YouSaid · the spoken record

Gergely Orosz

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2022-11-17
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2022-11-17
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  1. “A pragmatic engineer, I treat everything as anonymous, so you can tell me interesting stuff. I'm typically interested in the stuff that you might not read about in the traditional media, but the techies really care about. And finally, if you work at Google and you want to anonymously talk to me, just ping me because one of my next articles will be Google's engineering culture. I wrote one about Facebook, one about Amazon. I tried to talk with mostly software engineers to get a sense of how these companies work from a software engineer and engineer manager perspective. Awesome. I hope this comes out before that.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Can find me at pragmaticengineer.com. There is a bunch of stuff listed there from Twitter, LinkedIn, my talent collective, some of the companies that I invest in, et cetera. Everything's there. And you can also sign up to my newsletter. Listeners being useful to me. If you work in tech, consider signing up to my newsletter. I always tell people like we're a complimentary newsletter if you work in product or have interest in product, your newsletter. Is an awesome choice with software engineering engineering management? It kind of goes the other way. And it's not just people are telling me like when they're data scientists or even product folks, sometimes they get some value out of it. If, you know, I write this column called the scoop every Thursday, if you hear of any interesting scoop happening, especially relevant for techies, this might be some changes in the workplace. Like, you know, your company is just rolling out agile like Team at Twitter did. Feel free to ping me. I just short search for sending Scoop to.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I personally have learned over time to love writing. Like, I love being in the zone. So for me, it's not really work, but it's fun. And once you find that thing, whatever that might be, it just makes it easier. So fun talking about newsletter stuff. I don't have many people to talk about this life with. This was useful to people who are exploring this path, thinking about it. Creator Two final questions Find you online if they want to. Out or learn more How can list”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And more people will do videos. And you can take advantage of some of these shifts, which might be good or bad. So if you're going to be really well-known person on YouTube, you might get more people watching you, but we'll have a lot more competition. And the last thing is that for me, writing, especially with software engineers, it's really efficient because I can scan through it. I don't like YouTube videos, especially for learning about stuff, because I can't even scan through the whole thing. It just really time consuming. I think you decide if you want to do entertainment, which for these podcast listeners, I don't think that's kind of in the question of competing with the likes of Spotify and Netflix education, which is a little bit more dry, but it's really useful, or edutainment, which is entertaining education. And once you figure that out, either if it's education or entertainment, you can figure out what format might work both for the medium and for you. And at the end of the day, you need to enjoy it.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I'm pretty sure. And here's an interesting thought as well, just as foreclosure. I was talking about someone on why my newsletter is so successful. It's really successful. And I honestly don't know why. And this person told me something interesting. This is a person who had a really successful YouTube channel with about 200,000 subscribers, so more than my newsletter. And he said this. He's like, what I noticed is you start your blog in like 2015, 2016. And I started my YouTube channel like in 2019 or something like that. And instead on YouTube, there's so much quality. There's like super high grade productions. There's like everyone is doing YouTube and he said, you know what? I don't see. I don't see many blogs that are writing in-depth stuff regularly. I feel everyone went over to YouTube or TikTok. So there is the other angle of the medium. And I've been kind of saying that's not say, but it might be an advantage. These days, fewer people write because I think a lot of people find it hard.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Source graph. He actually went back in. But what I love about this, you know, it shows that you cannot guarantee having success, but you can do what he did, which is like, you know, start something to a cadence, see if it sticks. If not, either pivot or do something else. I feel the world is kind of about that as well. If you think about, you know, take a step back of what is successful newsletter, what is successful podcast? What is successful YouTube channel? And it's stuff that's kind of interesting. It's either entertaining or educational. But all of these things, you can't really kind of put a finger on. Like if you watch YouTube, Mr. Beast is someone who you probably came across. I actually like watching his videos and I use how good he does it, but it's not something you can have written in the book. So there is a sense of trying to understand what people care about. And a good way to understand is either experiment.