Software Engineer's Guidebook (Bestseller)

In my first few years as a developer I assumed that hard work was all I needed. Then I was passed over for a promotion and my manager couldn’t give me feedback on what areas to improve, so I could get to the senior engineer level. I was frustrated; even bitter: not as much about missing the promotion, but because of the lack of guidance.

By the time I became a manager, I was determined to support engineers reporting to me with the kind of feedback and support I wish I would have gotten years earlier. And I did. While my team tripled over the next two years, people became visibly better engineers, and this progression was clear from performance reviews and promotions.

This book is a summary of the advice I’ve given to software engineers over the years — and then some more. The book follows the structure of a typical career path of a software engineer at a startup or Big Tech: starting off as an entry-level software developer; through the senior engineer level; the tech lead role; all the way to thriving as a role-model staff or principal engineer.

About the Author

Gergely Orosz has been a software engineer for ten years — growing from new graduate developer to principal engineer — and spent another five years as an engineering manager. He now keeps a pulse on how the software engineering industry changes: he writes The Pragmatic Engineer. This is a weekly newsletter on Big Tech and startups; from the inside. Get access to bonus, online-only chapters of the book at: pragmaticurl.com/bonus

Book Review

"The book equips you with how to grow beyond the mid-career developer levels, and understand what is expected out of roles and situations you could be in. Reading this book made me lament one thing: how it was not available earlier in my career! It is absolutely essential for all software engineers."
— Arnav Gupta, Director of Engineering at Jio Cinema