Refactoring Quarterly Update! 📣
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Refactoring Quarterly Update! 📣
30,000 subscribers, recent articles, community, and learning tracks.
Hey! This is a special, quarterly edition to give you some updates about what has happened at Refactoring in the past few months, and what’s to come.
I do this in the spirit of building in public — so feel free to reply with feedback about what you want or don’t want to see at Refactoring!
Let’s dive in!
🚀 30,000 Subscribers!
Actually, 31,000! We started the year at ~25,000, so it’s +6,000 in just 3 months!
The first reason for such growth is Substack recommendations: more than 80 other publications recommend Refactoring! I am so humbled by this 🙇
The second one is, I believe, a good balance between free and paid content. In fact, as you know I send two emails a week:
💡 Monday 3-2-1s — short, practical ideas, cherry-picked from previous Refactoring articles. Free for everybody.
✍️ Thursday Essays — long-form, thoroughly researched articles, for people who want to upskill on specific topics. Exclusive to paid subscribers.
I want to make sure Refactoring stays valuable to free subscribers, while being a total steal for paid subscribers who are willing to invest more on their own growth.
Speaking of articles, here are the ones that I published this quarter, in case you missed some:
✍️ Articles
🎆 The Best of Refactoring in 2022 — a recap of everything that happened last year.
🤝 How to Delegate Effectively — principles and actionable tactics to do it well.
📡 New Tools and Techniques for 2023 — a tech radar of things you should adopt, or avoid, as a new year resolution!
🔮 LinearB — The Quest for Engineering Productivity — the story of the company that wants engineers and managers to work well together.
🗺️ What is a Technical Program Manager — a primer about this crucial but often misunderstood role.
🪚 How to Reduce Meetings — strategies and practical ideas for better async communication, and a detailed case study.
🥷 How to Deal with Impostor Syndrome — how to set expectations for yourself, raise your confidence, and adopt a growth mindset.
🏛️ Introducing Learning Tracks — discover the new Library features and how to create your own growth path.
📣 How to Improve Your Communication — how to present your ideas effectively, and how to use empathy for good.
🔒 How to Write Secure Code — a primer on how to secure the whole development lifecycle.
📋 How to Create a Great Resume — what to write, how to write it, a review of all the sections, useful tools, and my very own resume!
🔍 How to Test Software in 2023 — a practical and opinionated take on one of engineering's most divisive topics.
But there is more than just articles!
💬 More Community!
This quarter the community grew to 430 members, most of whom have been active in the last 30 days, which is a record level of engagement!
In the community, anyone can create threads and ask questions, but there are two main things we do all the time:
1) Co-create Refactoring articles ✍️
I anticipate the articles I will write about 2 weeks before publishing, so people can join the conversation with their own ideas and experience. I feature the best ones in the newsletter, quoting the author.
Some members are regular contributors, to the point that Refactoring feels more and more like the work of a collective of writers/engineers, rather than just me rambling on topics.
Here are the most active users over the last month — I deeply thank them for their input 🙏
Radoslav Stankov — Head of Engineering at Product Hunt
Andrew Twyman — Coach & former Staff Engineer at Dropbox
Michael Genesini — Engineering Manager at Cabify
Vladislav Verba — Senior Python Developer at Ivelum
Jasvir Dhillon — Founder in Residence at EoT Labs
Chiamaka Nwolisa — Senior Software Engineer at HelloFresh
Ari Koponen — Head of Platform at Swarmia
Kendrick Curtis — Engineering Manager Lead at Codacy
Devansh — ML Engineer at Clientell
Nicola Ballotta — Director of Cloud at Namecheap
Luca Sartoni — Coach & former Director of Prod. Engineering at Automattic
2) Run good events 🎟️
The community spirit is mostly written + async, so we do not rush to host events just for the sake of it. We do when we have something awesome to cover, or a fantastic guest.
This quarter we ran 6 events — about one every two weeks.
Today, for example, we will run this one with Andy 👇 long-time friend and member of the community.
You can learn more about the community—and eventually join—from this brand new page.
🏛️ Learning Tracks
One month ago we made the biggest product launch ever for Refactoring, with the revamped Library + Learning tracks.
The reason why I am investing so much on the library is that the Refactoring’s whole body of work is becoming huge. As of today, I have written 130+ articles, which is the equivalent of (we ran the numbers) 5+ business books.
So chances are, if you have some challenge at work, that I have already written something that can help you.
The Library helps by providing an organized structure where you can search for topics, and create your own learning journeys.
Learn more about the Library 👇
✨ Get Refactoring today!
My personal goal is to make Refactoring the best investment you ever made for your engineering career.
If you’d like to get the full Refactoring experience, consider subscribing to the paid version, for $120/year or $12/month.
There are many ways to do so 👇
1) 💸 Expense the subscription
Many subscribers expense Refactoring to their team’s learning budget.
My pitch to you (or your manager) is that if this newsletter helps you make just one better decision each year, or you end up using just one of the discounted tools, it’ll literally pay for itself. And if it doesn’t, you can cancel anytime. Here is an email you can send to your manager for this:
2) 🎽 Get a team plan
You can also buy a group subscription for your whole team, at a substantial discount, and receive a single invoice for it.
The subscription also comes with a 30-days money-back guarantee. If you are unhappy with Refactoring you can cancel and get 100% refunded — no strings attached.
And that’s it for today. See you next week with a new article!
Sincerely 👋
Luca