This page is based on the reading list from Gergely Orosz. I think it’s a splendid format to share books that I recommend.
The list below is a collection of software engineering and engineering management books I have read and recommend to others.
Engineering Books
These are books I learned a lot from as a software engineer.
★★★★★
- Grokking Algorithms. A great intro or a refresher for all the algorithms you’d likely need to use at a tech company.
- Clean Code - A book of coding best practices/patterns for a healthy codebase with some case studies. I read this book after having about five years of professional coding experience, and it changed how I approached code readability, testing, and maintenance.
- Domain-Driven Design - Great book to learn all the basics from DDD. You can learn a lot from ubiquitous language to bounded context in this book.
★★★★☆
- Refactoring - A book by Martin Fowler. It has unique patterns for refactoring your code smart and iterative. It’s a must-read for every engineer.
- Clean Architecture- From the same writer of Clean Code, this book covers the architecture gotchas that we need to be careful of. It also gives us many tips on how to build effective architecture.
- Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems - Hardcover & (free) online book - a good overview of SRE at Google. For those who worked at places with on-call, much of the first part of the book will be very familiar. Remember that your mileage might vary: what works at Google scale might not be the ideal fit for your use case.
(Engineering) Management Books
These books helped me level up as a tech lead and engineering manager.
★★★★★
- The Manager’s Path - a concise guide for managers, from tech lead, through line managers, managers of managers, all the way to CTO.
- The Phoenix Project - a novel inspired by the Goal, this time playing inside an enterprise in 2010.
- An Elegant Puzzle - a long overdue read for engineering leads. The most hands-on read on engineering management I’ve picked up. Apart from the book, the Recommended Papers section in the appendix list excellent engineering reads. See my in-detail review and book notes.
Newsletters
Curated newsletters are my preferred way to stay up to speed with what’s new and relevant in software engineering. I’ve tried out many newsletters, and here are my favorite ones, which I keep reading through every week. (Note: I also send a newsletter on engineering, tech leadership, and distributed systems once a month).
Tech Leadership
Software Lead Weekly by Oren Ellenbogen, VP of engineering at Forter. Five articles per week on technology and leadership. 23,500+ readers.
- Level Up from Pat Kua, Chief Scientist at N26. Another brilliant persona that I had the privilege to work with. His newsletter offers 15-20 exciting links on leadership, tech, organizations, and processes.
- The Weekly Hagakure by Paulo André, previously director of engineering at HelloFresh, I worked with. A weekly newsletter with three articles, two videos, and one book recommendation for technical leaders.
Software Engineering
- Changelog - interesting weekly links about what’s happening in the engineering industry.
Podcasts
I frequently listen to the below podcasts.
Tech Leadership
- The critical channel - a podcast I co-host. It’s about leadership, culture, and much more.
Software Engineering
- The Ladybug Podcast - a fresh take on the industry with three women software engineer hosts. Shorter episodes every week or two.
- Kubernetes - weekly news and interviews from the Kubernetes community.
- Go time - a weekly podcast with various discussions around the Go community.