The Software Engineer's Guidebook: Navigating senior, tech lead, and staff engineer positions at tech companies and startups

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.

This book follows the structure of a “typical” career path for a software engineer, from starting out as a fresh-faced software developer, through being a role model senior/lead, all the way to the staff/principle/distinguished level. It summarizes what I’ve learned as a developer and how I’ve approached coaching engineers at different stages of their careers.

We cover “soft” skills which become increasingly important as your seniority increases, and the “hard” parts of the job, like software engineering concepts and approaches which help you grow professionally.

Praise for the book

“From performance reviews to P95 latency, from team dynamics to testing, Gergely demystifies all aspects of a software career. This book is well named: it really does feel like the missing guidebook for the whole industry.” – Tanya Reilly, principal engineer and author of The Staff Engineer's Path

"Spanning a huge range of topics from technical to social in a concise manner, this belongs on the desk of any software engineer looking to grow their impact and their career." – James Stanier, Director of Engineering at Shopify