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Some epic long. He used to work at Amazon and then at Google, and Google wrote this internal email about platforms, about how Amazon is great at platforms. Google is terrible. And he was really well known that Google, because he wrote stuff inside Google. So he's experienced, knows a lot of stuff. And they put Google and he started to do a podcast. It's on YouTube. You can check it out. It's called Stevie's podcast. And what he did is every week he recorded an episode and he talked about a bunch of his learnings, a lot of stuff. And he was pretty clear up front when he started the first one. He said, like, what I'm doing is I'm going to do this for six months and I'll see if it sticks, see if people care about it or if people watch it. Now, this guy had a lot of experience, really fun. I think it's really fun to listen to. And in the end, you know, it was, I think successful. It was like it got to a couple thousand or maybe even 10,000 subscribers, but it wasn't this rocket ship. And I think what he did, he just stopped at for six months. And he's now, he's actually started the head of engineering at.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Three, have a cadence and stick to it to some extent because you do need to keep repeating it. And then four, don't be afraid to try out new things. A good example of a person who did these is Steve Yeger. Steve Yeger is, have you heard of Steve?”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “One is have enough depth in the field, whatever field you do. So this might mean that I think, I don't want to say that, if you don't have experience, don't start from, but it's kind of true. So become an expert somewhere, somehow before you start, because you'll be a lot more credible. I think there's no shortage of reporters and journalists who don't know about stuff, but they can interview people. But that doesn't give anything extra. And I think people feel that. you know, I would say choose a field that you're going to be good at. And you can start on the side of doing this. Assuming you have something, you're someone who's experience in the industry or you have kind of insights, wisdom, observations to share, start doing so in whatever format. I do newsletters. There's actually YouTube. A lot of people are becoming personal.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “A title cut to be a software engineer, and then he hosts the TDD workshop, a test-driven development workshop, and no one showed up at Facebook. And Facebook did no testing, which went against all commercial wisdom. And he took that risk joining this company where he could have been like, you know, like people would have knelt down to him anywhere else. But he went to his company where he just wanted to learn. And he has his lifelong learner. He's right now writing a book. But what I think away from is if you want to be someone who people listen to, like, yes, do cool and interesting stuff. Push yourself to get into the places that do these interesting things. That's how when I went to Uber in 2016, it was one of the highest regarded places back in 2016 and 2017. It was the other way around. But back in 2016, people were turning out Facebook and Google offers to go at Uber, which we all thought would change the world. So yeah, you know, like you do need to get into those teams that are doing interesting stuff, prove that you can do that.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Say that, but you know, one thing that I'll double down on, that's a really good observation if you actually, if you're serious, like one day I will want to write a book or a newsletter. It's kind of the same thing or teach people about stuff. Look at the people that you look up to, that you actually trust your list. Maybe it's me or maybe it's you, but it's more likely people like Kent Beck, for example. He's the creator of TDD and he's risen a lot of books. He's one of my favorite kind of people. I think he's coming up like 50 or 60 if he listens to this sorry, if I don't want William to make something old. But what I love about Ken Beck is he's been in the middle of it. He has always worked kind of in the industry. And then he kind of wrote about it. But for example, he invented, I think he invented or he was a co-inventure of TDD or extreme program. Anyway, one of these methodologies and then he went to work at Facebook. He kind of took a”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Especially these days, like people would not pay nearly as much attention to me if I worked at small parts limited. So there is that part as well. So you need to kind of manage some of these things, figure out what you want to do for a long time. I pretty much thought that I just want to climb the corporate ladder and prove that I'm good enough at all these companies. I was just doing all those stuff on the side. It's interesting how it's now flipped. I'm now doing these things. This is my main thing, which used to be my side project. And I guess one last advice is do some side projects. All of this starts as a side project. Like at work, no one's really going to appreciate that you're doing a newsletter or this or that. You know, try stuff on the side, assuming that you have time. Or if you don't have time, try to make time. Because I feel a lot of what we're doing is pretty entrepreneurial and the only way you're going to get these muscles if you start some small things.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “A small country from a really good university, which no one knows about. But I didn't grow up in, let's say, Silicon Valley. So I actually kind of made a subconscious point to try to work my way up. And after I got to, let's say, J.P. Morgan in London, I was pretty picky at where I would go next. So that's why when Skype came along, I was like, is this great? Like everyone knows Skype, I love Skype. And it was the same thing with Uber. So there's”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Thousand subscribers, that's a goal where you're not in charge. A good goal is what you can do. So a good goal, for example, is I want to learn this new language in the next year, which I'm going to spend time on work. Or I want to leave work at 5 p.m. on Fridays to be home with family. So set those goals that you can control. And this is how actually my block started initially. My goal was like, I