to write about: "Want to learn about entrepreneurship, as a software engineer? Sell something online".

And yes, your point is a valid criticism on "selling advice" without having been successful the space you write about. It's also a reason why I'm trying to steer clear on offering advice on running or scaling a business - since running my own business, ironically. I made one exception so far on this, sharing my thoughts on the term 'creator'. [1].

I also noticed how writing about business topics pulls in people who want to succeed in a similar way, and can go down the "publish self help content" in ways that you described. It's not appealing to me.

Appreciate the caveats on the publication! I'll also think of how to make it more clear to indicate my sources are direct and the information is "exclusive" without over using the "exclusive" part.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233437

Thanks for responding and being open to some healthy discussion.

To be clear: I am a subscriber and I do recommend The Pragmatic Engineer to a lot of people, although with some of the context above. Looking forward to watching the newsletter evolve over time.

Thanks - I keep evolving the publication; The Scoop is barely a few months old and was (still is) a bonus addition to the long-form weekly articles.

To quote or not to quote from other publications is an good question. Re-reading the last two Scoop issues, they both, indeed started with The Information quotes as you rightfully noted. I didn’t mark the information that was unreported outside my newsletter clearly either. The ones that were all based on directly talking with sources at companies - like the internal controversy on Slack access at Stripe, compensation rises and the Board's role at Adyen, the Meta PSC process as it’s playing out right now, the details on Google’s hiring freeze as confirmed with managers at the company, the Graphcore hiring freeze, reporting on the upcoming Apple hiring slowdown - and then sharing when Bloomberg shared information on the same two weeks later.

Here is an un-paywalled The Scoop issue from two weeks ago [1] where the first article was, indeed referring to The Information as a source, the second news referencing Bloomberg - confirming earlier reporting - and the next six scoops mostly from my own sources.

I don’t like the idea of calling out “exclusive” details, but I can also see how quoting from other sources can de-value this publication. Also, the reality as a on-person publication is there will be relevant news I won’t get to, but might still be relevant to share as a summary.

[1] (removed paywall) https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/fff15093-0d83-41d...

Hey this is a great answer! Really nice to see a "yep my thinking has evolved over time in these ways", which always feels really rare to me.

Hi PE, I have found something in how to counter overworked SEO. I started re-using the Google tool Google trends with a twist:

1 Pick the High Searched Term of your subject. 2 Pick an extremely niche unique term of your subject that gets low search hits.

Now combine them as a title to a post. Income wise one has two levers, immediate bump which often is just as high as the long term tail when it accumulates and the long tail is the niche search term.

> A similar - though much more impactful - example was how Traf Icons saw over $250K in sales after MKBHD - a YouTuber with over 13M subscribers - made a video with over 7M views of him installing these icons

these post usually based around survivorship bias, that's assuming there was no prior relationship/agreement.

Thank you for writing this! This quite align with what I've recently experienced. I was looking at a number of Twitter accounts that tweets about how to get engagements on Twitter. Naturally, they pointed to their own account as a good example of what to do. But if you look closely, they tend to find success precisely because they talk and sell courses on how to be successful. Not exactly the best example.

One thing I've noticed about those Twitter accounts with huge number of followers in the entrepreneurship topic(or perhaps any topic) is that they tweet about just one thing consistently; Everything they tweet about, incl. memes are almost always about their 'thing'.

Twitter rewards that consistency by organically promoting such accounts under 'topics', I guess it's easy to classify the tweets if the account stays within topic.

The followers are following those accounts for that 'thing' too and consider the follower count to be an accreditation for their subject matter experience. This works great if FOMO is involved and Entrepreneurial advice has boat load of it.

Good for them, Their business and perhaps may be their followers too.

But I personally tweet about everything from mental health to linux kernel; When I feel like it and it's evident from that I have just ~500 followers with 13 years of Twitter account. I don't follow anyone as I don't trust the conformist feed algorithms, I have lists for subject matter experts which I follow according to my needs and I engage(like, reply) to the tweets from my followers using my custom tool.

