The Pragmatic Engineer

The changes could well mean fewer software engineers immigrating to the US. Also: Ruby and Rails drama, designers “vibe coding” at Shopify, and more

Apple

Ruby

OpenAI

Shopify

Gergely Orosz

The Pulse #147: sudden changes to the H-1B program

The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.

From Uber to CloudKitchens, Charles-Axel Dein shares lessons on thriving in hyper-growth and building durable skills.

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CloudKitchens

Uber

High-growth startups: Uber and CloudKitchens with Charles-Axel Dein

A rare look into how the new, popular dev tool is built, and what it might mean for the future of software building with AI. Exclusive.

Claude Code

Real World Engineering Challenges

Anthropic

Industry trends

Claude

Engineering Culture Deep Dives

How Claude Code is built

A rare look into how the new, popular dev tool is built, and what it might mean for the future of software building with AI. Exclusive. 

Claude Code has taken the developer world by storm since being made generally available in May. The tool is currently generating more than $500M in annual run-rate revenue, and usage has exploded by more than 10x in the three months since that May release.

Big Tech interviewers using tougher interview questions, while startups drop algorithmic questions and takehomes. Also: new trend of devs vibe coding internal tools, and more

ChatGPT

Microsoft

VS Code

Vibe coding

Vimeo

Bending Spoons

Klarna

The Pulse #146: How AI is changing tech interviews

Before we start: we are doing research on MCP server best pratices. Do you use MCP servers at work, or did you build one/more? We’d like to hear from you. You can send details via this form. We’ll share findings with people sending details – and, of course, in the newsletter as well, at a later date. Thanks for your help!

How do GitHub, Google, Dropbox, Monzo, Atlassian, and 13 other companies know how well AI tools work for devs? A deepdive sharing exclusive details, with CTO Laura Tacho

Monzo

Industry Practice Deepdive

GitHub

Dropbox

Grammarly

Atlassian

Google

Glassdoor

Webflow

Adyen

eBay

Booking.com

CircleCI

Laura Tacho

How tech companies measure the impact of AI on software development

Hi – this is Gergely with the monthly, free issue of the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. In every issue, I cover challenges at Big Tech and startups through the lens of senior engineers and engineering leaders. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can

Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete, shares timeless lessons from his classic software engineering handbook, what he’s updated since, and the career principles every engineer should know.

Steve McConnell Audio Final.m4a

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Book author interview

Code Complete

Software Engineering

Code Complete with Steve McConnell

A broad and deep dive in how Google works, from the perspective of SWEs and eng managers. What makes Google special from an engineering point of view, engineering roles, compensation, and more

Elin Nilsson

Inside Google's Engineering Culture: Part 1

Today, the tech giant Google reaches more people with its products than any other business in the world across all industries, via the likes of Google Search, Android, Chrome, Gmail, and more. It also operates the world’s most-visited website, and the second most-visited one, too: YouTube. Founded in 1998, Google generated the single largest profit ($115B after all costs and taxes) of all companies globally, last year.

Also: Google lawsuit win, OpenAI buys two startups, LLMs deleting stuff in prod, and more

Zapier

Gemini

Career

The Pulse #145: More clarity on the tech jobs market

A deepdive into today’s tech jobs market, with exclusive data on tech jobs, AI engineering, Big Tech recruitment, the growing importance of location, and more

Netflix

Amazon

Stripe

State of the software engineering job market in 2025

The job market feels pretty weird right now; software engineers applying for roles are finding it harder to get responses – while hiring managers tell me it now takes longer to fill positions even though overall recruitment is, confusingly, slightly up.

Also: ChatGPT is potentially more efficient than 95% of in-house GenAI projects, Google cuts TLM positions, and more.

Coinbase

The Pulse #144: Rare look into AWS’s PR/FAQ process

The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Hit reply and send a message.

In-person algorithmic interviews are not disappearing from Big Tech and many top scaleups and startups, so it’s useful to know how to succeed at them. Advice and tactics from Mike Mroczka

Interviewing

Guest post

Mike Mroczka

In-person algorithmic interviews are not disappearing from Big Tech and many top scaleups and startups, so it’s useful to know how to succeed at them. Advice and tactics from Mike Mroczka 

How experienced engineers get unstuck in coding interviews

In-person coding interviews are returning to Big Tech and some startups in 2025 now that LLMs are too good at solving coding challenges, and a plethora of tools offer invisible AI “overlays” which help candidates to cheat during remote interviews. As a result, remote coding interviews today serve up more noise and less signal than ever. In response to AI “helper” tools for remote interviews, many employers are returning to the in-person interview format – while others accept AI tools and adapt their processes like

Also: Microsoft’s US compensation bands leaked, Tailwind CSS team gets burnt using Claude Code, Meta and OpenAI in talent & comp war, and more