It used to be the case that a news tycoon, such as Rupert Murdoch or William Randolph Hearst, could exert outsize influence on politics through his media weapons. If you had aspirations to be president, you didn’t want to get offside with Murdoch, and you needed to talk to the editorial board of the New York Times. Their endorsements mattered, and it was worth doing whatever you could to get generous coverage. For decades, the media elite and the political elite have mingled in a codependent relationship, if not exactly trading favors, then at least finding an alliance at the highest levels. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris didn’t have to care about those relationships this election. Instead they turned to Joe Rogan and Call Her Daddy. Instead they sought out social-media-friendly photo ops. The winning candidate, in fact, made a point of sticking it to the legacy media, even joking that he wouldn’t mind if the reporters at his rally got shot first during an assassination attempt. Those comments were reported in the mainstream press, but they were most talked about on social media. In fact, it was really happening mostly on X, since the largest social platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—preferred to suppress political discourse and just leave it to Elon. And what did Elon do with that power? He behaved just like Rupert Murdoch and William Hearst. On amphetamines. Those guys could only dream of having as much money as Elon. They could only dream of having as much power, reach, and influence as X. They could only dream of their competition deciding to put down their weapons so as not to upset their advertisers. The power shift from legacy media to social media, then, is not much of a shift at all. It’s just swapping one set of players for another. Zuckerberg chose not to use his power this time, but Elon, a media owner with more conflicts of interest than El Chapo, wasn’t so shy. He’s using X like Murdoch used Fox News. And he exploits the might of his platform, which reaches hundreds of millions and still influences the political narrative, to not only endorse but actively campaign for one candidate—a candidate who had promised him great powers if he won. Welcome to The Elon Times. Same old entangled interests, same old ruler impulses, same old elite power structures—just this time with memes. In The Elon Times, the star “columnists” and “anchors” aren’t Paul Krugmans or Walter Kronkites. They’re instead people whose platforms have been inflated to insane degrees by X’s heat-seeking algorithms. Ian Miles Cheong, Collin Rugg, and Mario Nawfal have more influence now than Anderson Cooper, Lester Holt, and Maureen Dowd—for as long as they remain in the good graces of the God King. And the man at the top, Elon himself, is the chief editorialist and propagandist, pushing his posts to the front of everyone’s feed, picking his favorites to amplify while proclaiming “News should come from the people,” flying the free-speech flag while promoting a soon-to-be-president who wants TV networks that broadcast content he doesn’t like to be taken off the air. Elon has made some incredible contributions to the world. Tesla’s cars are amazing and have upended the automobile industry. The literal genius rocket scientists at Boeing hadn’t figured out how to make rockets reusable before SpaceX; Mars is starting to look within reach. He is on the cusp of even more world-changing achievements in AI and brain-computer interfaces. No single figure since Steve Jobs has had such a revolutionary effect on business and technology. And now, despite his inexhaustible critics, he’s winning with X too. The 2024 election is over, and with it goes much of legacy media’s former glory. Elon, part-time media mogul, is stepping up to take Hearst’s place, and X has swapped itself in for CNN. However, unlike in the other industries Elon has transformed, in the most fundamental ways, nothing important has changed. We just traded the old boss for a new boss. As much as Elon trumpets the democratizing power of X, he’s wielding it as a tool to serve his partisan interests. The world desperately needs an alternative to these old power structures. That’s why we feel our mission at Substack—to build a new economic engine for culture—is more urgent than ever. We, at Substack, are partisans too. But we do not seek the favor of any one ruler. The politics of our platform have always been the same: we want to elevate writers and creators and give them a business model that supports their editorial freedom and connects them directly with the audience that values them. That means we don’t tell them what to think, or who to vote for, and we align our success with theirs. The media system needs a place that celebrates independence in every sense of the word; it needs a network that martials the power of the internet not to empower new rulers who favor different politicians, but to usher in new rules that return power to the people. We hope to keep building it with you.
