To many software developers, writing blog posts feels like going through rigid sprint ceremonies—just another task competing for the few hours they’d rather spend coding, refactoring, fixing bugs, or exploring new ideas. That’s partly because many devs don’t realize that when you write a blog as a developer, you’re not playing the short game. You’re investing time in exchange for benefits you won’t see on day one or two, but returns that build steadily over the long run.
As the founder of Devōt, I’ve always believed that software development is about more than just shipping features—it’s also about sharing knowledge. That’s why I contribute to our Devōt blog, where writing is part of our engineering culture.
I’ve also explored broader ideas outside of pure code, like in my guest post for Netokracija on how “laziness” can be a hidden superpower for CEOs. Whether writing internally or publicly, I see content creation as a tool for clarity, visibility, and long-term growth for both individuals and teams. Below, I’ll walk you through five reasons you should write blog posts and other content, too.
Why write content or blogs?
You've likely heard several thought leaders emphasize the importance of maintaining a social media presence as a software developer. You've seen the numbers: the average social media user spends approximately 2 hours and 21 minutes on social media apps every day. However, no comparative data have been published on the frequency of blog post visits. Why, then, should you take blogging as a software developer seriously?
1: Blog writing can be a tool for career growth
a. Thought leadership is increasingly expected
Senior engineering roles often expect evidence of thought leadership, or the practice of sharing insightful, original ideas and expertise to influence others and establish authority in the software development space. And candidates aiming for these roles are stepping up. According to Brighttail’s 2023 Thought Leadership Survey, 66% of decision-makers report an increase in content that demonstrates thought leadership.
So, how can you establish yourself as an authority in this space? For many, the first and most affordable step is writing blogs. Whether you write for your company or outside of work, it’s important to publish a few pieces under your name.
b. Visibility alone isn’t enough; you need substance
It seems like every developer has caught on to the “write my blog” movement. So, how do you stand out? By creating evidence-backed, original content that actually connects with your target audience.
You're not aiming to produce duplicate content that has already been published thousands of times. Buyers are increasingly tired of recycled ideas wrapped in clickbait titles. Forty percent of buyers in Brighttail’s 2023 Thought Leadership Survey said most thought leadership content feels repetitive and unoriginal. Even more striking, 71% of decision-makers believe that over half of current thought leadership adds no real value. And 30% go further, calling most of it mediocre or outright poor.
c. Blog authorship opens real-world opportunities
Furthermore, blog authorship can open doors to speaking invites, book deals, and even tech fellowships. Take these individuals, for example:
-
Gergely Orosz: He's the founder of The Pragmatic Engineer, the #1 Substack blog in the engineering space. He’s also the author of four books, including The Software Engineer’s Guidebook and Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges. His writing has established him as a trusted voice in the software industry.
-
Nana Janashia: She's a DevOps consultant and trainer. She's the founder of Techworld with Nana, where she offers courses and bootcamps for professionals looking to break into or level up in DevOps and cloud computing. She also maintains a blog on her site.
Now ask yourself this: if you had the chance to choose a mentor—or someone to mentor a junior on your team—would you pick a senior professional like one of the two above, or someone with no clear demonstration of clarity, initiative, or the ability to communicate what they know?
d. Blogging can signal promotability (even internally)
In lean job markets, a blog can take the place of open-source contributions when it comes to proving your skills. When you blog as a developer, your company is more likely to see you as promotable because you show that you can represent the team externally.
2: As you share your knowledge with the community, you assist professional development
a. Blogs promote the professional development of developers
Stack Overflow received responses from more than 90,000 developers for its 2023 Developer Survey. Of this number, over 87,000 answered the question on how they were learning to code. 80.13% of those responses disclosed that they learned how to code in 2023 through online sources, and 76.69% answered that they improved their knowledge of coding through blogs.
We’re sure that at some point in your software development career, you’ve turned to Google, skimming through the search results to solve a problem. If those blog posts hadn’t existed, you might not have had the chance to learn what you needed.
Each time you write a blog post, you contribute to the vast pool of free knowledge online. You increase the chances that someone, whether it’s a junior dev trying to upskill or a senior software engineer searching for that old “JavaScript array flatten polyfill”, will find exactly what they’re looking for.
b. Writing internal documentation increases organizational efficiency
Writing content such as internal documentation for your team makes the process of onboarding junior team members easier. When you write about something you've done in your organization and why you did it—for example, why you used your React hook to fetch from internal APIs—you provide crucial information to other employees to do their job better.
Also, according to Google’s 2021 State of DevOps Report, software development teams with high-quality internal documentation are 3.8 times more likely to implement strong security practices and 2.5 times more likely to fully leverage the benefits of cloud computing.
c. Writing clear documentation upfront is cheaper than replacing new hires who fail due to poor onboarding (and, by extension, poor documentation)
Clearly written documentation makes it easier for an organization to train new hires, thus improving its onboarding process. Replacing a new hire because they’re underperforming due to poor onboarding is expensive—typically costing the company 30–50% of that person’s annual salary.
In contrast, providing clear, detailed documentation during onboarding is significantly more affordable. If that documentation takes a new hire less than 2% of their working hours to read and understand, then your company is spending less than 2% of their salary to equip them to succeed. That small investment in documentation can prevent a costly turnover and improve productivity from day one.
3: Personal branding
a. Writing signals initiative
Did you learn something new at work today? Write a blog about it. Used Vercel AI SDK to build an AI chatbot as a beginner to programming? Publish a tutorial on how to go about it. Are you starting to take professional courses to advance in your software engineering career? Don't just share the milestone on your LinkedIn profile—set up an account with one of the several blogging platforms and write about it.
Running your own blog signals that you possess initiative and confidence, which are both traits that are considered in assessing a person's leadership capabilities.
➡ Fair warning: If you're new to software development, your blog will most likely not be impressive enough to attract recruiters or collaborators. At this stage, spending too much time writing may slow down, rather than accelerate your growth. You'll be making better use of your hours reading open source repositories, tutorials, or even your own framework’s source code.
b. Publishing builds credibility over time
You don't need to wait to gather 20 years of experience before you start your blog. A simple no-code blog built on a content management system like WordPress costs under $50 to run yearly. You could also try Substack, Medium, or other fully-hosted platforms if you want to have access to a large audience from the start.
In addition to strengthening your public digital footprint, blogs can be repurposed into talks, conference submissions, or teaching gigs.
c. Blog authorship increases your professional visibility
If you're not ready to start a blog yet, consider writing content in your professional capacity as part of your company. At Devōt, most of the posts on our blog are published under the names of in-house software developers. While Devōt retains ownership of the content, the writers use these articles to show that they contribute, teach, and communicate clearly.
Take these blog posts, for instance:
-
The Power of HATEOAS: Enhancing Your RESTful APIs with Spring HATEOAS
-
Beginner’s Guide to Role-Based Access Control in Spring Boot
-
Why Is AI Bad? Understanding the Risks, Limitations, and Consequences of AI
Each one positions its author as an authority in the field of software development. When a post is cited, the author’s name is included—further boosting their visibility online.
4: Writing improves your communication skills
a. Writing regularly strengthens your ability to communicate clearly and effectively in writing
When you write with the goal of publishing, your priority is to communicate your ideas clearly. You don’t want readers mentally switching on their internal grammar checker—rewriting your sentences in their heads just to understand you. That’s exactly why you should start writing: to sharpen how you communicate and, over time, become a stronger writer.
b. Writing sharpens communication skills, and those are highly sought after in hiring
For a long time, recruiters—both technical and non-technical—have been sending a clear signal: communication skills play a major role in hiring decisions. According to a Forbes article, about 65% of recruiters believe a candidate’s communication skills matter more than their college major.
To bring this closer to home: while your technical knowledge is essential, your ability to communicate it is just as important. You might know exactly what caused a production bug, but if you can’t explain it clearly in an incident report or retro doc, your fix won’t stop it from happening again. And with 78% of companies adopting AI tools as of 2025, you need to be able to organize and articulate your ideas clearly to take full advantage of AI in software development.
c. Writing helps you become a better developer
Beyond everything that's been said so far, writing consistently helps you become a better developer. If you like to write—whether blogs or other content—you’ll build discipline in organizing and prioritizing ideas. That same discipline carries over into your coding: clearer comments, better design decisions, and stronger technical reasoning.
It may be difficult to keep writing regularly while managing your workload, but if you stay consistent, you’ll notice improvements in how you articulate complex concepts and how you give actionable feedback during code reviews.
5: Blogs serve as a sales aid
a. Blogging influences purchase decisions
HubSpot did a small survey of 300 consumers in 2023. Among other things, 56% of the respondents confirmed that they'd bought something from a company because of a blog post. According to this infographic from DemandMetric, companies that blog acquire 67% more leads each month than those that don't.
As with most data, the exact figures may have changed over time. But the core point remains: blogging contributes to increased sales.
b. Blogs are a monetization tool for individuals and businesses
Apart from the small percentage of bloggers who contribute to the 7.5 million blog posts published each year simply because they enjoy writing, most people who blog do so to promote a product or service. A software developer with a personal blog hosted on their own site may include affiliate links in their content to earn a commission whenever someone buys a product through those links.
Internally, organizations utilize blogs as a means for indirectly making money—by including lead magnets, sneaking in an honorable mention of one or two of their brand's offerings, or embedding other forms of content that lead the reader to explore other forms of the brand's content, such as YouTube videos and Instagram reels.
c. Informational content builds trust, and trust drives conversions
Some brands reportedly avoid publishing overtly promotional blogs. Instead, they focus on informing and educating their target audience, building trust and credibility. According to Salsify’s 2025 Consumer Research Report, this approach is why 87% of consumers say they’re willing to spend more on a product.
Still in doubt? Look at the SEO budgets of your biggest competitors. See how much they’re investing just to ensure their blogs generate thousands of views and clicks. Explore the blogs of both emerging startups and established players. Notice how often they offer one freebie or another just to get visitors to join an email list, whether directly or through more subtle hooks.
Brands are increasingly prioritizing SEO, not just to rise in search engine rankings—especially on Google—but also to appear in generative AI search results. In Semrush’s joint report with Statista on how generative AI is changing search behavior, one data point stands out: as of 2023, about 13 million U.S. adults were already using tools like ChatGPT as their primary way to search online. And based on year-over-year adoption trends, that number is projected to grow to over 90 million by 2027.
Bonus: A practical toolkit to start blogging as a developer
You don’t need a large following or a publishing background to start writing. You just need a clear reason and a workflow that works for you. Here’s a simple, effective toolkit to help you begin:
1. Choose a platform that matches your workflow
Pick a space where you can write without friction. Platforms like dev.to, Hashnode, and Medium are built with developer writing in mind. For more control, use static site generators like Hugo or Astro and host your blog on GitHub Pages or Netlify.
2. Start with the topics you already think about
Write about what you're learning, problems you’ve solved recently, or decisions you’ve made while building software. These posts resonate the most because they’re real, timely, and grounded in experience.
3. Keep your workflow lean
Use tools you already know. Markdown in VS Code or Obsidian is often enough. Grammarly or Hemingway can help with clarity. Focus on writing clearly, not writing perfectly.
4. Build consistency, not pressure
You don’t need to post weekly to see the benefits. A post every 3–4 weeks is enough to grow a presence, document your thinking, and build long-term visibility.
5. Repurpose what you’ve already written
Your answers on Stack Overflow, notes from a recent talk, or README documentation can be adapted into blog content. You’ve probably already written more than you think.
6. Track your progress, not your traffic
Early on, views and comments might be low. That’s fine. The value comes from the writing itself—clarifying your thoughts, building a portfolio, and sharing knowledge that scales beyond one conversation.
Conclusion: Start writing, provide value
It’s not enough to simply decide, “I’ll share my thoughts with the world (and maybe make a bit of money while at it).” You also need to consistently publish content that leaves each reader better off than they were before they found your piece. Need a good example to follow? Check out our blog posts here at Devōt.
