Writer of The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter and books on software engineering careers; previously an engineering manager at Uber, Skype and Skyscanner.
loved
A novel on empowerment, teamwork and breaking down the hierarchical structure. All of it taking place onboard a nuclear submarine (really!).
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).
Engineering leader and writer; wrote The Manager's Path and Platform Engineering
loved
The most successful book I tried to get folks to read was Turn the Ship Around . I read it with my leadership team, and we would discuss it in our team meetings. It is a book that is so deeply applicable to the practice of managing engineering teams that I think it was easy for my team to appreciate its value.
A blog post about trying to get her engineering team to read management books
Management writer; co-author of In Search of Excellence and author of The Excellence Dividend.
recommended
David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!
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.
Programmer and writer. Keeps a running list of the non-fiction he reads, starring the ones he recommends.
read
Guide to transforming top-down organizations into lean ones, where everyone is a leader. Written by a submarine commander, it’s mostly useful to managers in big corporations and other institutions.
On his public list of books he has read, with his notes.
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.
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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
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