Why I Started TechFlix Weekly

A new Substack newsletter for deep software engineering.

I have a problem

How do I truly and universally keep up with all the latest software engineering innovations and developments happening from across the world?

I wanted it for two reasons — To keep myself updated, and to have the knowledge and awareness to curate, explore and create content to everyone else as a tech content creator.

I used to follow many sources to keep my social media feed and email filled with latest updates.

• All the tech content creators, topics on YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium.
• Tech newsletters in almost every subdomain.
• Random blogs from all over the internet.
• Google search alerts for the latest news in technology, AI, data science, etc.

I have done it all.

I did gather many rich insights and data points but there were a bunch of problems.

1. YouTube and LinkedIn were algorithmic in nature. Often the content shown to me did not feel as useful. I was also tired with repetition where if a new thing becomes popular, everyone talks about it. Content gets redundant.
2. I was not getting many original sources of information. Most of the content I consumed were the interpretation of creators, writers of the internet. While this is good in a way, as a creator myself, I wanted more primary sources — the actual official updates published within the tech industry.
3. Everything, everywhere, all at once. I had to track multiple apps and websites. The content was distributed across LinkedIn, YouTube, Medium, Gmail. It was not very efficient to organize and assimilate it.
4. I was still exposed to only the tip of the iceberg. There weren’t many secondary sources (the creators, the newsletters, the media) that covered core engineering, complex algorithms, designs and content that could probably target staff level engineers or above.
5. I wanted more control with what content I consume — to organize better and be efficient with time.

So, I decided to build a new platform for myself — TechFlix (as you might have guessed, its inspired from Netflix, to be such a platform for software engineering content).

It was a win-win. I get to build a new project for my portfolio + it solved a bunch of real issues I face as a tech content creator/consumer.

I had a few fundamental requirements.

1. To gather data from primary sources- the updates given by companies and the official engineering blogs.
2. To cover maximum number of companies that no one else keeps a track of, all on a single user interface that is easy to read, skim and refer to, while creating secondary content (My understanding, perspectives, learnings, and explainers of them).

I decided to build it in public and improve incrementally, adding small features and enhancements with every release. At the time of writing this article, we are at version 0.8.

Let me reserve the technical story of how I built TechFlix for another day.

That said, TechFlix solved almost all the problems I mentioned. The future updates will solve even more. I have full control, flexibility and plan to add features to make things as seamless and efficient as possible.

Now, you might be wondering, what is “TechFlix Weekly”?

I built TechFlix for myself, and it might be useful for other serious tech creators too, but it’s not intended for the general audience- the casual tech enthusiasts, the normal software engineers, managers, thought leaders and students.

As the number of sources that I track on TechFlix increase, the number of updates it curates in a given week can go well over 300 articles. Most people won’t have time to go through all of them. In fact, not all updates are relevant or useful either.

There was a scope for a consumer facing content product derived from TechFlix — a curated newsletter sharing the best of what it has.

What if we extract the most meaningful and practical content from all the 300+ articles and condense it into a simple 10-minute read that even a computer science student can grasp?

All with expert commentary and ideas that can bring everyone to speed.

And hence, I created TechFlix Weekly — one edition every week, for everyone interested in tech but may not have the luxury of time (or simply, do not prefer) to scourge through everything to look for the golden nuggets.

We mostly discuss core engineering designs and how companies built their systems. I also add some tidbits on latest trends in tech, career opportunities, salaries, etc. If this is something that fancies you, do check the link below and subscribe!

Thank you.

Do note that both TechFlix and the weekly newsletter are a work in progress. Expect frequent updates, format iterations and enhancements. Feel free to give critical feedback and ideas to make things better.

But, Why Substack 🦝?

I had three options in mind — LinkedIn, Medium, Substack. All of them had a newsletter option.

I already had a newsletter on LinkedIn called Self Learning Tech with over 10K subscribers. It’s been inactive for a very long time. I have other plans there. LinkedIn is closely tied to my personal brand and thought leadership — which doesn’t make it ideal for the general public or if I want to collaborate with more people and create a new brand.

Medium is a great platform, but I felt I should explore a new platform dedicated to newsletters and less algorithmic in nature. Plus, I wanted to have the option to monetize the newsletter as a standalone product, if I ever wanted to. TechFlix Weekly will be absolutely free forever. However, if things scale well, I might introduce a pro version for the power readers, where I shall cover complex workflows and designs, with practical insights, relevant to software architects, tech leadership, CTOs who can use such knowledge to make better, cost-effective decisions in their orgs or give new directions to their teams.

All said, I arrived at the decision to use Substack. The experience of setting up a brand-new newsletter has been pretty fun and intuitive so far.

If you made it to the end of this article, you might as well subscribe 👇. Arigato Gozaimasu!

TechFlix Weekly | xqbuilds | Substack

And don't forget to give me feedback so that I can improve further and create a top-notch newsletter and tech platform for the world.