Rephonic
Artwork for The Pragmatic Engineer

The Pragmatic Engineer

Gergely Orosz
Software Engineering
Developer Productivity
AI Tools
Google
Engineering Culture
AI Engineering
Github
Rust
Copilot
AI Impact
Software Development
Amazon
Microsoft
Sourcegraph
Thronefall
Vibe Coding
Non-Deterministic Systems
Machine Learning
Agile Manifesto
Openai

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.com

PublishesWeeklyEpisodes63Founded2 years ago
Number of ListenersCategories
NewsTech NewsTechnology

Listen to this Podcast

Artwork for The Pragmatic Engineer

Latest Episodes

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 fu... more

YouTube

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

• ⁠Cra... more

YouTube

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 fu... more

YouTube

Brought to You By:

• Statsig — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more.

• Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review

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

YouTube

Key Facts

Accepts Guests
Accepts Sponsors
Contact Information
Podcast Host
Number of Listeners
Find out how many people listen to this podcast per episode and each month.

Similar Podcasts

People also subscribe to these shows.

Recent Guests

Alice Ryhl
Software engineer on Google's Android Rust team; core maintainer of Tokio; Rust language team advisor
Google
Episode: Why Rust is different, with Alice Ryhl
Anders Hejlsberg
Creator of Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript
Microsoft (formerly) / Borland (historical)
Episode: TypeScript, C# and Turbo Pascal with Anders Hejlsberg
Mario Zechner
Creator of Pi, self-modifying coding agent
Pi project / Open-source community
Episode: Building Pi, and what makes self-modifying software so fascinating
Armin Ronacher
Creator of Flask, early adopter and contributor to Pi
Pi project / Open-source community
Episode: Building Pi, and what makes self-modifying software so fascinating
Martin Kleppmann
Author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Author/Researcher
Episode: Designing Data-intensive Applications with Martin Kleppmann
David Heinemeier Hansson
Creator of Ruby on Rails, Omarchy, co-founder of 37signals
37signals / Omarchy / Ruby on Rails
Episode: DHH’s new way of writing code
Thuan Pham
Former CTO of Uber, later CTO roles and board positions including Faire and Nubank
Uber (former CTO)
Episode: Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber’s first CTO)
Jean Lee
Early engineer at WhatsApp; later engineering leadership; spoke about building WhatsApp's multi-platform stack and acquisition by Facebook
WhatsApp / Facebook
Episode: Building WhatsApp with Jean Lee
Steve Yegge
Veteran software engineer known for industry commentary and AI/compilers focus
Independent/Gas Town creator
Episode: From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yegge

Hosts

Gergely Orosz
Lead host and co-publisher with a long-running role discussing engineering culture, architecture, and practical lessons from scale.
Gerge
Alias used across episodes for the same host persona with lean engineering culture and practical insights.

Reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars from 934 ratings
  • My daily walking companion

    Fantastic show! Great guest list and thoughtful questions

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    Vish Hegde
    Irelanda month ago
  • The BEST for SWEs

    I enjoy this podcast so much! Gergely is such a good podcaster and has had amazing guests on his podcast.

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    boogutron
    United States3 months ago
  • All-timer incoming

    Started good, it’s getting great. Incredible guests, host gets out of their way, sets them up with fantastic questions. Required listening.

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    bananafish86
    Germany4 months ago
  • Inspiring and Practical for Software Engineers

    The Pragmatic Engineer podcast is one of my favorite resources for growing as a programmer. It consistently introduces me to interesting people to follow, newsletters to subscribe to, and books worth reading. The conversations are thoughtful, inspiring, and genuinely interesting, and I always come away with new ideas and perspectives I can apply to my own career. Highly recommended for anyone serious about software engineering.

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    Jordy1984
    United States5 months ago
  • Best tech podcast? Try best overall podcast.

    This show is exactly the reason I listen to podcasts. Smart people having deep discussions with domain expertise. Always a great podcast, the new episode on Google’s Engineering culture is one of the best deep dive podcasts I’ve listened to in a minute.

    Apple Podcasts
    5
    Loredon
    United States7 months ago

Listeners Say

Key themes from listener reviews, highlighting what works and what could be improved about the show.

Audience values candid, experience-based lessons over theoretical discussions
The balance of hands-on technical detail and big-picture strategy is frequently highlighted
Guests consistently praised for depth and relevance to real-world engineering
Listeners appreciate actionable insights that apply to both startups and larger tech orgs
High-quality guests and thoughtful interviewing are common strengths cited by listeners

Chart Rankings

How this podcast ranks in the Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube charts.

Talking Points

Recent interactions between the hosts and their guests.

