Thread by @gregorywitek

This year I've read so far 20 books. Here's what I do and don't recommend: 📕

1. "Multipliers" - a book about a leadership and being a genius vs genius maker (someone who helps other to reach their potential). Overall ok, but it should be 50 pages instead of 250

2. "System design interview" by @alexxubyte - great read when preparing for tech interviews. Very solid and yet concise examples. It helped me to pass a number of interviews. Highly recommended!

3. "A Philosophy of software design" by @JohnOusterhout - solid read, I didn't agree with all the points there but I recommend it for every mid-level developer. IMO way more valuable and universal than "Clean code" and others

4. "Culture map" by @ErinMeyerINSEAD - one of my favorites this year, it talks about cultural differences. Working in a few countries I saw these differences but I lacked a mental model to better think about them, and thes book helped me with that

5. "Software Engineering at Google" - surprisingly it made me realize that I have already followed a lot of good practices that are a standard at Google. Overal a pleasant and informative book

6. "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by @martinkl - a thick book, but full of great insights. I used it as a prep for system design interview, but I can recommend it for every senior developer out there

7. "The Software Engineering Manager Interview Guide" by @vgraupera - a good intro for everyone interviewing for EM position for the first time. Short book with a lot of questions that are common during interviews

8. "The Mythical Man-Month" - a classic that I don't think should be recommended anymore. I know it's a source of a lot of great insights, but it hasn't aged well

9. "The art of readable code" by @dustinboswell - a book I'll be recommending to everyone who wants to read "Clean Code". It's more concise, less dogmatic, less Java-centric and just overall better

10. "Site Reliability Engineering" - a book about SRE at Google. Tons of interesting content, but at some point I got lost in all the numbers and examples there. A bit too heavy, but a good, 500-pages intro to SRE at scale

11. "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns" by @KentBeck - I read it out of curiosity and even though I spent roughly 7min learning Smalltalk, I could easily follow it. I've also learned how much Smalltalk-inspired stuff @yukihiro_matz used in Ruby

12. "Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager" by @jstanier - I think I talked about it before. It's a book that I wish I wrote, written better than I could write it. Solid starter for every engineering manager

13. "So Good They Can't Ignore You" - a book that says you shouldn't follow your passion and then provides examples of successful people who were very passionate about their work 🤷🏻 besides that there's some good advice there though

14. "The coaching habit" - it should have been an email... or rather a blog post. A short book that provides solid coaching advice, but it really doesn't contain enough info to justify 117 pages

15. "The Origins of Political Order" - I bought it as an audiobook and I struggled with it. The topic and the content is very interesting, but it requires sitting down and focusing fully on the book. I need to re-read it in the future

16. "The Practice of Groundedness" by @BStulberg - I've praised it before on Twitter. It's a self-help book, but one of those few that has some original ideas and original content. So good after audiobook I bought a paper version

17. "Atomic habits" by @jamesclear - a very popular book that kind of lives up to expectations. It offers simple, yet effective ideas on how to step by step build good habits

18. "Broken stars" - a collection of Chinese sci-fi stories. For someone who knows Chinese culture rather superficially, it was very interesting to see how it impacts the way sci-fi is written. Not all stories were great, but a couple of them were brilliant

19. "A convenience store woman" - this time Japanese fiction, talking about a mundane life of a social outcast, working for a convenience store. Short and interesting story

20. "Staff Engineer" - half-book, half-interviews with staff engineers. I wrote more on Goodreads (goodreads.com/review/show/43…), overall I think I expected more. It certainly lacks the depth and detail that "An elegant puzzle" (author's previous book) had.