[HN Gopher] How some good corporate engineering blogs are writte...
___________________________________________________________________
How some good corporate engineering blogs are written (2020)
Author : montyanderson
Score : 193 points
Date : 2024-05-30 14:56 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (danluu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danluu.com)
| andsoitis wrote:
| Good process won't guarantee good content. Bad process won't
| prevent great content.
|
| What's more important in my view is a compelling story to tell in
| a way that is not corporate speak, but instead something that
| enlightens or surprises the audience.
| p0seidon wrote:
| The culture to think about blog entries in general is probably
| encouraged with a good and lean process. Some companies do not
| value such contribution.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| Semi related: anyone know of a good link aggregator of mostly
| software development content? Preferably good quality stuff, not
| blogspam/medium.com crap. HN isn't really scratching my itch
| anymore.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| searx
| eru wrote:
| I think there's a feature to visit HN in the past, ie to see at
| least that front page as of a specific date. So you can check
| out HN 2009 or so?
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Lobsters?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| That looks interesting! Any tips on getting an invite?
| mindcrime wrote:
| Quite a few people are on HN and Lobste.rs. Usually if you
| ask here in a noticeable way, you can find somebody who
| will hook you up with an invite, although everyone has
| their own criteria on who they'll invite if they don't know
| you personally.
|
| My take? I usually look at someone's HN post history and if
| it appears that they are a reasonable person who conducts
| themselves in a reasonable, moderately professional,
| respectful way, I'll invite them.
|
| So yeah, feel free to drop your email here, or shoot me an
| email at the address mentioned in my profile, and I'd be
| happy to invite you.
| mcherm wrote:
| I've asked a few people in the past for a lobster.rs
| invite and haven't gotten one yet, so I'm interested.
| Check out my posting history here or my (somewhat
| neglected) blogging on https://www.mcherm.com . My email
| is mcherm@mcherm.com.
| htk wrote:
| Check your e-mail.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Thanks! I already got an invite though :)
| htk wrote:
| Sent to info at your website.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Thumbs up, thanks!
| ksec wrote:
| HN Classic. https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
|
| It is basically HN Frontpage ranked using only votes from
| accounts over a year old. But what I would really like as Dang
| mentioned previously, was to add a query param so you can
| decide how ancient you want the contributing upvoters to be.
|
| I much rather have the HN Front-page in the Pre-2012 era. There
| used to be a time when media wouldn't even quote the source as
| HackerNews but only mentioned it as "an Orange industry forum".
| They wouldn't even link to it. It is as if everyone have an
| unwritten agreement not to pollute it from outsiders.
|
| Then came twitter, and then some 2014 US election, after that
| HN isn't the same anymore.
| omoikane wrote:
| I think it's frontpage ranked by only users from 2009 and
| earlier:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465569 - HN front page
| ranked using only votes from early users (2009)
|
| But a similar thread from 2009 says:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271 - HN Frontpage
| ranked using only votes from accounts over a year old
|
| I am not sure if the one year threshold is relative to
| current year, or fixed at 2009.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| soylentnews
| tuttyboy wrote:
| https://www.plushcap.com/ brings in blog posts from tech
| startups, most of which offer dev platforms. Created by Twolio
| devrel who led the community writing program Twilio voices.
| cibyr wrote:
| (2020)
| omoikane wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22544688 - 2020-03-11, 94
| comments
| userbinator wrote:
| Some are written, while the rest are just generated by LLMs?
|
| Omitting one word makes the title imply something else entirely!
| pavpanchekha wrote:
| HN's title editor drops the word how at the start of titles in,
| I think, an attempt to combat clickbait. Funny enough, this
| might actually be a good use case for an LLM.
| donatj wrote:
| I worked for a company where every blog post went through an SEO
| team and came out keyword laden and unreadable.
| gravescale wrote:
| If you're into hardware, Analog Digital has _Analog Dialogue_
| which is pretty fun and somewhat like a blog in some ways. It
| goes way back to the 60s if you like blasts from the past.
|
| It's also fun how one word lost the "-ue" and the other didn't,
| but they both come the same Greek _-logos_.
|
| https://www.analog.com/en/resources/analog-dialogue/about-an...
| keiferski wrote:
| Cloudflare is still under a thousand employees? That's
| impressively small considering their impact.
| imadj wrote:
| This post is from 2020. As of Oct 2023, they had over 3,300
| employees according to this press release[0].
|
| > Cloudflare has more than 3,300 team members globally
|
| In Mar 2020, they had 1,200 employees[1]
|
| [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/pt-br/press-
| releases/2023/cloudfl...
|
| [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-cloudflare-keeps-
| employees-p...
| keiferski wrote:
| Thanks, I missed that part.
| brabel wrote:
| They grew by 2,000 employees in 3 years? WOW.
| vampiresdoexist wrote:
| Is the Segment example supposed to be good?
|
| "Also socialize among eng team, get get feedback from 15-20
| people."
|
| That's after 3 revisions, an eng manager and cofounder review,
| and a dedicated editor.
