My take away is that you don’t need to read any book in particular to reach the ‘staff’ level. There’s nothing on this list that isn’t accessible to a junior with a year of experience.
Definitely. Guess what I meant (and poorly explained) was that many people don’t think a lot about non-technical aspects of engineering until they get to senior levels. Or at least I didn’t 😬.
Will update the article to reflect that. Thanks for the feedback!
That’s not a stupid question, and I should’ve just titled this “my software engineering reading list”.
Staff engineer is a level in many engineering career ladders, above senior engineer. I titled the reading list with “staff engineer” because I tended to read a different set of books than these earlier in my career, but now these seem to be the most impactful.
But others in this thread rightfully pointed out that these books are useful for all experience levels.
I would rename the post, but then that would change the url to the article 🤔
I haven’t read it yet, but the author of An Elegant Puzzle also has a new book called Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track. Unfortunately, it’s self published, so it’s probably wise to wait for reviews.
Thanks for putting this together! We went over Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs in my programming languages course, but I’ll definitely add some of these others to my list of “eventually” books.
Also wanted to note that the ISBN for the first book is off. It looks like it may have been copied from the second in the list.
SICP brings wonders. The rest I don’t know.
SICP: https://github.com/sarabander/sicp
SICP is vastly overrated.
Ok, I’ll bite. Why do you say that?
I understand it doesn’t resonate with everybody, which is why I included it in the section of books good for specific interests.
C’mon, these are great books even for the entry level grunt.
And I struggle with “An Elegant Puzzle,” it is not a book I would recommend.
That’s fair. Wasn’t sure if the “staff engineering” label made sense, but I went with it because
But agreed that these are probably great choices for anybody. Updated some wording in the article to account for this.
For a “Staff” software engineer, this book should be on their reading list: https://www.amazon.com/Developer-Hegemony-Erik-Dietrich/dp/0692866809
Not a book about programming, but about the corporate system they are part of.
My take away is that you don’t need to read any book in particular to reach the ‘staff’ level. There’s nothing on this list that isn’t accessible to a junior with a year of experience.
Definitely. Guess what I meant (and poorly explained) was that many people don’t think a lot about non-technical aspects of engineering until they get to senior levels. Or at least I didn’t 😬.
Will update the article to reflect that. Thanks for the feedback!
You’re welcome! I might pick up “The Pyramid Principle” based on this and JulianWgs’ comment
Ok. With the risk of sounding stupid, What is a staff engineer?
That’s not a stupid question, and I should’ve just titled this “my software engineering reading list”.
Staff engineer is a level in many engineering career ladders, above senior engineer. I titled the reading list with “staff engineer” because I tended to read a different set of books than these earlier in my career, but now these seem to be the most impactful.
But others in this thread rightfully pointed out that these books are useful for all experience levels.
I would rename the post, but then that would change the url to the article 🤔
I haven’t read it yet, but the author of An Elegant Puzzle also has a new book called Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track. Unfortunately, it’s self published, so it’s probably wise to wait for reviews.
I can really recommend „The Pyramid Principle“. It will change the way you structure your thoughts (and write better e-mails, if you are into that)
Without a doubt! I’ve been using it a lot for proposals and presentations, as well.
Thanks for putting this together! We went over Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs in my programming languages course, but I’ll definitely add some of these others to my list of “eventually” books.
Also wanted to note that the ISBN for the first book is off. It looks like it may have been copied from the second in the list.
Thanks for catching the ISBN error! Fixed.