Sean Goedecke on Technical Blogging

“I thought I'd run out of ideas, but the more I write, the more ideas I have.”

Sean Goedecke emerged as one of the most prominent tech bloggers about a year ago. But he’s been writing for many years, and he’s certainly not aiming to fan the legendary Hacker News flames.

Sean writes with a philosophical precision that makes you feel like you’re crawling into his mind for a little bit. His first real “hit” was a late 2024 post on how he thinks about shipping software at large companies. From there, things escalated fast. In 2025, he published 141 posts, 33 of which hit the top of HN. His posts at https://www.seangoedecke.com/ cover topics from AI in software development, to what it’s like being an Aussie in an American company, to where your engineering salary comes from.

So how did he get here? And what lessons has he learned? Over to Sean.

Why did you start blogging – and why do you continue?

I’ve been blogging forever, in one form or another. I had a deeply embarrassing LiveJournal back in the day, and several abortive blogspot blogs about various things. It was an occasional hobby until this post of mine really took off in November 2024. When I realised there was an audience for my opinions on tech, I went from writing a post every few months to writing a post every few days - turns out I had a lot to say, once I started saying it!

The biggest thing that keeps me writing is getting emails and comments from readers. I like it all: positive feedback, people sharing their own experiences, people who disagree and want to argue. We all get such a narrow picture of what it’s like from our own jobs. It’s so cool to open up the aperture and hear from hundreds of other people who’ve had different experiences.

What has been the most surprising impact of blogging for you?

I thought I’d run out of ideas, but the more I write, the more ideas I have. If I don’t write for a few weeks, I feel like I’ve got nothing to say, but as soon as I get a post out, I immediately want to write five more. No idea why!

What blog post are you most proud of and why?

Talking to ChatGPT costs 5ml of water, not 500ml. It’s not the deepest post I ever wrote, but I’m happy that I was able to trace through the chain of references for the “every ChatGPT query costs a bottle of water” claim to find the actual source (which of course didn’t support the claim). This post gets a constant stream of Google traffic and is frequently linked in Reddit or Twitter arguments about AI water usage. There’s a lot of people now who have looked into AI water usage in depth, but in October 2024 it was basically unquestioned that language models used ridiculous amounts of water. I’m proud to have been one of the first voices poking holes in that claim.

What post was the most difficult to write and how did you tackle it?

Everything I know about good system design. I was really worried that it would come off as just a boring summary of some vaguely systems-related topics. I rewrote it a bunch to try and bring out my overall point: that system design is about combining a relatively small “toolbox” of generic components. It was also a challenge to decide how many details to include. I wanted to be concise, but I also knew that people would gleefully point out any edge cases I missed. I’m really happy with how it turned out - and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback - but I think I spent more time editing this post than any other post I’ve written.

Any lessons learned that you want to share with the community?

If any of your posts become popular, people are going to be really, really mean about you on the internet. I’ve had Hacker News and Reddit commenters calling me a sociopath, saying that I’m the kind of engineer who ruins companies, that it must be awful to work on the same team as me, and so on. You just have to develop a thick skin about it. I have a hard rule for myself that I don’t engage with the comments on aggregator sites at all. I’d much rather interact with people over email, where we can talk a bit more thoughtfully and nobody’s “playing for the crowd.”

As a matter of practical advice, I’d also suggest setting up a RSS feed before you think you might need one. It’s very easy to do, and if one of your posts does blow up, you’ll be very glad you did it beforehand instead of a day afterwards. I didn’t do this and probably missed out on a few hundred subscribers because of it.

Your advice for people just getting started with blogging?

Try and use it as a tool for figuring out what you really think about things. It’s fine to write several posts about the same topic, even if it feels like you’re repeating yourself. I like to have each post make a single point (and ideally to express that point in the title), but if you prefer a more meandering style, go for it!

I strongly suggest not using AI to make edits to your posts, or to generate content directly. The AI “voice” is really easy to detect, and can turn readers off your blog forever. Worse, AI edits tend to tone down the most interesting and controversial aspects of your writing.

A few blogs that you particularly enjoy?

First, let me shout out my fellow Melbourne tech bloggers Ludicity and thundergolfer.com (who wrote by far the best report on AWS’s recent outage).

Like everyone with a passing interest in AI, I’ve also been loving Simon Willison’s blog. And he hasn’t posted much in a while, but Dan Luu’s blog is excellent and was a big inspiration for my personal style.

Finally, this isn’t about programming, but A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is the only blog where I stop what I’m doing to read new posts as they come out.

Anything else you want to add?

If you’re working in tech, I would strongly recommend not trying to monetize your blog. I know it sounds like a good side hustle, but in my view the long-term career benefits of having a popular blog massively outweigh any short-term gains you might get from sticking ads on your site or introducing paid-only posts. It’s also just nicer to put all your posts out there for free, like how blogs worked on the old internet before social networks.

See Sean’s blog for some great reading on writing. Also, watch/listen to this podcast for more writing tips.

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