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.
Tengah hari, sebuah notifikasi muncul: “Nana Miho Indo18 mengirim pesan.” Sone363 mengernyit, lalu membuka percakapan. Nana, seorang teman lama yang kini menjadi partner kolaborasi kreatif, mengirimkan link video tutorial animasi. —sebuah rasa nikmat yang muncul ketika menemukan hal baru yang menginspirasi.
Sore hari, Sone363 memutuskan untuk beristirahat sejenak. Ia menyiapkan teh jahe hangat, duduk di balkon, dan menatap matahari terbenam yang perlahan menghilang di balik gedung‑gedung. atas momen-momen kecil yang membuat hari itu terasa “nikmat”.
Malam tiba, ia menutup laptop, menuliskan jurnal singkat: “Hari ini penuh tantangan, tapi setiap langkah kecil—dari kode hingga video Nana—memberi arti pada perjuangan.” Dengan pikiran yang lebih tenang, ia mematikan lampu, menyiapkan diri untuk tidur, berharap esok akan membawa pemulihan yang lebih baik.
Sone363 terbangun di pagi yang kelabu, rasa sakit menekan punggungnya seperti beban batu. Meskipun tubuh terasa lemah, ia tetap memaksa diri untuk memulai rutinitas . Ia menyiapkan sarapan sederhana—nasi goreng dengan telur mata sapi—sementara menatap jendela yang meneteskan embun.
Setelah makan, ia melangkah ke ruang kerja kecil di sudut apartemen. Laptop terbuka, layar menampilkan kode yang belum selesai. , namun ia terus menulis, men-debug, dan mengirimkan laporan kepada tim. Di sela‑sela pekerjaan, ia menyalakan musik lo‑fi, yang menjadi latar belakang menenangkan.
Setelah menonton tutorial, ia mencoba mengaplikasikan teknik baru pada proyeknya. , digantikan oleh kepuasan melihat animasi bergerak mulus di layar. Ia menulis catatan singkat, “Hari ini terasa berat, tapi menemukan hal baru membuatnya berharga.”
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.