Do like the best Engineering blogs!

More and more employer-brand strategies are flourishing. The intention is to enable companies to address their potential future employees through different channels (media, events, trade fairs, online presence, etc.).

In the process of establishing their tech-brand, more and more French start-ups are embracing the creation of a Tech Blog (or Engineering Blog). A tech blog is maintained by tech teams who share content for tech communities: templates, projects, best practices, reveal technological advances in their products, etc. This is already a very popular practice in the United States! Take the test: all the largest US companies have an Engineering Blog. Casper — the e-commerce platform dedicated to sleep products, or the retail giant Walmart for example.

We have reviewed the best tech blogs — including those that our Data Scientists and Developers regularly consult — and we deliver our top 15 and some things to keep in mind if you want to create your own!

Our top 15 Engineering Blogs:

• algoliaBlog: it is one of the most extensive blogs. A little more than one article per week and multiple editors (17 different contributors since January). Topics covered: product, engineering, partnerships, UX, e-commerce, etc. A special feature of this team is that they also have a Youtube channel.
• Airbnb Engineering & Data Science: 7 editors since January who publish an average of just over one article per month. Airbnb remains quite classic in the topics covered: mobile app, data science, infrastructure.
• deezer: 4 editors publish an average of one article per month. The blog is directly linked to Deezer’s jobs page. Members of this tech team participate in many events and hackatons and share their experiences on this blog.
• drivy.engineering: 9 editors publish nearly 2 articles per month. Their team being one of the Ruby experts in France, many of the articles deal with topics related to this techno.
• Dropbox: 10 writers for just over 2 articles per month. They present their technical choices, limits and safety, technical performance and some articles on the life of developers and its organization at work.
• Code.fb: as expected, the social network’s technical team is the most active on its blog. 8.8 articles / month. A wide range of subjects are covered: AI, mobile, machine learning, back/front end, UX, security…
• The Netflix Tech Blog: just under one article per week published by the VOD giant. Many of the articles deal with data analysis, most conclude with “We’re hiring!” and a link to an offer related to the subject.
• octo talks: at Octo, articles are published twice a month and often written by several collaborators. Infrastructures, mobile, big data, tests and methodologies are shared.
• Stripe: Stripe publishes about 2 articles per month. The peculiarity of the blog: every month Stripe publishes a changelog which contains all the modifications and new features of their tool.
• Red Hat Developer: RedHat’s tech team published 22 articles in May 2019 alone. There are many resources, tutorials, cheat sheets, guides to download…
• Twitter Engineering: less frequent than the previous team, at Twitter the articles are published about once a month. Very interesting for as much as the subjects are diverse: corporate culture, infrastructure, open source.
• Sicara: this blog is a must for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. Sicara’s team also shares a monthly article that lists the best articles published on Artificial Intelligence.
• buffer: buffer writes mainly on mobile technologies (iOS and Android), shares tools and good practices of methodology as well as updates of their products.
• Inside Intercom: Intercom’s blog is a reference in terms of content. It is generalist and contains various topics: Sales, Marketing, Product… The Engineering part of the blog is just as extensive and contains articles, videos, templates, tutorials.
• OpenAI: nearly 3 articles per month and the option to subscribe to a weekly selection of articles.

Know why you’re going for it.

A tech blog will allow you to:

• Develop your tech brand, your employer brand and therefore recruit!
• Participate in open source projects.
• Grow your technical team by integrating the writing of your blog into your development process.
• Impose rigour and exemplarity on your expertise and methodology by detailing your own projects for an audience outside your team.

Diversify the topics covered.

This is the main interest of the blogs mentioned above, all the technical issues facing their teams are covered. The more diversified your teams are (Data Science, Web Development, DevOps, Product, etc.) the more themes you will have to address.

Break down your blog into different categories according to the particularities of your tools and teams.

Sqreen’s blog, Sqreen develops an Application Security Management (ASM)

For a potential candidate your blog will be an opportunity to discover his/her future team from the inside. The projects they are working on, their methods of interaction and organization, the reasons for your technical choices, your recommendations for optimization, tools, etc. Be transparent about your decisions and methodologies: share as much as possible!

Be numerous and steady!

Have multiple editors: it will allow you to discover the members of your team and therefore their respective points of view.

Highlight the strengths of your team members. They will naturally address various themes, raise debates and highlight each other’s points of view.

Involve Data Scientists, Data Analysts, Developers, DevOps, CTO.

Maintain the relationship with your readers. Call for exchange and discussion. Publish at best once a week to engage with your readers on a regular basis. With several editors at the controls, you will limit the individual workload.

Deal with your problems in public.

Solve the problems you face. Tech communities often refer to their peers and content to answer their questions. If you are facing difficulties, you are certainly not alone and your publications will surely be useful to others.

For example, select the three major problems you have faced in the last three months. Then integrate the writing process into your work processes, writing will become a reflex.

Be yourself.

“Our tech blog is an initiative of our team. They are all very involved, especially in the Ruby community, and regularly organize internal events (Hack Days),” said Rebecca Ingram, Talent Acquisition Manager @Drivy told about drivy.engineering

Indulge yourself, choose subjects that fascinate you. You will therefore create a universe that resembles your technical team and that will attract curious profiles. Develop a tone and identity that really resembles you.

Get started, write, iterate!

And above all, make each of your broadcasts an event! Publish on your blog platform and on all your social networks. The important thing when you share content is to make it viral and for that nothing better than starting with your own teams: share!