The Pragmatic Engineer cover art

The Pragmatic Engineer

The Pragmatic Engineer

By: Gergely Orosz
Listen for free

Software engineering at Big Tech and startups, from the inside. Deepdives with experienced engineers and tech professionals who share their hard-earned lessons, interesting stories and advice they have on building software. Especially relevant for software engineers and engineering leaders: useful for those working in tech.

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.comGergely Orosz Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Tech interviews with NeetCode

    Tech interviews with NeetCode
    Jun 24 2026

    Brought to You By:

    • Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages.

    • Sentry – application monitoring software considered “not bad” by millions of developers

    • Google Cloud Run – run your code and host LLMs directly on top of Google’s scalable infrastructure, without having to worry about managing infra.

    —

    Navdeep Singh – oftentimes better known as NeetCode – is the creator of NeetCode.io, one of the most popular coding interview preparation platforms and YouTube channels for software engineers. Before building NeetCode full-time, he worked as a software engineer at Amazon and Google.

    In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Neet to discuss his path from Amazon and Google to building his own startup, why he left Amazon after just two months, what he learned at Google, and the decision to leave a stable engineering career to bet on himself. We also discuss what coding interview preparation teaches beyond passing interviews, the value of going deep on difficult problems, and why systems thinking and domain expertise remain essential engineering skills in the age of AI.

    Throughout the conversation, NeetCode makes the case that learning hard things is one of the single best investments an engineer can make, helping build the judgment and expertise that remain valuable no matter how the tools change.

    —

    Timestamps

    00:00 Intro

    02:57 Neet’s take on coding interviews

    06:41 Getting into tech

    08:56 Why Neet isn't a fan of the CAP theorem

    13:12 Quitting Amazon after two months

    18:22 Google vs Amazon

    22:26 The origins of NeetCode

    25:27 Leaving Google to go all in on NeetCode

    32:02 Why Neet doesn't fix every bug

    39:26 The value of coding interview prep

    42:57 Systems thinking and domain expertise

    47:28 Hiring at Big Tech

    52:15 Tech stack at Neetcode

    57:57 The NeetCode redesign contest

    1:01:46 The future of software engineers

    1:09:04 Hot takes: AGI, AI skill erosion, personality traits

    1:22:49 “Maybe some people should just give up”

    1:24:39 How to be a standout engineer

    1:27:55 Book recommendation

    —

    The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

    • Learnings from conducting ~1,000 interviews at Amazon

    • How experienced engineers get unstuck in coding interviews

    • The Reality of Tech Interviews in 2025

    • Tech hiring: is this an inflection point?

    • AI fakers exposed in tech dev recruitment: postmortem

    —

    Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.



    Get full access to The Pragmatic Engineer at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 29 mins
  • CI/CD with Robert Erez

    CI/CD with Robert Erez
    Jun 17 2026

    Brought to You By:

    • Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages.

    • WorkOS – everything you need to make your app enterprise ready.

    • turbopuffer – a vector and full-text search engine built on object storage. It’s fast, cheap, and extremely scalable.

    —

    Robert Erez is a principal engineer at Octopus Deploy, and a longtime expert in CI/CD, deployment systems, and software delivery. Rob and I were also once colleagues on the Skype web team, working on large-scale deployments and release processes.

    In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sit down with Rob to discuss how teams deploy software safely and efficiently at scale. We cover Kubernetes, GitOps, platform engineering, progressive delivery, feature flags, cloud development environments, and the growing role of AI in CI/CD workflows. We also get into the tradeoffs in different deployment approaches, why self-hosted software still matters for some organizations, and the recent evolution of software delivery practices.

    —

    Timestamps

    00:00 Intro

    02:09 Canary deployments at Skype

    05:01 Joining at Octopus Deploy

    06:15 Continuous deployment

    10:26 Why Kubernetes won

    15:51 Kubernetes on-prem

    18:50 How GitOps works

    25:00 The uses and limitations of GitOps

    31:04 The rise of platform teams

    35:51 How AI is changing CI/CD

    39:49 Progressive delivery explained

    47:31 Rollbacks and roll-forwards

    50:14 Feature flags

    54:32 How development environments are evolving

    57:40 Cloud development environments (CDEs)

    1:03:45 Self-hosting CI/CD

    1:09:25 Getting started with progressive delivery

    1:11:15 Book recommendations

    —

    The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

    • Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower

    • The past and future of modern backend practices

    • Microsoft is dogfooding AI dev tools’ future

    • How Kubernetes is built with Kat Cosgrove

    • How Linux is built with Greg KH

    —

    Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com.



    Get full access to The Pragmatic Engineer at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower

    Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower
    Jun 3 2026
    Brought to You By:• Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages.• Buildkite – CI software built to absorb whatever your coding agents throw at the build queue• Sentry – application monitoring software considered “not bad” by millions of developers—Kelsey Hightower went from a self-taught technician installing DSL modems to becoming one of Google’s elite Distinguished Engineers, whom the CEO of Microsoft personally tried to recruit. Hightower’s career achievements are rooted in hard work and self-directed learning, and today he’s one of the most influential voices in modern infrastructure, through his talks, open source work, and writing.In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, Kelsey and I cover his unconventional path into tech and the lessons he’s learned during three decades in the industry. We discuss his entrepreneurial years, building a reputation through open source, the rise of containers and Kubernetes, and his time at Google during one of the most consequential periods in cloud computing. He recounts how a job offer from a big tech giant led to the biggest raise of his career, what prompted him to slow down after years of career acceleration, and we also discuss his perspective on AI. Throughout, Kelsey keeps a simple idea front of mind: that technology is ultimately about people. Whether it’s infrastructure, leadership, careers, or AI, he argues that the goal is not to build technology for its own sake; it’s to solve meaningful human problems.—Timestamps00:00 Intro03:34 Kelsey’s first job at McDonald’s05:04 His non-traditional path into tech11:45 Landing his first tech job with an A+ certification15:33 His entrepreneurial years19:45 Joining Google as a data center technician27:48 Learning automation at a Rackspace spinoff33:26 Moving into financial services50:00 Building a reputation through open source53:55 From configuration management to containers1:08:20 The rise of Kubernetes1:25:05 Why he almost joined NASA instead of Google1:29:20 Defining DevRel at Google1:38:20 Demonstrating impact at Google1:41:20 Microsoft's offer1:55:20 Learning how to slow down2:06:39 Advising and investing2:15:03 A people-first view of GenAI2:24:27 Using AI with guardrails2:28:26 Matching AI to the task2:36:06 Staying relevant in the AI era—The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:• Career paths for software engineers at large tech companies• The past and future of modern backend practices• How Kubernetes is built• How Linux is built• The Staff Engineer’s Path: You’re a role model now (sorry!)—Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com. Get full access to The Pragmatic Engineer at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    2 hrs and 51 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet