The Software Engineer’s Guidebook @EngGuidebook Twitter profile

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

7 months

The Software Engineer's Guidebook is (finally!) out today! 413 pages, 27 chapters, 10 online-only bonus chapters, and 4 years of writing. Available to order as paperback, off Amazon: Thank you for all the patience - hopefully, it was worth the wait!

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

Healthy engineering teams, unhealthy engineering teams. Some thoughts:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

As a Senior or Staff engineer, how can you understand more about the business? Especially starting from the Staff level, getting a grip on how the business works - and how your team fits into the picture - becomes increasingly important to do outstanding work. A few approaches:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

An way to get more productive as a software engineer: practice writing clear and concise pull request summaries. This will help not only explain your thinking, but you'll catch yourself when overcomplicating things. Also: use images if making UI changes.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

What are ways Staff and Principal engineers - some of the most experienced engineers in a company - can get stuck? Onboarding is an all too typical situation. Here are common ways this happens, and what you can do to avoid it:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

What are tools of a productive software engineer? - Knowing your IDE and its capabilities - Debugging. Know how to use tools to help with this! - Automated tests. Learn to write robust and good tests. - CI/CD - Coding workflow. Small changes > big ones

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

"How can I improve my team's software engineering skills, as a Staff engineer?" There's stuff like pairing, mentoring, advising you can all do. But there's something much more impactful: become a pace setter. With your experience, there's little excuse not to do it.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

"How can I get that Senior Software Engineer promotion, quickly?" There's no one universal answer to this question: so much depends on where you are now, your company, manager etc. However, there are things that will help you grow professionally, and towards a senior level:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

What are the most common "types" of Staff+ engineers? This is not a simple question to answer. Here's my take on common Staff+ engineer profiles:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

When 'architecting' a system - aka planning how to build it, what components to put in place, what technologies to use - what are considerations you should take? Here's an important one: capture the current business needs, and anticipate future ones:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

Internal politics for software engineers: the "bad" type of politics. If an individual contributor is described as “political”, it almost certainly has a heavily negative meaning. A few perceptions which often contribute to this:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

7 months

The book is in the final stages, getting ready for print, a few weeks away from release. Right now, we are adding a few last visuals. For example, visualizing upstream and downstream dependencies:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

7 months

The Software Engineer's Guidebook: table of contents, parts 1-3 (from a total of 6 parts). Launching in a few days! Get notified when it is out:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

5 months

An interesting observation: most devs do *not* necessarily gravitate to work at profit centers within companies. This is because many profit centers are generating revenue, but in return can feel “boring”… versus new projects that are greenfield and exciting. From the book:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

What are some of the "typical" software engineer career paths? Even when it comes to more common ones, there is a huge variety. Here are 10 that are pretty "common." Software engineering is a field that is dynamically changing, and so "common" career paths will be less common!

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

"Stakeholders." As a sw engineer, doing your job tends to go beyond just executing tasks: it's often about figuring out what the 'right' work is to do. To do so, it's worth talking with stakeholders for your team. Who are these, and how can you locate them?

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

A challenge plenty of Staff+ engineers have: no "roots" on any team. Staff and above levels are ones where engineers are often not hired to support any one team. My advice? Sort this, and make your "main" team and priority clear.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

As a Staff and above engineer, you'll probably have a lot less time to write code. What are strategies to make the most of this more limited coding time? A few approaches:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

What are ways you can partner with Product Managers, as a Staff+ engineer, to work better? Here are some approaches. Many of these are relevant for engineers at all levels - though it's usually table stakes at the Staff+ level, and for eng managers. What else would you add?

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

When leading a project as an engineer, or tech lead, have you ever done a project kickoff? Gathering all stakeholders, having a project summary, making sure everyone (eng and non-eng) is on the same page? If not, you might want to give it a go. Some advice:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

Some advice if you're a software engineer, who is lucky enough to work with dedicated QA folks or a QA team. This is not the norm, across the industry. So take advantage of it, to build up your "QA muscle!"

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

The importance of personal connections. Once you onboarded to a company, it's smart to start to build up connections outside your immediate team: meet other engineers (and non-engineers!) and get to know them. These relationships could help get things done faster, later on!

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

8 months

The nearly finalized table of contents. (Currently in content review, and final editing)

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

One way to broaden your understanding of coding: Learn an imperative, a declarative and a functional language pretty well. Imperative languages: most ones. Declarative languages: markup languages like SQL or XSLT; ones like Prolog. Functional languages: F#, Haskell, Lisp.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

4 months

The more experienced of an engineer you are, the more inbound requests you'll get. Helping others all the time, however, will make your work suffer. Here's a tip: when you are "in the zone," respond to inbound requests with "I'll help, but not right now." From @EngGuidebook :

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

One of the underappreciated perks of great tech companies is dual career ladders. It's not just the clarity of how to become a manager, from an engineer. It's also the realization that you *can* take home more than managers, without becoming one. This is a feature, not a bug.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

The bigger of a tech company you work at, the more non-coding activities you’ll do day-to-day, even when focusing 100% on building software. The more senior you become, the more the non-coding activities take up your day. Learning how to focus manage your time early on is key.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

Learning how to unblock yourself as a software engineer is a skill that will help you in all environments: from startups to large companies. What are ways you've been blocked while building software? Here's a list we're starting with. What else would you add?