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems really excessive. Another set of informed eyes?
| Sure. But if you told me that was the process somewhere, I'd
| tell you I had better things to do.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| > Despite the seemingly obvious benefits of having a "good" corp
| eng blog, most corp eng blogs are full of stuff engineers don't
| want to read. Vague, high-level fluff about how amazing
| everything is, content marketing, handwave-y posts about the new
| hotness (today, that might be using deep learning for
| inappropriate applications; ten years ago, that might have been
| using "big data" for inappropriate applications), etc.
|
| It's sad how the majority of corporate software blogs do seem
| like they're written (1) so Marketing can justify their existence
| or (2) to cast an SEO line in the hopes of reeling in some
| C-level who's ready to whip out the corporate credit card on a
| new tool. The latter is a pretty valid use of resources if it
| brings in revenue, but it's still a bummer how many blog posts
| seem like they're going through the motions... speaking as
| someone who once got conscripted to write a bunch of half-baked
| "thought leadership" blog posts in an industry I barely
| understood. (Never again!)
| benreesman wrote:
| I never ceased to be surprised at the clarity of thought that Dan
| can bring to even ostensibly qualitative topics.
|
| I had the rare pleasure of catching up with him briefly not all
| that long ago and we somehow stumbled onto trying to describe our
| individual specializations. I don't remember if I actually
| articulated this or realized it shortly after, but my conclusion
| is the same.
|
| Dan is many things: a mathematician, an electrical engineer, a
| discrete logic specialist, a computer scientist. He's a
| demonstrated expert in all of these things.
|
| But the unifying theme is Dan's real speciality, which is rather
| general in utility: rigor.
|
| An excellent essay and an excellent analysis as usual. If you
| haven't read his entire catalog, I recommend anyone passionate
| about drawing plausible conclusions or building things meant to
| last do so.
| noen wrote:
| Slightly tangential but I want to throw out the blog of my
| previous team/organization at Microsoft-
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/ise/
|
| I happened to be one of the engineers that designed and help
| launch this blog in July 2015.
|
| Despite many attempts by marketing overlords it has remained
| pretty pure for 9 years - all the authors are engineers writing
| production code with real customers, and almost every blog post
| contains a direct link to a GitHub repo with the full code
| context to reproduce the article - again with production* quality
| code.
|
| The same org also publishes the entirety of their engineering
| process here https://github.com/microsoft/code-with-engineering-
| playbook that has been continuously refined since 2018.
| masfuerte wrote:
| > Our team, ISE (Industry Solutions Engineering), works side-
| by-side with customers to help them tackle their toughest
| technical problems both in the cloud and on the edge.
|
| The blog could really do with a subtitle or about page
| explaining this.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| What a way to humblebrag.
| p0seidon wrote:
| Still very hard to do, also he is right about the blog he
| mentioned.
| ozim wrote:
| I think author overestimates value of blogging for a company.
| While also underestimating problem running a corporate blog.
|
| Not every employee wants to run the blog and if there is no one
| dedicated to it, most likely it will end up corpo-spam.
|
| If you are an unknown company, you should have a good blog.
| Especially having great engineering content will help hiring. It
| might make you stand out or find you at all.
|
| If you are established like cloudflare it doesn't matter as much.
| I think they get loads of good CV's anyway.
| thom wrote:
| Blogs aren't just content, and there's no correlation between the
| resources available and the quality. They're popular (both to
| read and to write!) because they're a venue for authentic human
| voices. Like adding "reddit" to a google query they're a way of
| cutting through all the bullshit. Corporate blogs that allow
| themselves to do the same are exceedingly rare. I suspect those
| that have decent tech content but convey an authentic sense of
| their engineering culture are probably more interesting than
| those with strictly deeper technical content.
| tuttyboy wrote:
| Having a technical editor is key (like companies in this
| article), and not editing too much. I'm non-technical and have
| edited drafts of engineering blog posts too much and lost favor
| with engineers who contribute.