want to write like once a month. And I did that for a while. And I was proud about that. Whenever I learned something, I actually want to share it every now and then. So I would say set those goals. And the rest will come probably. Again, like don't get me wrong. Like I'm not trying to talk people out of doing it, but for me, a lot of this was luck. And the other thing that I would suggest is be curious and look at your professional career as well. One thing that definitely helped me is getting pedigree. This was somewhat conscious. I come from, you know,”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It would be before I was at reverse. I was maybe at Skyscanner or maybe at Skype, but I was even blogging before. So I was hoping conferences before. So my advice really would be is like, if you're thinking you have a newsletter or something similar, start teaching and sharing what you know and what you're observing. This could be a newsletter. This could be a YouTube video. This could be going to meetup. I actually 10 years ago, I went to a lot of meetups where I presented all sorts of I met a lot of cool people. I would say, you know, share your knowledge one way or the other. And as you're doing it, you're going to learn a lot more. So what I find, this is true when I was a manager, people, you know, we have this set goals. And I told people there's like two sides of goals you can set. One is goal. People set this goal. I want to be promoted the next thing or I want to lead this big project. And those are bad goals because it's not in your control. So setting similar, setting a goal that I want to have a successful newsletter with like, I don't know, 20.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “If you're lucky, or if you're right about stuff, you might start to attract people who think similarly. So, you know, step one is get started. Step two is keep it up. And my suggestion is step two, do it for yourself. Like the weird thing is until I started my newsletter, I never thought I would turn this ever into business. But it always felt rewarding. So I never, like if you're starting out writing a newsletter to do what I'm doing one day, you know, like it might work out. Interesting enough. I never even thought that this was an opportunity.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Like, I do want to get an email every week instead of the things that were every now and then. So there was years of work, and I wish I could tell you how to build a successful newsletter. But the best advice I have is still what Jeff Appwood does, except I have less conviction. But if you start writing and you do it regularly, you know, two things will happen. First of all, you're going to write for yourself and you keep improving, you'll be a better writer. That's for sure.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Wrote about my work, like in terms of the things that I could write about, like not about the details that we did, but some of the learnings that I did, for example, distributed systems. And more and more of these posts just started to just pop up on Hackers. People would either submit it or sometimes when I submitted it, it would just do well. And I was thinking just so people, I start to get this validation, people care about what I write. And to the question of the success of the newsletter, by the time I launch a newsletter, I had a lot of posts that a lot of software engineers read. And there was a very famous post about performance management, like how to do performance reviews. I wrote one about the trimodal nature of software-induced salaries where I observed that there's kind of three different tiers that are like there's big tech and there's like local companies. And I think what happened is when I announced that I'm going to write this newsletter, I also put it on the blog. A lot of people realized that they, oh, I've been reading this pragmatic engineer. I didn't know who is behind it, but I like it. Let me sign up.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “My view that if there's a comment and a code, that means that comment should be deleted and you should just refactor the whole thing. And it exploded in hacker news of people called me an idiot. Some people called me absolute wisdom. And it was these two crowds battling it out. And I was like, wow, I actually made software engineers in Silicon Valley argue about my stuff. Like I saw some of the karma people, some really high karma people were really, you know, going pro. So that's when I thought it just like by writings some people might read it. It's not a guaranteed. And I started to write on that blog like once every few months depending on kind of my mood, but I never stopped doing it. And I partially did it. I always hoped that it would get on this site called hacker news. But by the way, for a while, I didn't even know you could submit it. So I never submitted my own things. But the other thing was I just kind of liked it. And I kind of had this habit. And over years, like I had this blog from 2015, for six years, I was writing a blog. And in the last year, when I worked at Uber, on the side, I kind of”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “A huge traffic spike and it crashed my shared hosting at the time. And it came from a site called HackRews that I never heard about. And people were discussing my posts and they were adding like a lot of things. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. People care about what I wrote like six months ago. What was that post, by the way? It was called A Comment is an invitation for refactory. I wrote my”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “And he wrote a post which really stuck with me for years. He said, How to be famous on the internet? He said, like, there's three simple steps. There's one, write a blog post. Two, do this like three times a week. Three, do it for two years. And I guarantee if you do this, you're going to be famous. And I always saw this kind of ironic. But the more I read it, the more I thought he actually means something with it. And when I started this blog, The Pragmatic Engineer, I said, I'm kind of tired of my old blog being all over the place and there's no focus and no one really cares about it. I'm going to do what Jeff Aff said. I'm going to publish, okay, it's not going to be twice a week, but like for every two weeks, I'm going to publish an article and I'll do it for a year. So I started to do this. I published six blog posts about software engineering, kind of, you know, going into topics that I carried research and all that. And then I gave up. I'm saying this because I kind of gave up and I left it for a few months. But then something interesting happened.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I was just writing for myself, by the way, but I didn't like how I was just all over the place. And I said, you know what? I'm going to start a blog. It'll be about software engineering, and I'll call the Pragmatic Engineer. I vaulted the domain and I read this blog post from Jeff Atwood, who's the founder of Sack Overflow. And back in 2010 or 2000, I think in 2007, when I was still in college, he had the most popular blog on the internet for software engineers. It was called Coding Horror and all the software engineers I knew read it like and were drinking it. It was like next level wisdom every single week, like twice reading that a week. Yeah, you read it as well.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Well, I mean, I'll tell the story that is kind of true and people will think it's amazing and outside of the real deal behind it. I mean, I analyzed fine newsletter. I told people I'm going to go full time on all this. I had maybe 10,000 Twitter followers and I don't know, like maybe 1,000 on LinkedIn or something like that. And people started signing up the next day. I had 100 subscribers in the first day before I publish anything. And within six weeks, when I published my six newsletter, I had a thousand paces subscribers. And this sounds like a fairy tale. And if you do this, I guarantee you're not going to get the same results. In fact, you'll probably see way smaller numbers. What I didn't tell is that there was at least six years of kind of accidental work behind this. I started blog six years before. Actually, I've always been blogging since I graduated. I had this like personal blog where I just published all sorts of random things about software engineering. But like it was really like sometimes it was about an app that I published. Sometimes it was a problem that I came across, it was all over the place. And I kind of got fed up with this. The blog wasn't going anywhere.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “This book because it seems there's an interest in it. And I kind of iterated, I turn it into a book that was free for two months, but I got sponsorship. The point was I was able to double down on this pull. And same thing with the newsletter. So we're going to talk about how I got to first few thousand subscribers. But the point was I was able to double down on something that I felt like this is super interesting. I never expected. I never expected that people would care about building a large mobile app more than a few hundred people. Turns out they do. Thousands do.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “One of the biggest best things about doing what we do when you're in charge of your time is you can double down on polls. So when I could Uber, like I said, my plan was I'll write this book for six months. Two months in, I just put a draft about a really long blog post about mobile engineering and I got like a lot of messages, like a lot. I usually get like used to get like three or four messages on Twitter per day. I got 20 in an hour, people saying, can I read the draft? And I was like, that's interesting. I just felt this pull of like this huge interest of people caring about this. It was this really long blog post about how mobile engineering at scale. And someone suggested on a private and said, you could probably turn this in the ebook. And I was like, oh, that's a good idea because it's a really long blog post. So I said, it's going to be an ebook and it'll be pay what you want. And then people start to buy it. And I was like, that's interesting. So I didn't have much else to do. So I was able to double down and said, like, you know what? For the next two months, I'm going to write.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Right now it is, but where I see it going is I'll keep building the business. I'll keep playing to my strength, which is I love talking with people. I love writing on stuff. I love software engineering. So this is a great format. But over time, it might shift. So I'm kind of keeping my options open. And what I've learned from this journey is You need to create time to be able for that spark to come. So, one of my goals for the next few years is to not spend 50 hours a week on a newsletter, which I'm doing right now, but spend 20. And then maybe take a few weeks off and have that spark come. Because the reality is this news that only came because I gave myself six months of unpaid. I'm not looking for work. I didn't answer any LinkedIn emails. And it kind of just, the idea came and the inspiration came and the motivation came.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I stopped they've long term plans because three years ago you would have asked me what I wanted to do, and I was like, I want to be, I don't know, like a manager of managers. And then I became one. And then I would have asked, what is my dream? I would have been like, well, it's a stretch, but maybe I want to be a site lead. And I didn't become one per se. But I never thought of writing a newsletter or now writing a successful newsletter. So I'm kind of going with the flow. I'm seeing this less, by the way, as a newsletter or creator or creator economy, as people like to see it. I see this as a business and I'm trying to put on that business hat. Like I'm building a one-person business. I want to make it sustainable. I want to make it successful. And I find that this thinking really helps me kind of detach as well. I can actually enjoy my weekends as opposed to like, you know, thinking, oh, I need to write this. I need to write that. So I also want to make it work for me. And I'm not going to marry to the idea of like, hey, it needs to be like it always needs to be a newsletter, et cetera.