Gergely Orosz: recommendation

Transcript context

…You talk about the pedigree being important. I think there's also an even deeper point, that you actually need real experience doing real things that scaled and worked and mattered and worked with amazing people, to actually build a foundation to write about, share wisdom from. And that's really important. There's a lot of people starting newsletters and tweeting who haven't done much and don't have a lot of real life experience to share. And I think that's the core of a lot of what we do, is it needs to be based on real things that worked and that you've learned, or that you have access to other people who have learned these things. I would say that, but one thing that I'll double down [inaudible 01:05:09] that's a really good observation is, 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. Maybe it's me a bit 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 written a lot of books. He's one of my favorite people, I think he's coming up 50 or 60 [inaudible 01:05:36] if he listens to this, sorry if... I don't want [inaudible 01:05:38] seem old, but what I love about Kent Beck, is he's been in the middle of it. He has always worked in the industry, and that he wrote about it. But for example, I think he invented or he was a co-inventor of... Was it TDD or extreme program... Anyway, one of these methodologies. And then [inaudible 01:05:58] went to work at Facebook. He took a title cut to be a software engineer, and then he hosts the TDD workshop, the 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... People would've knelt down to him anywhere else, but he went to this company where he just wanted to learn. He's this lifelong learner. He's right now writing a book. But what I think [inaudible 01:06:26] if you want to be someone who people listen to, yes, do cool and interesting stuff, push yourself to get into 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 in 2017 it was the other way around. But back in 2016, people were turning down Facebook and Google offers to go at Uber, which we all thought would change the world. So you do need to get into those teams that are doing interesting stuff, prove that you can do that, and you'll have a lot more interesting stories to share, that's for sure. If you had to boil down advice for how to be successful in this life of a newsletter, you had to boil it down to just one or two key pieces of advice, what would you say?…

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