
Ask HN: Which books have helped you the most professionally? - marai2
Often times I see threads on HN about good Compuer Science books, but I&#x27;d like to find out which books have helped you the most in your career growth (which may not specifically be CS type books) or professionally (which may be CS type books).<p>Edit - having a few words describe how the book was helpful would be really useful!
======
r0fl
Would it be ridiculous if you upvoted this comment??

Never Split The Difference - Chris Voss

This book has made a much greater negotiator both professionally and
personally.

“Would it be ridiculous if” and “How am I supposed to do that?” Have saved me
100s of thousands of dollars!! The only negative point is that the negotiation
style does not work on my wife ever since she read the book.

~~~
quickpost
Seconded on all counts. Except I'm not planning to recommend the book to my
wife for exactly the reason you mentioned! ;)

------
joshka
How to win friends and influence people. Helped me solve some approaches to
handling people in general and highlighted a few approaches that I had been
taking that were actively causing me problems.

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
by Gerald Weiberg. [1] Helped me understand why technical problems are rarely
just technical.

Working effectively with legacy code by Michael Feathers [2]. Practicing some
of the techniques in this helped me get my foot in the door in a job long ago
where one of the interview scenarios was "This is broken, go ahead and fix
it.". I recommend reading this for anyone working on a code base that's been
around for a while.

\--

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-
Suc...](https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Successfully-
ebook/dp/B004J35LHQ/)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Robert-
Mar...](https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Robert-Martin-
ebook/dp/B005OYHF0A/)

------
jefflombardjr
For a non-cs book, checkout Deep Work by Cal Newport. It's been a little while
since I read, but what struck me most is the mindset to avoid distractions.

~~~
InterestBazinga
I am truly greatful of reading that book. IMHO, A must read for our
email/social media burdened world.

------
johntran
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable,
Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann. Absolute best book on
system design.

------
fiskeben
The War of Art - about overcoming that nagging resistance to getting stuff
done that we all feel.

~~~
tombrm
Have you seen this video? It is basically the war of art book illustrated with
movie scenes: [https://youtu.be/1lTcgSzf0AQ](https://youtu.be/1lTcgSzf0AQ)

~~~
turingcompeteme
Wow, that video was much better than the book in my opinion. The book spends
chapters and chapters repeating the exact same thing over and over. And then
the last third of the book is about divine inspiration and other things I just
couldn't get into.

I always thought the book would have been better as a blog post or two, but
the video format was perfect. It presented the ideas and gave advice on how to
achieve them. I took a lot more from that video than I did from the book.

------
null000
"How to Solve it" was great for me from an abstract problem solving point of
view. It helped me get better at seeing which abstractions help solve an
otherwise difficult problem, which is a useful skill to have for coding
interviews and, really, most technically difficult problems encountered during
the work day.

------
superasn
As a small business owner I'd have to say E-Myth Revisited and Work the
system.

Because once you learn systems thinking, you see the world totally differently
and from a business point of view, understanding how their systems work is
like getting to have a look at the source code of that business.

------
john37386
If you want to embrace DevOp culture, where it comes from, why is it important
and the reality of medium big businnesses, then you definitely want to read
the Phoenix project

------
nandorsky
How to win friends and influence people

~~~
SippinLean
some of my favorite parts of _The Recognitions_ are the ones that make fun of
that book

>There was, finally, very little need to know anything at all, except how to
“deal with people.” College, the author implied, meant simply years wasted on
Latin verbs and calculus. Vergil, and Harvard, were cited regularly with an
uncomfortable, if off-hand, reverence for their unnecessary existences...In
these pages, he was assured that whatever his work, knowledge of it was
infinitely less important that knowing how to “deal with people.” This was
what brought a price in the market place; and what else could anyone possibly
want?

------
clintonb
"What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More
Successful" by Marshall Goldsmith helped me become a better teammate and
communicator.

------
amorphid
You've Only Got Three Seconds by Camille Lavington. Basically helped me to
understand what I can do to make a good impression on others.

------
muzani
33 Strategies of War. It's good for dealing with any and all types of
conflict, including conflicts with yourself. Half of the book is
unconventional techniques most people don't even think of.

Similarly themed is Extreme Ownership, which covers leadership in chaotic
situstions.

Militaries are designed to deal with the chaos of war, and a lot of principles
apply to the chaos of software engineering too.

------
mbrodersen
"Large-Scale C++ Software Design" by John Lakos. The only book (as far as I
know) that really teach you the nitty gritty of handling very large scale
systems (not just C++ systems). Something I have needed more than once in my
career.

------
crdoconnor
Mythical Man Month

------
kristianp
SICP, the foundation on which my career rests.

~~~
TurboHaskal
SICP almost turned me into an unemployable mess.

Fortunately I managed to forget it all and am now happily earning a good
living in a subset of Pascal called Go.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Off topic, but I'm curious: Why do you call Go a subset of Pascal? Go seems to
me to be rather different, both in spirit (much less restrictive and nanny-
like) and in syntax.

------
noobly
I'm no professional but I was very impressed by the immediate utility and
domain independence of what I gained from reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

I've always felt that intelligence is largely cultivated (or at least a
significant portion of what we commonly refer to as 'intelligence'), and much
of this book seemed to agree and offered constructive advice on improving ones
cognition, along with making use of many quirks, oddities and primitive habits
our brains have been endowed with.

------
wjr
ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (good reference on good
principles)

Traction by Gino Wickman (how to create SOPs & scale)

Authority by Nathan Barry (how to develop an audience)

------
slipwalker
early in my career, those two books were on my desk continuously:
[https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programming-Perl-Lincoln-
Stei...](https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programming-Perl-Lincoln-
Stein/dp/0201615711/) [https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Perl-
Practical-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-Perl-Practical-
Programming/dp/1565923987/)

later, it was time for [https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/0671027034)

------
tombrm
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Wow what an amazing coincidence. I was at the library today and picked up this
book. It wasn't featured in any way, my eye just happened to fall on this
particular book, on one of the many many shelves there.

------
Fire-Dragon-DoL
POODR - Practical Object oriented design in ruby. Changed my way of coding
entirely, brought me to a completely different level and pushed an even bigger
growth

------
jrs235
Difficult Conversations

Primal Leadership

Necessary Endings

------
btgeekboy
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Time Management For Systems
Administrators. The concepts also work for devs too.

------
keufran
Software Craftsmanship from mancuso helped me a lot to find meaning in my work
as a software devloper

------
SkyRocknRoll
First 90 days from HBR

------
q-base
Pitch Anything - About selling and the psychology of selling. Really need to
re-read that one actually.

And +1 for Deep Work, So Good They Can't Ignore You or The World Beyond Your
Head. They made me realize that being in a profession where you can reach
"flow state" actually is a privilege.