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I don't mind, but it gets to you, you know, like we should be conscious about burnout as a whole. So you need to solve for that. And I'm starting to solve for that as well.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “And it caused a bit of friction with, let's say, my family. And now I'm solving it in a different way. So I am trying to take more time off now and I'm doing it by working ahead with some of the less time sensitive things, but it is tough. So the downside we haven't mentioned, but I'm just going to call it out is holiday. Like the great thing I never felt, well, I felt a little guilty sometimes taking holiday, but when I went a holiday, I took it off. When I had my son born at Uber, they gave me a four-month paid holiday. I took the whole four months. I just locked off. It was great. It wasn't my company. I was still getting stock. You know, the stock price was independent of mostly what I was doing, just being honest. And that was really, really good. So this might be true, by the way, if you start any business, especially while it's just yourself. It's hard to turn off. And I think most people don't mind.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, but a lot that were very early. So I think the whole concept of pain user is new. So I think we're going to do a lot of experimentation. And also, a lot of it, I think you need to figure out what your needs are. So in the first year, I did not take a holiday, like in terms of, or even when I did, I was writing.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “That anymore, or you keep doing this, and then until either stop, and then the revenue stops, or you might be able to sell it, but it really undervalue.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, and it's a really good example because for a lot of companies, and I'm assuming a lot of listeners are working in tech, typical thing is you work hard, you build equity at a company, or you build the value of the company, and then you can sell that company. And then you could have an exit and you could do whatever for what we're doing. It's really tied to us. So however much or little my newsletter will make, it'll have a value, let's say four or five times the annual revenue as a business, but you cannot really sell it like that and you cannot really walk away. So that's that makes it unique. It makes it harder to compete with, which is cool, but it does not create that much of an exit path unless you start to build a company around it, build an organization that can run without you, for example. This is what a lot of book publishing companies. So basically either you build a publishing company where you start to hire people who start to write some of the articles initially and then later more of them. But it's not 1%.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “There's a lot of external validation. So, like, whenever looking at your subscriber numbers, which brings a bunch of stress that I didn't expect. And I'm a successful newsletter. I think my success is quite rare. There will be one or two or like a handful of people who have similar success, but I'm kind of an outlier. So that's another thing that I think is just good putting out there. And the downside is you don't really know how well you're doing. There's external goals are kind of meaningless. Internal goals. Either you smash them or you don't reach them. So there's this constant sense of where am I? How am I? And how do I judge myself? Did I make a mistake for leaving my job? I actually ask myself for like several months actually after I started or did I make a good one. And I think for a lot of these kind of questions and doubts, having past professional experience working at a company is really, really useful to kind of set yourself grounded.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Because it's a little bit of attention economy as well. People are not going to subscribe or pay for 10 different newsletters on the same topic. So that makes it a little bit more, it's not the same as when you're”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “I would start my day, let's say, at 9 or at 8 30, and I finish it up at like 6 or 5 30. It depends. I would probably have on an average day, I would have like, you know, like good eight meetings. I would like finish like two or three documents. I would send over this, send over that. Like I actually had like looking at my output, like, you know, now I write a lot, but I wrote a lot. I think I wrote almost as much in terms of emails, chat messages, et cetera. The downside is I felt very guilty and a little bit frustrated for myself for feeling that I'm slacking off. That's one. Any other thing, it is surprisingly stressful. So when you start off, it's kind of lonely. Not many people do this. What we do, you know, that's also one of the reasons that we connected because it's a very small community. And even within the community, I feel the news that our community is different. You're all running your own business and there is some level of competition. So you might not.