|
| Once I restored that favor, I would have lost it again if I told
| contributors, hey, we're going to share your draft with a bunch
| of your mates (like companies in this article). That's groupthink
| and it brings any blogging momentum to a standstill.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's certainly possible to over-edit pieces and lose the
| original writer's voice because the tone or whatever is
| different from the editor's preference even though it's not
| wrong.
|
| That said, for any company blog that has an editor, I expect
| there to be some style guidelines that posts/articles at least
| roughly stick to and, if the editor doesn't feel they're enough
| of a subject matter expert in the topic to provide at least a
| cursory review, they'll probably send it to someone who is if
| the writer hasn't already done so.
|
| If it's purely a personal blog, that's something else but my
| observation is that, at least larger, companies have generally
| moved away from hosting individual blogs on company properties.
| The degree to which they're OK with people posting on their own
| sites I'm sure varies by company.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I don't write blog posts not because there is some bureaucracy
| stopping me (although I am sure there is bureaucracy), but
| because it's a poor use of my time. I have never in my career had
| a point where I felt I could sacrifice 1-2 workdays on a polished
| technical blog post. Even if all of one's planned tasks are on
| track (they are never on track - by design of the process, one
| inevitably takes on more tasks than time exists), there is always
| a years-deep backlog of papercut bugfixes, tech debt cleanups,
| and minor-ish feature requests, not to mention colleagues wanting
| some advice, rubber-duck design conversation, or in depth code
| reviews - doing any of which would be both more useful and more
| personally satisfying than writing a post.
|
| I suspect people mainly write blogs only when required - either
| they are forced to promote themselves by their circumstances
| (they are between jobs or they are an independent consultant) or
| their boss asks them to (a tech blog makes for good PR for our
| project).
| shalmanese wrote:
| A lot of the good blog posts were invested in during the ZIRP
| era because it was viewed as a differentiated hiring tool. Now
| that the supply/demand curve has totally shifted, we might see
| a drought of great new corp blogs for a while.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are also just fashions with such things--I've seen a
| lot of cycles between the early 2000s and today--as well as a
| lot of variation among companies and between individual roles
| at companies. In some cases, a senior developer is sort of
| the public face for a new technology they've been involved
| with and promotong.
|
| It's perfectly reasonable for someone not interested in doing
| this sort of thing to push back--they won't do a good job
| anyway if they're being pushed to do it. Others get a lot of
| recognition by writing and speaking. I'm not even sure the
| hiring pipeline is that big a part of the rationale.
| yojo wrote:
| I've worked with some blog post writers in the past. They
| tended to be people who were singularly uninterested in career
| advancement. At least one of them left industry for academia.
|
| Different people have different motivations, and some of them
| get a ton of satisfaction out of sharing knowledge with the
| world. It may not lead to maximum career earnings, but they're
| operating under a different utility function.
| lambdaxyzw wrote:
| Strong disagree.
|
| >it's a poor use of my time.
|
| You state this as a fact, but it's it really true? Is "a years-
| deep backlog of papercut bugfixes" really that important? I
| don't think so, the bugs have waited for 4 years already, they
| can wait another year.
|
| In contrast, good technical blog posts bring actual value to
| the world. You share your hard earned knowledge with others[1]
| - imagine how much poorer the world (or HN frontpage) would be
| if nobody wrote blog posts.
|
| Blog posts also bring marketing value to your company (way more
| value than fixing the css bug in privacy policy that was filed
| 3 years ago), and bring value to you (by allowing you to self-
| promote).
|
| I'm not saying everyone should write - I do it because I like
| it, and my job is in large part research so I have
| insights/stories to share. But claiming you don't do it because
| it's a poor use of your time is - in my opinion - an excuse .
|
| [1] Assuming you have something to write about, instead of
| writing yet another post about a well covered topic, like
| "introduction to C++". In this case I agree, that - unless your
| approach is really novel - it's pointless.
| lupire wrote:
| Think of how many bugs would be fixed if people did work
| instead of reading blog posts. A good, relevant book beats
| 100 isolated blog posts.
| ghaff wrote:
| A book is a huge amount to write and will probably be
| outdated in a few years. Generally speaking, blogs probably
| have a lot more bang for the buck than most books. (Yes,
| there are exceptions and books/big reports have a certain
| "thunk factor" and perhaps outsized halo effect than blogs
| but I'm skeptical as someone who has done a bunch of both.)
