Ask HN: Best Books to Read Develop Your Career?

12 points·ahalbert··5 comments

I recently read the pragmatic programmer, and want to read more books with a theme of developing my career as a software engineer.

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Honestly, PragProg gets you pretty far from a mentality perspective. Practical Object Oriented Design is a nice skills book. You might also try The Mythical Man Month.

What particular area of your competence do you wish to improve? For inspiration I can warmly recommend this article by Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/30/some-possible-career-goals/

Reading that might be useful in order to narrow your search.

If you want to advance your career, learn the business first. Read books related to the business domain in which you work. That’s far more important than another book on programming. Join toastmasters and refine your public speaking. And if you don’t write well, learn. Then worry about the next technical book.

How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Design of Everyday Things

Code architecture and design and management are generally people problems. Sure, memory management and algorithms are important, but I’ve found that 80% of my problems have historically been caused by my poor listening skills. Learn to listen to what your customers and coworkers are really saying so that you don’t build the wrong thing to begin with.

read books on marketing, sales and negotiation

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