Why Rust is different, with Alice Ryhl
Q: Why is Rust getting so popular?
The guest discusses Rust's lack of a garbage collector, memory safety, explicit error handling with the Result type and the ? operator, and strong compile-time guarantees as core advantages over languages with runtime or weaker safety guarantees.
Why Rust is different, with Alice Ryhl
Q: How did you get into software engineering?
Alice explains her path from Minecraft modding to formal software training, then transitioning into industry and moving to Google, highlighting persistence and early exposure to programming as key drivers.
DHH’s new way of writing code
Q: What does it mean to “shift to Agent First” in your teams?
Agent First means starting projects with agents handling much of the heavy lifting, then integrating human oversight to ensure quality and coherence with the product's design and architecture. It changes team composition, reduces reliance on large, slow-moving teams, and elevates the importance of architectural judgment and design-led thinking.
DHH’s new way of writing code
Q: How is AI changing how you work and your craft?
AI has shifted from being a tool for autocomplete to an enabler of agent-based workflows. It accelerates coding and design, but still requires human judgment, taste, and craft. The output now needs to meet a high bar, and senior developers play a crucial role in validating and steering the AI toward reliable, elegant results.
The third golden age of software engineering – thanks to AI, with Grady Booch
Q: What is the current state and future outlook of software engineering in light of AI advancements?
Grady Booch argues that while AI has the potential to automate certain coding tasks, the fundamental skills of software engineering, which involve balancing technical, economic, and ethical considerations, will remain essential and relevant as the industry evolves.

Audience Metrics

Listeners, social reach, demographics and more for this podcast.

Listeners per Episode
Gender Skew
Location
Interests
Professions
Age Range
Household Income
Social Media Reach

Frequently Asked Questions About The Pragmatic Engineer

What is The Pragmatic Engineer about and what kind of topics does it cover?

This show focuses on deep-dive discussions with experienced software engineers, engineering leaders, and technologists from big tech and startup environments. Recent episodes center on lean, high-ownership engineering cultures, AI-assisted development, tooling and security for developers, and the evolving nature of software engineering—from language design to large-scale systems and cloud infrastructure. A standout pattern is candid storytelling about growth, culture, and the practical trade-offs of shipping reliable software in fast-moving organizations. The format often features first-person experiences, pragmatic lessons, and thoughtful takes on how AI and new tooling reshape engineering work. Potential listeners—engineers, tech leads, a... more

Where can I find podcast stats for The Pragmatic Engineer?

Rephonic provides a wide range of podcast stats for The Pragmatic Engineer. We scanned the web and collated all of the information that we could find in our comprehensive podcast database. See how many people listen to The Pragmatic Engineer and access YouTube viewership numbers, download stats, audience demographics, chart rankings, ratings, reviews and more.

How many listeners does The Pragmatic Engineer get?

Rephonic provides a full set of podcast information for three million podcasts, including the number of listeners. View further listenership figures for The Pragmatic Engineer, including podcast download numbers and subscriber numbers, so you can make better decisions about which podcasts to sponsor or be a guest on. You will need to upgrade your account to access this premium data.

What are the audience demographics for The Pragmatic Engineer?

Rephonic provides comprehensive predictive audience data for The Pragmatic Engineer, including gender skew, age, country, political leaning, income, professions, education level, and interests. You can access these listener demographics by upgrading your account.

How many subscribers and views does The Pragmatic Engineer have?

To see how many followers or subscribers The Pragmatic Engineer has on Spotify and other platforms such as Castbox and Podcast Addict, simply upgrade your account. You'll also find viewership figures for their YouTube channel if they have one.

Which podcasts are similar to The Pragmatic Engineer?

These podcasts share a similar audience with The Pragmatic Engineer:

1. Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers
2. The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
3. Software Engineering Daily
4. The Peterman Pod
5. Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

How many episodes of The Pragmatic Engineer are there?

The Pragmatic Engineer launched 2 years ago and published 63 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.

How do I contact The Pragmatic Engineer?

Our systems regularly scour the web to find email addresses and social media links for this podcast. We scanned the web and collated all of the contact information that we could find in our podcast database. But in the unlikely event that you can't find what you're looking for, our concierge service lets you request our research team to source better contacts for you.

Where can I see ratings and reviews for The Pragmatic Engineer?

Rephonic pulls ratings and reviews for The Pragmatic Engineer from multiple sources, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, and Podcast Addict.

View all the reviews in one place instead of visiting each platform individually and use this information to decide if a show is worth pitching or not.

How do I access podcast episode transcripts for The Pragmatic Engineer?

Rephonic provides full transcripts for episodes of The Pragmatic Engineer. Search within each transcript for your keywords, whether they be topics, brands or people, and figure out if it's worth pitching as a guest or sponsor. You can even set-up alerts to get notified when your keywords are mentioned.

What guests have appeared on The Pragmatic Engineer?

Recent guests on The Pragmatic Engineer include:

1. Alice Ryhl
2. Anders Hejlsberg
3. Mario Zechner
4. Armin Ronacher
5. Martin Kleppmann
6. David Heinemeier Hansson
7. Thuan Pham
8. Jean Lee

To view more recent guests and their details, simply upgrade your Rephonic account. You'll also get access to a typical guest profile to help you decide if the show is worth pitching.

Find and pitch the right podcasts

We help savvy brands, marketers and PR professionals to find the right podcasts for any topic or niche. Get the data and contacts you need to pitch podcasts at scale and turn listeners into customers.
Try it free for 7 days