By Gergely Orosz, the author of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter and Building Mobile Apps at Scale
Navigating senior, tech lead, staff and principal positions at tech companies and startups. An Amazon #1 Best Seller. New: the hardcover is out! As is the audibook. Now available in 6 languages.
The context: sex and technology converging Technological advances over the previous decades transformed human intimacy. Immersive VR/AR systems offer hyperreal encounters; neural interfaces allow shared sensory experiences; advanced synthetic bodies and personalized avatars let people present fluid embodiments. Parallel developments in AI enable convincingly realistic generative media: voices, faces, and tactile simulations indistinguishable from the original. These tools expanded possibilities for erotic expression while creating risks—deepfakes, exploitation, and consent violations—prompting society to invent new norms and technical systems for authenticity.
Bodies, identities, and the aesthetics of desire The video’s aesthetics would reflect contemporary norms: bodies may be augmented, fluid across gender and species-templates, and choreography might blend physical movement with augmented overlays communicating internal states (arousal, safety boundaries, negotiated roles). The performers could be human, augmented humans, or legally recognized synthetic partners. Viewers’ interpretations would depend on how the video signals authenticity—if the provenance indicates live participants consenting in real time, audiences treat it differently than if it were generated or staged.
If you want, I can: rewrite this for a different tone (academic, op-ed, creative fiction), shorten it to 300–400 words, or focus on legal, technical, or ethical aspects. Which would you prefer?
Conclusion: a mirror and a test A verified sexy video in 2050 functions as both mirror and test: it reflects evolving aesthetics of intimacy and tests the social, legal, and technical systems that govern mediated desire. Verification can protect agency and build trust, but it cannot substitute for robust norms, equitable economic arrangements, and vigilant protections against bias and coercion. The future of erotic media hinges on collective choices about how we encode consent, who controls provenance, and whether technological promise will expand freedom or entrench new inequalities.
The book is separated into six standalone parts, each part covering several chapters:
Parts 1 and 6 apply to all engineering levels: from entry-level software developers to principal or above engineers. Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 cover increasingly senior engineering levels. These four parts group topics in chapters – such as ones on software engineering, collaboration, getting things done, and so on.
This book is more of a reference book that you can refer back to, as you grow in your career. I suggest skimming over the career levels and chapters that you are familiar with, and focus reading on topics you struggle with, or career levels where you are aiming to get to. Keep in mind that expectations can vary greatly between companies.
In this book, I’ve aimed to align the topics and leveling definitions closer to what is typical at Big Tech and scaleups: but you might find some of the topics relevant for lower career levels in later chapters. For example, we cover logging, montiroing and oncall in Part 5: “Reliable software systems” in-depth: but it’s useful – and oftentimes necessary! – to know about these practices below the staff engineer levels.
The Software Engineer's Guidebook is available in multiple languages:
You should now be able to ask your local book shops to order the book for you via Ingram Spark Print-on-demand - using the ISBN code 9789083381824. I'm also working on making the paperback more accessible in additional regions, including translated versions. Please share details here if you're unable to get the book in your country and I'll aim to remedy the situation.
I'd like to think so! The book can help you get ideas on how to help software engineers on your team grow. And if you are a hands-on engineering manager (which I hope you might be!) then you can apply the topics yourself! I wrote more about staying hands-on as an engineering manager or lead in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter.
I've gotten this variation of a question from Data Engineers, ML Engineers, designers and SREs. See the more detailed table of contents and the "Look inside" sample to get a better idea of the contents of the book. I have written this book with software engineers as the target group, and the bulk of the book applies for them. Part 1 is more generally applicable career advice: but that's still smaller subset of the book.