Books / Star Engineer

Star Engineer Books

You have a few years under your belt. You’re cranking out code. Fixing bugs left and right, all while launching new features. These books will help you advance your skills, transforming you into a higher leverage and more valuable engineer.

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The Staff Engineer’s Path

The Staff Engineer’s Path

What it takes to succeed as a Staff Engineer

Data Science on AWS

Data Science on AWS

Using AWS built-in data science tools to improve your application

Monolith to Microservices

Monolith to Microservices

The tradeoffs and implementation patterns of microservices

Hacker News Books

Hacker News Books

Hacker News favorite software engineering and startup books

Masters of Doom

Masters of Doom

The story behind Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, and Doom

Extreme Programming Explained

Extreme Programming Explained

Principles and practices of agile development

Refactoring

Catalog of code readability and structure improvements

System Design Interview

System Design Interview

Real-world system design interview questions that also help you excel in your current role

Ask Me This Instead

Ask Me This Instead

How to interview the company, not just having them interview you

Books for Developers to Improve Their Writing Skills

Books for Developers to Improve Their Writing Skills

Improve your writing and communication skills

Books to Improve Code Testability

Books to Improve Code Testability

How to write code that supports automated testing

Making Work Visible

Making Work Visible

Fantastic description of using kanban boards to improve software delivery

The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project

A novel about transformational leadership in technology

Data Pipelines Pocket Reference

Data Pipelines Pocket Reference

Using SQL and Python to create data pipelines

Coders at Work

Interviews with software development legends

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

Refactorings to increase the testability of legacy code

Show Your Work

The quick and inspirational guide to self promotion through content

Foundations of Security

Foundations of Security

Security threats programmers need to defend against

Never Split the Difference

Never Split the Difference

Practical guide to everyday negotiations

5 Books to Increase Productivity on Software Engineering Teams

5 Books to Increase Productivity on Software Engineering Teams

Software development metrics and advice to improve productivity and performance

Working in Public

Working in Public

Why developers create open source projects and how they are maintained at scaled

The Problem with Software

The Problem with Software

A brief history of computer programming, plus analysis of the gap between academia and industry

Books on Distributed Systems and Resilience Engineering

Books on Distributed Systems and Resilience Engineering

Build systems to serve more users while increasing reliability and performance

SQL Antipatterns

SQL Antipatterns

Database design pitfalls that you will make if you haven’t already

Hackers & Painters

Hackers & Painters

The culture and languages of makers

The DevOps Handbook

The DevOps Handbook

A pragmatic devops guide for SREs and developers

Staff Engineer

Beyond senior engineer on the technical leadership track

A Philosophy of Software Design

A Philosophy of Software Design

An introduction to useful coding practices

On Writing Well

On Writing Well

The practical guide to non-fiction writing

Clean Architecture

Clean Architecture

Pragmatic advice for transforming readable code into a solid architecture

Designing for Behavior Change

Designing for Behavior Change

Applying behavior change science to software design and development

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Quality is hard to define but we know it exists somewhere

Code Complete

The book every junior to mid-level engineer should read to improve their code

The Master Algorithm

The Master Algorithm

Machine learning primer for technically-minded people

Practical Monitoring

Practical Monitoring

A quick read covering the basics of monitoring

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

A quick read self-help guide to focusing on what you care about and ignoring the rest

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Highly technical guide to modern data storage systems

Release It!

Technical primer on resilience engineering

Clean Code

The book on code quality I wish every engineering job applicant would read

Flow

The science of being in the zone

The Pragmatic Programmer

The Pragmatic Programmer

Look into the world of professional software development

Articles for Star Engineers

Clean workspaces instead of rewrites

Clean workspaces instead of rewrites

The pragmatic engineer’s alternative to a rewrite

Refactoring is a daily job

Refactoring is a daily job

Five things that engineering leaders need to understand about refactoring

Deploy to production on day one

Deploy to production on day one

Shipping on the first day is an opportunity to send positive signals to new hires about your engineering culture

Your Third Job in Software

Your Third Job in Software

Navigate around the pitfalls of finding your third job in software. The right job.