By Gergely Orosz, the author of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter and Building Mobile Apps at Scale
Navigating senior, tech lead, staff and principal positions at tech companies and startups. An Amazon #1 Best Seller. New: the hardcover is out! As is the audibook. Now available in 6 languages.
Julien uses "pattern interrupts" to break logical loops. Watch for the moment he ignores a question or changes the subject abruptly. In extra quality, you see the micro-expression of confusion on the girl's face, followed quickly by compliance. That is the hook. The Moral and Ethical Frame (Critical Context) It is impossible to write about Julien Blanc without addressing the elephant in the room. In 2014, a petition to deport him from the US garnered tens of thousands of signatures. Critics claimed his content promoted harassment.
Julien famously recorded every single approach he made for two years. You should too. Use your phone. Record audio of your interactions. Listen back.
High-quality infield proves that Julien’s style works because of enthusiastic consent, not in spite of it. He teaches taking the risk of rejection, not cornering a woman against a wall. The extra quality reveals the mutual fun of the interaction—something the mainstream media specifically cropped out. Disclaimer: Piracy hurts creators. While much of the old RSD library is now defunct or repurposed, legitimate ways to access high-definition infield are limited since Julien moved to a private coaching model and launched platforms like "Julien Free Tour" and "The System."
Watch an approach with the sound off. Track his eye contact. Notice the "triangle gaze" (eye to eye, eye to mouth, eye to body). Note when he breaks eye contact to create space. Do this for the entire 10-minute set.
That is your low quality self. The goal is to edit yourself in real-time.
The search for "RSD Julien Infield Extra Quality" is not just a nostalgia trip for pickup artists of the 2010s. It is the search for clarity in chaos. In a world where dating advice is vague, sanitized, or outright misleading, high-resolution evidence of a real human interaction remains the most powerful teaching tool.
The book is separated into six standalone parts, each part covering several chapters:
Parts 1 and 6 apply to all engineering levels: from entry-level software developers to principal or above engineers. Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 cover increasingly senior engineering levels. These four parts group topics in chapters – such as ones on software engineering, collaboration, getting things done, and so on.
This book is more of a reference book that you can refer back to, as you grow in your career. I suggest skimming over the career levels and chapters that you are familiar with, and focus reading on topics you struggle with, or career levels where you are aiming to get to. Keep in mind that expectations can vary greatly between companies.
In this book, I’ve aimed to align the topics and leveling definitions closer to what is typical at Big Tech and scaleups: but you might find some of the topics relevant for lower career levels in later chapters. For example, we cover logging, montiroing and oncall in Part 5: “Reliable software systems” in-depth: but it’s useful – and oftentimes necessary! – to know about these practices below the staff engineer levels.
The Software Engineer's Guidebook is available in multiple languages:
You should now be able to ask your local book shops to order the book for you via Ingram Spark Print-on-demand - using the ISBN code 9789083381824. I'm also working on making the paperback more accessible in additional regions, including translated versions. Please share details here if you're unable to get the book in your country and I'll aim to remedy the situation.
I'd like to think so! The book can help you get ideas on how to help software engineers on your team grow. And if you are a hands-on engineering manager (which I hope you might be!) then you can apply the topics yourself! I wrote more about staying hands-on as an engineering manager or lead in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter.
I've gotten this variation of a question from Data Engineers, ML Engineers, designers and SREs. See the more detailed table of contents and the "Look inside" sample to get a better idea of the contents of the book. I have written this book with software engineers as the target group, and the bulk of the book applies for them. Part 1 is more generally applicable career advice: but that's still smaller subset of the book.