I guess my account is an exact contrast for someone who wishes to be a successful Twitter marketer; Which is a shame considering I'm an indie too.

The difficulty with tech blogging in general, is that even the best produce at most one genuinely great, authentic piece per year.

So, if you want to be posting regularly, there is no choice but to recycle other people's insights, or produce less well-researched pieces, or to just repeat yourself a lot.

Recycling insight is one thing, but I was referring to the sense that a lot of the content feels like “reporting on reporting”. That is, an article telling me that The Information posted an article that said something.

The quotes are always properly attributed with links, but given that the original content is behind a different subscription I feel slightly sleazy for subscribing to a newsletter that basically summarizes and quotes from a different paid newsletter as a primary source. (I also subscribe to The Information, FWIW)

Just want to push back on the note that my newsletter "basically summarizes and quotes from a different paid newsletter as a primary source".

The last issue had the most number of The Information quotes [1] plus a bunch of original reporting and opinions.

The one two weeks ago had one such quote [2] and a bunch of original reporting.

I hadn't quoted The Information three months before, the last time I mentioned anything from that source was late April [3].

All linked issues are un-paywalled.

Point taken though on quoting from other publications and the perception a few such quotes can create in a paid publication, not to mention when these external quotes are how an issue starts. And especially when burying original or "exclusive" reporting from original sources.

I'm learning the ropes on this one as I go and will iterate on the format and the notion of "reporting on reporting".

[1] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/e0cb6dd3-0527-421...

[2] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/fff15093-0d83-41d...

[3] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/1d8672a5-a2ab-48e...

I appreciate the links and sources, I’m not sure what OP’s problem is. I have a feeling they prefer opinion pieces, instead of insights into reported news.

I think Gergely's ambition is to be more than just a news outlet.

> The difficulty with tech blogging in general, is that even the best produce at most one genuinely great, authentic piece per year.

Au contraire, the limit as I can see it is more like once per month.

There's unique authentic content and then there is expanding what is already known with a voice. Something that I refer to when I reflect on this is https://xkcd.com/1053/

Yep, after thinking about this and trying my hand at being the first "engineer" at a pre-product fit startup, I decided that this kind of thing is fine and even sensible advice for people who just want to run a successful business, any business at all, but just very much isn't for me. I like thinking about how to scale up software, not how to get more engagement. I'm just a better fit for more established companies that have a product with some amount of existing flywheel and need to keep it working, improve it, and expand it.

I think the advocacy for these content based businesses would honestly make more sense directed to people whose direct interest is in business and marketing who just need to learn how to do some simple "low code"ing to turn their ideas into businesses. I don't think most of us here got into the programming game to start blogging and book-writing businesses!

Edit to add: I do really like The Pragmatic Engineer by the way! I'm glad the author is interested in this kind of business, because I benefit from it. It just isn't the right sort of thing for me to work on. Different strokes for different folks.

Unfair. The blog post is pretty clear that it’s a recap on things learnt about entrepreneurship and not, as you label it a “startup”. It is most certainly not inviting its readers to embark upon that business pursuit. I think the advice is clear: go sell something, anything, on the side and you’ll be amazed what you learn. Now bring those learnings back into your actual business aspirations.

It's not surprising. Information products are often the easiest to produce, lowest risk-to-reward, and often valuable enough people will part with money just to see if you have some information they don't. It's sort of like FBA used to be when alibaba arbitrage was still new.

It's so, so, so much harder to start a SaaS product and get an MMR that covers minimum expenses. It has very little to do with talent, because SWEs are talented enough to make an app, but more about getting properly funded and often times how well you can get foreign developers to work for you so you can move quicker. Solo development still happens occasionally, but only rarely anymore. SaaS products have necessarily gotten even more complex and the "one man job" type niches are filled to the gills with failed projects.

Yeah this seems to be a common trend? It's easier to make money by capturing some small group of attention and getting them to pay you. In the best form of this you get interesting podcasts/writing that can be really great (Ben Thompson, Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, Yascha Mounk, Scott Alexander, etc.), but the more common form seems to just be mediocre content marketing, how-to, and self-help crap.

Thank you for the honest advice