By Gergely Orosz, the author of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter and Building Mobile Apps at Scale
Navigating senior, tech lead, staff and principal positions at tech companies and startups. An Amazon #1 Best Seller. New: the hardcover is out! As is the audibook. Now available in 6 languages.
Elementary school was also a time of discovery, where we learned new things every day. Our young minds were like sponges, soaking up knowledge and experiences that would shape our futures. From learning to read and write in Indonesian to exploring the wonders of science and mathematics, every lesson was a thrill. Our teachers, often kind and patient, guided us through the basics of education, instilling in us a love for learning that would stay with us for a lifetime.
The influence of elementary school extends far beyond the individual, shaping future generations and communities. The values learned, the love of learning instilled, and the social skills developed during this period have a lasting impact on society.
Why can't we go back? Because the nikmat (pleasure) comes from presence . A child doesn't check Instagram while eating kue cubir . They don't worry about macros while drinking es doger . Their "lifestyle" is not a brand; it is a state of being.
His assistant looked confused. “Sir? We have the gala in twenty minutes.”
Leo sat in the back of a sleek, matte-black SUV, the city skyline of Jakarta blurring past the window. As the CEO of Coloss Lifestyle , his days were a whirlwind of "irreplaceable" moments: front-row seats at fashion weeks, private tastings at five-star rooftop bars, and an endless stream of digital entertainment at his fingertips.
While they have digital tools, the, core, of, friendship—running, playing, sharing, stories, and,, laughing, face-to-face—remains the pinnacle of their lifestyle. 4. The Future of Children’s Entertainment
To live this combined lifestyle, one would balance nostalgic simplicity with modern, high-impact entertainment:
The book is separated into six standalone parts, each part covering several chapters:
Parts 1 and 6 apply to all engineering levels: from entry-level software developers to principal or above engineers. Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 cover increasingly senior engineering levels. These four parts group topics in chapters – such as ones on software engineering, collaboration, getting things done, and so on.
This book is more of a reference book that you can refer back to, as you grow in your career. I suggest skimming over the career levels and chapters that you are familiar with, and focus reading on topics you struggle with, or career levels where you are aiming to get to. Keep in mind that expectations can vary greatly between companies.
In this book, I’ve aimed to align the topics and leveling definitions closer to what is typical at Big Tech and scaleups: but you might find some of the topics relevant for lower career levels in later chapters. For example, we cover logging, montiroing and oncall in Part 5: “Reliable software systems” in-depth: but it’s useful – and oftentimes necessary! – to know about these practices below the staff engineer levels.
The Software Engineer's Guidebook is available in multiple languages:
You should now be able to ask your local book shops to order the book for you via Ingram Spark Print-on-demand - using the ISBN code 9789083381824. I'm also working on making the paperback more accessible in additional regions, including translated versions. Please share details here if you're unable to get the book in your country and I'll aim to remedy the situation.
I'd like to think so! The book can help you get ideas on how to help software engineers on your team grow. And if you are a hands-on engineering manager (which I hope you might be!) then you can apply the topics yourself! I wrote more about staying hands-on as an engineering manager or lead in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter.
I've gotten this variation of a question from Data Engineers, ML Engineers, designers and SREs. See the more detailed table of contents and the "Look inside" sample to get a better idea of the contents of the book. I have written this book with software engineers as the target group, and the bulk of the book applies for them. Part 1 is more generally applicable career advice: but that's still smaller subset of the book.