Management writer; co-author of In Search of Excellence and author of The Excellence Dividend.
recommended
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules
A list he wrote after his niece at Tuck asked him for the best leadership and management books; the second half is drawn from a draft of The Excellence Dividend.
Writer of The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter and books on software engineering careers; previously an engineering manager at Uber, Skype and Skyscanner.
mixed
Gallup interviewed thousands of high-performing teams and managers and found a dozen of things each of these teams had in common. While the insights are good, the content itself was quite dry for my taste.
His continuously-updated public reading list of software engineering and management books, newsletters and podcasts he recommends (page last modified 2024-12-16; the page states none of the links are affiliate or sponsored).
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.