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

A possible source of tech debt: using dated languages or frameworks. Merely using ones that are well behind what is considered "modern" does not mean there is any debt. However, switching languages & frameworks often allows to revisit architecture decisions.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

To keep growing as an engineer, it’s a good strategy (and an advantage!) to pick up the languages/technologies used on your team, and surrounding teams. How to do this? Code reviews are an underrated way to learn a new language, on the side - and then get (much) better at it.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

The staff/senior/distinguished engineer is typically one or more levels above the senior one. These folks are expected to have more business impact than seniors. But what are ways staff (and above) engineers typically drive organization- and company-wide impact? Here are a few:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

On the importance of continuous learning, as a software engineer: the best and most inspiring engineers never stop learning. Here are a few ways you can keep doing this, and make it a habit.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

On career and $$ progression expectation vs a possible reality. Early on, you usually see a rapid progression in salary and promotions. It gets more difficult to get promoted beyond the senior level, and compensation changes scan slow down. You can always get lucky though!

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

When you’re blocked with your work, it’s usually due to lack of knowledge on something (how things work) or... people. Waiting on people, for the most part. To unblock yourself in these “people” cases, escalating is powerful (and necessary) tool. But be careful when using it.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

A commonly referenced list of Staff Archetypes comes from @Lethain in the book Staff Engineer. Here is his excellent list: The source: And the book:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

Christmas Tree-shaped developers/engineers: you can do anything you put your mind to!* Happy holidays. * but there's no shame in asking for help for design.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

Things to think about when running projects, as a software engineer. This topic will be part of @EngGuidebook as well.

Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz

2 years

I'm writing about running projects, as a software engineer (e.g. if you're a tech lead, or if you're given the opportunity to do this even without the title). Here are topics I'll cover. What else would you like to read about?

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

1 year

Meta is one of the few companies that has defined archetypes as part of their career ladder. These are: Generalist Specialist Coding Machine Tech Lead Fixer Product Hybrid Read more here:

Inside Facebook's Engineering Culture: Part 2

A broad and deep dive in how Facebook / Meta works, from the perspective of SWEs and EMs.

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

6 months

That is this book!

Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz

6 months

I cannot believe it: @EngGuidebook is the *absolute best seller* in the Netherlands, on Amazon!! NO. WAY. It's also the #2 in Sweden.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

4 years

Performance reviews are coming up soon at many places. Advice: don't rely on your manager knowing everything you did. They won't. Make a list of your achievements, impact, work. A self-assessment. Share it, before they start doing reviews. A story of why it can help:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 months

A review of the book by @SandorDargo (engineer at Shopify). "I don’t think this book help you become a better coder. There are more suitable books for that purpose, but this book is rather about how to be a successful engineer people want to work with."

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

7 months

Read more on how the book was written, and access sample chapters:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

(This cheatsheet coming in the book as well) 👇

Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz

3 years

Performance reviews are coming up. A *lot* of these reviews will be biased, esp from managers who are not aware of biases existing, and not actively countering them. Here's a WIP cheatsheet on how, as an employee, you can verbalize and counter them. I'd appreciate feedback.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

4 years

The chapter on performance reviews is in progress. Most tech companies tend to do performance reviews once or twice a year. We've heard of some that do even more frequent. Engineers/managers: how often do you have perf reviews at your company?

Once a year

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Twice a year

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Every quarter

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Other cadence

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

2 years

@kishvanchee @GergelyOrosz Sometime this year if all goes well!

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

Advice on preparing for performance reviews - and details on how the perf review process typically works: 👇

Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz

3 years

Here's a new experiment: as I'm writing the @EngGuidebook book, I'm recording myself talking about the topics I'm putting down on paper. With this (drumroll) my first-ever YouTube video on the topic of perf reviews for software engineers:

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

Some exciting news: 1. Growing as a Mobile Engineer is out! This is a shorter book than what @EngGuidebook . If you're a mobile engineer, you might find it helpful while this one gets ready: 2. Work will now resume on @EngGuidebook ! Target is summer 2021.

Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges

The guide for building large, iOS and Android native apps - with the challenges and common solutions across the industry.

www.mobileatscale.com

Gergely Orosz

@GergelyOrosz

3 years

I've published two books recently, but the second one - Growing as a Mobile Engineer - was a much more quiet launch. I don't like to overpromise: this ebook was meant to be a few of my Uber learnings. Here's what it ended up as: a concise guide to growing in the mobile domain.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

@FabienTownsend Yes, it’s a great idea! And you should probably start with this. I’d agree with the manager and team on how to do this. 1. You’ll do it the way it’s common in the company 2. The whole team will know how to do it, and will follow a similar approach.

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

@FabienTownsend Got it! Yes, that one can be so time consuming to get the logging, try to repro again...

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The Software Engineer’s Guidebook

@EngGuidebook

3 years

@FabienTownsend Ah, yes, legacy code. That’s a good one, thanks! What do you mean on monitoring? Being blocked on not having the right level/granularity of logs/alerts?

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