| weaksauce wrote:
| > Blog posts also bring marketing value to your company
|
| there's an european engineering firm doing amazing work and
| they attract amazing engineers because, in part, they
| document their work via some youtube videos that rival the
| quality of most documentaries out there. fascinating work and
| fascinating videos. if anyone is looking for a video to watch
| today the drilling one and the moving bridge one are great
| https://www.youtube.com/@MartiGroup
| whymauri wrote:
| I worked at a startup where the CEO wanted each technical
| contributor to write a blog post per month, every month.
|
| I wrote two internal memos and then quit. Exactly zero got made
| public. Imagine thinking this is a good use of time for a
| startup right after closing Series A.
|
| One per IC per month.
| toolslive wrote:
| Funny: I was forced to write a blog post every month by my
| CEO, about a decade ago. I did it for about a year, and some
| of these went to No1 on HN (for example this one [1]). Just
| searched for it, and although the company is turpor, the blog
| is still alive. Looking back it gives me an insight on my
| opinions at the time.
|
| https://incubaid.wordpress.com/tag/functional-programming/
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| The best setup I've seen is a rotating support engineer where
| everyone takes a week at a time. Unless there's an emergency,
| support is typically less than 40% typical load.
|
| You'd use that 60% to write a blog post and fix any bugs you
| felt inclined to. Obviously, if support duties were heavy,
| you wouldn't write a blog post
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| It's one of the best uses of your time. No one is going to
| notice your papercut bugfixes. There's a good chance that the
| bug-fix itself will be deleted in a few months with the rest of
| the code.
|
| However, a written artifact of your technical thinking and
| contributions with your name on it will outlast probably even
| the company.
|
| These things matter. Unfortunately there's so much garbage
| self-promotion nowadays through Linkedin and other platforms
| that the pendulum has swung in the other direction for people
| with actual skills and expertise.
| lupire wrote:
| How long something lasts is not the measure of its value.
|
| A rock lasts million of years.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| I bet you felt very clever saying that. Now could you
| please engage with the actual intent of my comment?
| LoFiSamurai wrote:
| In addition to the self promotion benefits, writing about
| something in plain terms is the best way I know of to shine a
| light on areas I don't fully understand. It's a useful tool
| to have if you're serious about self-improvement.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| It's the opposite. Writing and effective communication are the
| best use of your time.
|
| People write company blogs only when required. That's true. But
| it is incumbent on management to make that an incentive. Good
| technical blogs will attract talent when you want to hire.
|
| For you - it's a public validation of your job skills. 3 in-
| depth blogs will carry a lot more weight than a resume.
|
| For the company - it's a place to advertise the kind of work
| done to hire talented devs.
| taway40524531 wrote:
| At Google my team wrote a post for the Google Cloud blog about
| our product. This article is painfully true, in particular "Non-
| engineering approvals suggest changes authors find frustrating".
|
| My coworker wrote an initial draft and the rest of the team left
| some minor suggestions. Then we waited for weeks to get approvals
| from multiple people, mostly non-engineers, one of whom was at
| the company for whole of three weeks. Had to make several changes
| we didn't like but had no choice.
|
| After addressing all their (at best, non-consequential) feedback
| we had to wait another few weeks to hear back again. This time
| one person who initially required we change X to Y was apparently
| replaced with another review, who insisted we absolutely have to
| replace Y with X.
|
| In the end it got published, but was so heavily butchered it is a
| very bland and uninteresting post.
|
| As a silver lining, we ended up writing a technical paper about
| the product later and that was much better experience, reviews
| came from internal researchers and domain experts.
|
| (throwaway so I don't add too many bits of identifiable info to
| main pseudoanonymous account)
| kccqzy wrote:
| As a former Google employee who had wanted to write a technical
| blog post, I saw first hand how much power the non-technical
| product manager had in shaping the blog post. That killed my
| interest completely.
| MasterScrat wrote:
| It's a tangent, but reading this linked article from 2014:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-bandwidth-a...
|
| Am I reading correctly that egress in Europe costs $8 Mbps/month
| which is $0.0004/GB, while GCP charges you $0.12/GB?!
|
| And this was in 2014, and the article states the price they show
| is "higher than actual pricing"
| m_2000 wrote:
| Best tech-blog I have found so far:
|
| https://acko.net/
|
| (3D graphics, webdev, tech-philosophy, (and not mine!)). If you
| know tech-blogs of comparable quality, I am eager to hear from
| you.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-01 23:02 UTC)