Comment by gregdoesit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gregdoesit | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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