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Well, one is obviously lonely. So I do mess. I had a really good team at a group of team, it was the people. I liked, like, you know, everyone has different views on remote work. I actually didn't enjoy remote work as much because I just liked hanging out with people. I guess I'm not kind of more outgoing type. And I really like, you know, walking up to the coffee station and having a chat with people or at lunch sitting next to someone and talking about it obviously is sometimes annoying because I wanted to get work done. But for the most part, I miss it more than I have. So I miss not having that. I kind of compensate for that by working a shared workspace, like a shared office, which is a techie workspace. So everyone needs to work in tech. So I actually get to say hi to people and have a little small talk. The structure is weird because I felt really guilty for the first few months because I felt that at Uber, I was more productive because I had to be. Like I was doing so many things. Like in a day, you know, I would.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “It's kind of the manager time to make her time. So that's the best part. And I also like how much in charge I am. So initially, it kind of freaked me out in the sense that how much creative freedom I have. I can write about whatever. I can change the format. I can do this. I can do that. It can be a little bit overwhelming because I also kind of know that people are going to be reading this and what are they going to think about it. But I do like that it's very entrepreneurial. So I get to experiment a lot as well, which reminds me a little bit of my old job because as Uber, we also experimented a lot, obviously more in a corporate setting. But that, I guess, that's just kind of gotten extended. So, you know, these are the two favorite things is the open calendar or very few meetings and experimenting, trying out stuff and being able to decide what I want to try out.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I really like that it forces me to have my calendar empty because for so many years my calendar was this giant mess of meetings on top of meetings and I would barely have any time to actually have focused time now I actually have the opposite I usually have a lot of focus time and I had very very few meetings or or things and even now like I kind of get like a little bit like cagey like oh if I have this one meeting in the holiday so I like how it's kind of flipping”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Yeah, and the simple thing started 20 minute timer, and you say for 20 minutes, I need to focus on this thing, on your iPhone or somewhere else. It's just 20 minutes. But during that time, you cannot do anything else. And just try it. It works for me. Like a charm, one side, one side decides to actually do it.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Really well for a certain amount of time. I don't know why maybe I just get bored easily or something that I just need to rotate. But for example, when I went back to Center, I have no affiliation, by the way. So I'm just telling this, but I really liked how they keep evolving as well to do like cooler things. I have a community element where you're kind of competing with people on uninterrupted time and closing stuff. So that to me is like I'll do one last thing, one last thing I'll center again. I have no physician. What I really liked about centered is it allows you to turn on your video camera. And I felt really kind of forced to do work because I knew that people in the other side of the world might be watching me even if it was not true.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Yeah, so there is definitely going to be extensions that you can use. I mean, but if, well, on this podcast, we'll have a variety of people. If you're a software engineer, it's pretty simple because even if you're not, you can look it up in the whole spot. When you override your whole style, you can actually block things, what you do. And I did this because I wrote a script where I need to run the script and I need to run the script again to unblock it. And it's kind of cool because I put it together for myself. So I usually find that the tools that other people use, maybe this is just me or maybe the software engineers. I don't like them because I feel they're either too opinionated or they're not opinionated enough. So I don't know if this is just the fact that I used to like to build my own tools and my own scripts because I can. So I found that my scripts work the best, best for me. But as you said, there's a bunch of really good tools. So my advice to people would be look up all of these is try them out. You all know until you try them. And again, I had stuff that worked.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “It's just a very simple Python script that I wrote for myself. And then I in the first few minutes, I'm kind of grumbling on like, I wish I could do this. I wish I could just look at Twitter to research. But about five minutes in, there's a switch when I'm like, I'm now actually like heads down on doing it. And this has been the thing that's consistently worked. The interesting thing is that I feel guilty a lot of times that I'm not working as far as I could. And I do wonder if it's guilt or if it's my mind or body telling me that they just want a break or it wants to do something else. I still haven't figured it out, but I'm on the way there.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “So, Trich I sometimes do when I'm just like, I just don't feel like doing anything. As I said, a timer of 20 minutes. And then I say, all right, no distraction. I have a script where I just kill. I use a maxim, the host file, I just kill all LinkedIn.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Yeah, investor and Yeah, and I found it helpful, the idea of focus time and it turned on. But it might just be me, but after a while, I kind of like get used to these things and I find it not as efficient. I found the polar method for a few months useful when you kind of have the 25 minute intervals. And the one thing that has never failed me, but I just find it hard to do is I find it hard to start. I have this kind of benefit that I have all this time. Sorry, there's two things that always work. One is it's almost time for me to go home. And then I'm like super focused. So like when I have this external thing and I know that there's no way I can, I need to focus and, you know, basically the deadline. So if you have deadlines, that works, the other thing is if I start to get ice fund three or four minutes doing something focused and I kind of get the flow of it.