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The Elon Times
Promotions and tooling at Google (with Irina Stanescu, Ex-Google)
Promotions and tooling at Google (with Irina Stanescu, Ex-Google)An inside look at Google’s unique working processes, tactical advice for getting promoted at companies like Google and Uber, and how to build influence as a software engineer.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Brought to you by: • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. — In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Irina Stanescu, a seasoned engineer with over 14 years in software engineering and engineering leadership roles at tech companies like Google and Uber. Now an engineering leadership coach, Irina helps tech professionals build impactful careers, teaches a course on influence, and shares insights through her newsletter, The Caring Techie. In our conversation today, Irina shares her journey of rising through the ranks at Google and Uber. We dive into the following topics:
 TakeawaysMy biggest takeaways from this conversation: 1. Google is different in its tooling and processes than most tech companies. While it’s common enough to hear from current and former Googlers just how many custom internal systems Google has, Irina shared several of these, which perhaps made it more specific. She mentioned ones like Borg (deployments), Critique (code reviews) and Memgen (meme generator). There’s often no direct mapping of these tools at other companies. Google also has processes around code quality that few, if any companies put in place. The concept of a “readability review” code reviewer is one of these. It shows just how much Google values clean and easy-to-understand code, to the point that they created a pretty heavyweight process to ensure code readability remains a top priority. 2. Being rejected for a promotion doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be slow to be promoted later. It sounded to me that Irina was very disappointed when her first promotion application from the L3 to the L4 level got rejected. At the same time, after she got promoted to L4, it took her a mere one year to get to the L5 level – which is an unusually short time at a place like Google! What happened? As Irina shared: after her first promotion rejection, she was more active in looking out for teams where she could have a bigger impact. When she joined a newly created team and there was a ton of work to do, she stepped up and did all this work. My read is that thanks to staying longer at Google, she understood more about how the company works; her tenure surely helped her get promoted – as well as doing great work. It’s a reminder that it can be worth grinding teeth and pushing through situations that don’t go your way – and turn things around later! 3. If you want to influence others: start by building credibility! Think about peers who you consider “influential:” why do you listen to what they say? There is a fair chance that those tech professionals have a track record of getting things done, their work is visible to you, and they are active participants in both discussing things and getting things done. So, if you would like your peers – or people on other teams – to see you as influential, you also need to put in the groundwork! Irina suggests asking yourself the question: “Why should people listen to you?” And figure out the answers to these questions as well:
Influence is a two-way street: some of the most influential tech professionals not only get things done, but they are good at listening to others and changing their minds and approaches if and when the other person has good points. Timestamps(00:00) Intro (01:34) Irina’s time at Google (03:10) An overview of ‘design docs’ at Google (08:27) The readiness review at Google (10:40) Why Irina uses spreadsheets (11:44) Irina’s favorite tools and how she uses them (13:46) How Google certifies readability (15:40) Google’s meme generator (17:36) Advice for engineers thinking about working for an organization like Google (20:14) How promotions work at Google (23:15) How Irina worked towards getting promoted (27:50) How Irina got her first mentor (30:44) Organizational shifts at Uber while Irina and Gergely were there (35:50) Why you should prioritize growth over promotion (36:50) What a career plan is and how to build one (40:40) Irina’s current role coaching engineers (42:23) A simple explanation of influence and influencing (51:54) Why saying no is necessary at times (54:30) The importance of building leadership skills ReferencesThe Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode: • Preparing for promotions ahead of time • Engineering career paths at Big Tech and scaleups • Getting an Engineering Executive Job Where to find Irina Stanescu: • X: https://x.com/thecaringtechie • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinastanescu/ • Website:
• Maven course: Impact through Influence in Engineering Teams: https://maven.com/irina-stanescu/influence-swe Mentions during the episode: • Google Fiber: https://fiber.google.com/ • Design docs at Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40273534 • Code Search: https://developers.google.com/code-search • Inside Google's Internal Meme Generator: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reyhan/inside-googles-internal-meme-generator • Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | TED:  • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878123/ • The Midnight Library: https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Library-Novel-Matt-Haig/dp/0525559493/ • Golang: https://go.dev/ • gRPC: https://grpc.io/ • Software Developer Promotions: Advice to Get to That Next Level: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-promotions/ • Preparing for Promotions Ahead of Time: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/preparing-for-promotions • Getting an Engineering Executive Job: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/getting-an-engineering-executive • The Seniority Rollercoaster: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-seniority-rollercoaster Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com. You’re on the free list for The Pragmatic Engineer. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Many readers expense this newsletter within their company’s training/learning/development budget. This post is public, so feel free to share and forward it. If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my book, The Software Engineer's Guidebook. Here is what Tanya Reilly, senior principal engineer and author of The Staff Engineer's Path said about it:
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The Elon Times
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ...