In my first few years as a developer I assumed that hard work was all I needed. Then I was passed over for a promotion and my manager couldn’t give me feedback on what areas to improve, so I could get to the senior engineer level. I was frustrated; even bitter: not as much about missing the promotion, but because of the lack of guidance. By the time I became a manager, I was determined to support engineers reporting to me with the kind of feedback and support I wish I would have gotten years earlier. And I did. While my team tripled over the next two years, people became visibly better engineers, and this progression was clear from performance reviews and promotions. This book is a summary of the advice I’ve given to software engineers over the years – and then some more. This book follows the structure of a “typical” career path for a software engineer , from starting out as a fresh-faced software developer, through being a role model senior/lead, all the way to the staff/principle/distinguished level. It summarizes what I’ve learned as a developer and how I’ve approached coaching engineers at different stages of their careers. We cover “soft” skills which become increasingly important as your seniority increases, and the “hard” parts of the job, like software engineering concepts and approaches which help you grow professionally. The names of levels and their expectations can – and do! – vary across companies. The higher “tier” a business is, the more tends to be expected of engineers, compared to lower tier places. For example, the “senior engineer” level has notoriously high expectations at Google (L5 level) and Meta (E5 level,) compared to lower-tier companies. If you work at a higher-tier business, it may be useful to read the chapters about higher levels, and not only the level you’re currently interested in. The book is composed of six standalone parts, each made up of several chapters: Part 1: Developer Career Fundamentals Part 2: The Competent Software Developer Part 3: The Well-Rounded Senior Engineer Part 4: The Pragmatic Tech Lead Part 5: Role Model Staff and Principal Engineers Part 6: Conclusion Parts 1 and 6 apply to all engineering levels, from entry-level software developer, to principal-and-above engineer. Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 cover increasingly senior engineering levels and group together topics in chapters, such as “Software Engineering,” “Collaboration,” “Getting Things Done,” etc. Naming and levels vary, but the principles of what makes a great engineer who is impactful at the individual, team, and organizational levels, are remarkably constant. No matter where you are in your career, I hope this book provides a fresh perspective and new ideas on how to grow as an engineer. Praise for the book “From performance reviews to P95 latency, from team dynamics to testing, Gergely demystifies all aspects of a software career. This book is well named: it really does feel like the missing guidebook for the whole industry.” – Tanya Reilly, senior principal engineer and author of The Staff Engineer's Path "Spanning a huge range of topics from technical to social in a concise manner, this belongs on the desk of any software engineer looking to grow their impact and their career. You'll reach for it again and again for sage advice in any situation." – James Stanier, Director of Engineering at Shopify, author of TheEngineeringManager.com

Recommended on 1 episode:

A Lot Has Happened in A.I. Let’s Catch Up.

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT. A lot has happened since. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, recently dominated headlines again after the nonprofit board of directors fired C.E.O. Sam Altman, only for him to return several days later. But that drama isn’t actually the most important thing going on in the A.I. world, which hasn’t slowed down over the past year, even as people are still discovering ChatGPT for the first time and reckoning with all of its implications. Tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are hosts of the weekly podcast “Hard Fork.” Roose is my colleague at The Times, where he writes a tech column called “The Shift.” Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer, a newsletter about the intersection of technology and democracy. They’ve been closely tracking developments in the field since well before ChatGPT launched. I invited them on the show to catch up on the state of A.I. We discuss: who is — and isn’t — integrating ChatGPT into their daily lives, the ripe market for A.I. social companions, why so many companies are hesitant to dive in, progress in the field of A.I. “interpretability” research, and America’s “fecklessness” that cedes major A.I. benefits to the private sector, and much more.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940 by David E. E. Nye
• 📘  Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill
• 📗  Introduction to LLMs for Business Leaders: Responsible AI Strategy Beyond Fear and Hype (Byte-sized Learning) by I. Almeida
• 📙  When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles by Bill Johnson, Jack Taylor, Randy Clark
• 📕  AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan, Sayash Kapoor
• 📘  The Software Engineer's Guidebook: Navigating senior, tech lead, and staff engineer positions at tech companies and startups by Gergely Orosz

Kevin Roose , Casey Newton Dec. 1, 2023 6 books recommended

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