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “So, a problem that I have, and this might be unique to newsletters. I'm not sure, I use Twitter for a lot of research. And unfortunately, what that means is that when I start to write something, it can really pull my attention because I have Twitter open and then I get a message from someone. It's a little bit like Slack, but I'd argue that it can be worse because also Twitter for me is also something that is very useful in generating people raising awareness. So kind of whenever I tweet, it kind of helps my business. So that's a good thing, right? But it also, it justifies for me spending more time on, for example, Twitter than I want to. So I find that I come up with a method and it works for like a few months and then I need to change it because my brain just learns to work around it. So I'll tell you a few things that I did and I'll tell you where I'm at right now. But I use, for example, apps.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Certain things, but put in constraints for the things that you need to do, and then you're going to do that without that. When you're on your own, when you're an entrepreneur, I was a great, like I think I was a really diligent employee. Like I always tried to get my work done, show up on time. I tried to meet all expectations. But what I noticed is when I start to work for myself, it just went out the window. Like almost 15 years of being this star employee who really wants to do well, I find myself upset of myself for not, you know, just kind of wasting my day. But I fixed it. If I telling people you're going to get this every week and now I have to do it, I just have no choice.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “So he wrote the book for magazine. He was apparently just low on money and he started to write for this magazine who told them like, all right, we need you to write something that our readers will want, but we want so that they will buy the magazine. And I think he was getting a cut of some sales or something. So he needs to write in a way that was interesting and then cut it off in a way that people would come back and buy the next one. And he wrote a whole book and that book, when I read it, it was really long. I was like, hold on, if he could do this, then this is kind of a good strategy. Like he was writing it because he just needed the money. Like that's all. And then he wrote a really good book on the way. So one big learning for me from newsletters and I would argue that you can use this not just for newsletters, but any business that you do. If you're going to go out and start a new business, you'll probably have some ideas. And it's not just going to be newsletters. It's going to be a fun, bunch of other things. If you put in ways that you have to.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “In my mind, when I started a newsletter a year ago, it's crossroads. Like, I want to write this book, which I think will be a great book, the software engineer's guidebook. I feel it'll be my kind of, you know, summary of my last 10 years of what I have to share as advice. But I was worried that it's just a big project that just going to take months and I'll lose motivation midway. And I partially I went down the newsletter route because I liked how every week I would have to write something. And I had the sneaky idea of, hey, what if I wrote this book where I kind of write some posts that will be part of the book? And then the book will just kind of come together partially. And I've kind of been doing that. I haven't been telling people, but some of the posts are going to be, not exactly, but they're the ideas. I have this chapter and I have this list, like have I written about this topic in the newsletter. And you know where I got this idea from? There's the book Three Musketeers from Alexander Dumak.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I have these deadlines. And as you said, I also know that thousands of people are paying me. I have like they have expectations of me. And so this is what it's done. Like if you want to write a book, the easiest way is go to a publisher, inside a contract, not because of the money. In software engineering, you're not going to get much like $5,000 or something like that. That's what I was offered initially. But it's the pressure. Like you absolutely should go to a publisher or, you know, like have some external to someone to hold you accountable and then you'll get it done. And I'll let you in another kind of secret or not so secret.”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “And you're in a job and you're thinking, oh, Gary's job is so amazing. One thing that I liked, and I really miss about working at Uber, is I actually had a schedule. This is weird. I hated it back then. But I needed to do these things. And whenever you have a pressure, you do it. And this works with my news that I put in a second post user, I think, to have a bit more pressure because the second part of Wednesday, I'm already starting to write my Thursday newsletter. On Thursday, I write that Thursday newsletter. And on Friday, I'm now writing the next newsletter for Tuesday. So almost every day, except for Wednesday, I have a strong pressure to write, which when people ask like. I ruled like four or five books worth of content just last year. It's because”

    2022-11-17 · Lenny's Podcast · Leaving big tech to build the #1 technology newsletter | Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source