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- 🍐#141: How to get your engineers to blog, executive dinners, and a benchmarking ad campaign from ClickHouse
🍐#141: How to get your engineers to blog, executive dinners, and a benchmarking ad campaign from ClickHouse
Pearenting lesson
Jakub Czakon
January 18, 2026
Hey,
Bittersweet pearenting 🍐 lesson. Spent as much time as you can with your kids. They will leave you for the first snowboarding instructor they meet.
This week on the agenda:
How to get your engineers to blog (new podcast episode)
Ideas for running “executive dinners” from Recall.ai
Benchmarking ad campaign from ClickHouse
+ a few bonus links at the end
Total pearusing time: 8min
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Developer marketing insights
1. How to get your engineers to blog (new podcast episode)
This time I had an awesome chat with Ivan Brezak Brkan (IBB) about building programs that get engineers to write at scale. He build that with shiftmag.dev at Infobip.
Takeaways/themes:
“Begging” + bonuses don’t get engineers to write: Most engineers won’t write for money. They write when you give them time + permission + support (peer feedback + real editorial help).
Run writing like a sprint, not a side quest: Timebox it. 2-day workshops produce ~80% drafts; 3-day in-person workshops got 30 people to finish ~90% of a handbook. Since this is not their “main job” if you make it optional, “finish when you finish” type of a thing it won’t happen.
The sync workshop loop is the product: Individual ideation → peer feedback → editorial feedback → outline → draft. The key is fast feedback and an editor who’s ruthless about structure (usually: last paragraph becomes the first).
Use a “Venn diagram” filter for topics: Great content sits at the overlap of what the engineer cares about, what the audience cares about, and what the company cares about.
Create spiky content, not safe content: Not necessarily “controversial for clicks,” but content that makes it possible for devs to disagree, extend, comment. Example: “It’s OK if your code is just good enough” → internal pushback → they published a rebuttal. Comes out more authentic and better that way. Plus there is a reason for external readers to engage (as you semi-tested it internally).
As always way more juicy bits in the podcast.
Listen/watch to this or previous episode on:
2. Ideas for running “executive dinners” from Recall.ai
I like how Amanda shares great actionable stuff from their journey. Highly recommended follow. This time she shared their learnings on running executive dinners.
Three comments:
Give them reason to come: 100x right. And that reason depends on the competing events too. Sometimes the venue/experience may be enough. Sometimes you may need speakers, or other attendees from top AI labs. Whatever it is → give people a clear reason to attend.
Conversation design: this has been the biggest mistake we’ve made a couple times and a biggest learning. Design experiences so it is easy to talk to. Make sure that people sit in tuples of prospect/customer/your company person. If you don’t do that people will batch in ways you don’t want.
Follow up: love this, never tried it but love this so much. Intro customer/prospect with you as an obvious intermediary/help. Brilliant. You add even more value as a vendor too. It is always awkward to reach out after, especially when you didn’t talk to someone you wanted to (but were seated far away or smth). So good.
3. Benchmarking ad from ClickHouse
Another great ad campaign from ClickHouse I saw on X. Btw I love this move towards content promotion vs pure ads that I see there. Makes so much sense and ClickHouse does it in a way I wish more people did.
What I like about the creative:
Clear info as to what it is that you are selling (a piece of content comparing warehouses).
Clear info that you win → no point hiding imho. Better to come out clear right away
Diagram/matrix visualization that communicates parts of the analysis and supports the result.
And then what is super crucial the blog post that it links to delivers on the promise. It really does.
First viewport after landing is soo good imho. And this is perhaps the most important moment, you need to get me to commit time to go through. Explain why it is worth it.
They start with this TLDR which could have just been an intro but showcasing it as TLDR makes it more relatable, more devy.
They give you that TOC shows what you’ll get
They open a curiosity gap in a very straightforward way in that “How to compare…” block and state clearly what is the main question they will answer.
They let you interact with this page easily in AI engines with “copy page”
Then they show you various interactive comparisons like this one that show you exactly what they checked, let you play with it in a way you’d want to anyway.
Then they drive the cost and speed story with more visuals:
They close by explaining the benchmark methodology. It is a key part when talking to engineers. But you can still start with conclusions and then show supportive evidence (BLUF framework). I like it way more than starting with the premise but then give you the behind the scenes and DIY (GitHub Repo). Way to go.
Way to go ClickHouse team. Bravo.
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