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Gergely Orosz

Gergely Orosz

@gergely-orosz · 86 positions · On ppll ↗

Writes The Pragmatic Engineer, the software-engineering newsletter, and wrote The Software Engineer's Guidebook. Formerly an engineering manager at Uber, and at Microsoft/Skype and Skyscanner before that.

Gergely Orosz did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

5 of Gergely Orosz's claims fit 5 mental models. Most often: Feedback loops, Incentives, Less, but better.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Feedback loops

Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.

Used by 62 others

Some engineering teams celebrating velocity gains are flying blind to product quality degradations that power users immediately notice but cannot easily report.

  1. Gergely Orosz Writes The Pragmatic Engineer All of these are things that power users IMMEDIATELY notice and get annoyed. But there's no good way to report them, and the eng teams clearly are flying blind, patting themselves on the back how everything is up velocity-wise... but product quality got degraded! And they don't even know @GergelyOrosz on Xx.com · 11 Sept 2026
    All of these are things that power users IMMEDIATELY notice and get annoyed. But there's no good way to report them, and the eng teams clearly are flying blind, patting themselves on the back how everything is up velocity-wise... but product quality got degraded! And they don't even know

Incentives

Look at what people are rewarded for; it explains more behaviour than what they say, your own included.

Used by 85 others

One reason startups in the 2010s adopted and blogged about new technologies was to hire strong developers more easily, especially those barred from new tech at their current company.

  1. Gergely Orosz Writes The Pragmatic Engineer Unironically one reason startups in the 2010s would start using "hip" technologies + blog about them (eg Clijure, Go, React etc when these were 'new' and still rare) was to hire much easier, especially solid devs who were not allowed to introduce new tech at their current co!! @GergelyOrosz on Xx.com · 2 Oct 2026
    Unironically one reason startups in the 2010s would start using "hip" technologies + blog about them (eg Clijure, Go, React etc when these were 'new' and still rare) was to hire much easier, especially solid devs who were not allowed to introduce new tech at their current co!!

Less, but better

Find the essence and cut the rest; simplicity is hard work, not the absence of effort.

Used by 59 others

Writing is thinking, so an LLM inflating a one-sentence observation into three paragraphs destroys the thing that made it worth reading.

  1. Gergely Orosz Writes The Pragmatic Engineer Writing is thinking, and we are interested in your own thoughts and observations, not a sharp, one-sentence observation turned into three paragraphs of blob text by an LLM. How software engineering is changing: an essay challengeblog.pragmaticengineer.com · 1 Sept 2026
    Writing is thinking, and we are interested in your own thoughts and observations, not a sharp, one-sentence observation turned into three paragraphs of blob text by an LLM.

Leverage

Tools, code, capital and debt multiply what one person can do, in both directions.

Used by 29 others

Probabilistic thinking

Think in odds, not certainties, and bet heavily only when the odds are clearly yours.

Used by 26 others