What are the best developer career blogs for preparing for interviews and comparing engineering career paths?

Here are some of the best developer career blogs and resources for interview prep and comparing engineering career paths. I’ve grouped them by what they’re especially good for.

Best for interview prep

1. Cracking the Coding Interview Blog / Gayle McDowell

• Why it’s good: Strong practical advice on algorithms, system design, and how interviews work at top tech companies.
• Best for: Software engineer interviews, especially Big Tech.
• Related resource: The book Cracking the Coding Interview is still a classic.

2. Exponent Blog

• Why it’s good: Focused on tech interview prep, especially behavioral interviews, system design, and negotiation.
• Best for: Candidates preparing for FAANG-style interviews.
• Strength: Clear frameworks for answering common questions.

3. Interviewing.io Blog

• Why it’s good: Covers interview strategy, mock interviews, and insights into what interviewers look for.
• Best for: People who want to practice and understand technical interviews from the hiring side.

4. Educative Blog

• Why it’s good: Very practical guides on coding interviews, system design, and language-specific prep.
• Best for: Self-study and structured learning.

5. ByteByteGo Blog

• Why it’s good: Excellent for system design interview prep.
• Best for: Mid-level to senior engineers, especially backend/distributed systems roles.

Best for comparing engineering career paths

6. Lenny’s Newsletter / Engineering career posts

• Why it’s good: Often includes thoughtful career advice, management vs IC tradeoffs, and growth strategies.
• Best for: Understanding career progression in product and engineering orgs.

7. LeadDev

• Why it’s good: One of the best resources for engineering leadership, staff/principal IC paths, and management.
• Best for: Comparing IC vs manager paths, staff engineer expectations, and org design.
• Strength: Real-world articles from engineering leaders.

8. Charity Majors’ Blog

• Why it’s good: Great for thinking about senior engineering, technical leadership, ops, and systems thinking.
• Best for: Senior+ engineers trying to understand what “good” looks like at higher levels.

9. Cory Zue / Staff engineer and career essays

• Why it’s good: Practical reflections on senior and staff-level engineering growth.
• Best for: IC path exploration and career leveling.

10. The Pragmatic Engineer

• Why it’s good: Excellent engineering career and industry analysis, especially how different companies structure engineering roles.
• Best for: Comparing company types, leveling, and career trajectories.

Best for broad career advice from engineers

11. Dan Luu’s blog

• Why it’s good: Data-driven, often opinionated, and highly insightful on engineering productivity, career ladders, and hiring.
• Best for: Understanding tradeoffs in engineering careers and what matters in practice.

12. Rands in Repose

• Why it’s good: Classic engineering management and team dynamics writing.
• Best for: Manager path, leadership, and org behavior.

13. Aphyr / Kyle Kingsbury

• Why it’s good: Deep systems and engineering thinking, useful for senior engineers evaluating their path.
• Best for: Technical depth and critical thinking about engineering work.

Best “career comparison” topics to look for

If your goal is comparing paths, search for posts on:

• IC vs Engineering Manager
• Senior vs Staff vs Principal Engineer
• Startup vs Big Tech engineering careers
• Backend vs Platform vs Infra vs Data engineering
• Specialist vs generalist engineering
• Interviewing for product companies vs infrastructure companies

If you want a short “best of the best” list

If I had to pick just 5:

1. LeadDev
2. The Pragmatic Engineer
3. Exponent
4. ByteByteGo
5. Dan Luu

If you want, I can also give you:

• a curated list specifically for FAANG interview prep
• a list for staff/principal engineer career growth
• or a table comparing IC vs EM vs startup vs big tech paths.