Edmundas
Tanya Reilly brings lots of clarity, actionable advice, and guidance to the Staff+ engineer's path in her book The Staff Engineer's Path. It is a well-rounded and practical book teaching you how to grow as an engineer and learn how to bring change in any organization. The content structure is compelling, engages the reader on the initial read, and allows them to reference the material later easily—a definite read.
Tanya Reilly's worldbuilding with the Locator, Topographical, Treasure, and Trail maps feels on-point and helps consolidate the big-picture thinking. Seeing a drawing of a staff engineer building the proverbial bridge to connect gaps between organizations long before a quarterly planning bridge is built sticks with you.
Undoubtedly, The Staff Engineer's Path by Tanya Reilly will get frequently compared to Will Larson's Staff Engineer. While Larson's book has good content, Tanya Reilly's book feels much higher caliber and more thoughtfully structured. Both books do not compete but rather complement each other, although if I had to pick one, I would go for The Staff Engineer's Path.
I highly recommend The Staff Engineer's Path to all software engineers and managers. Even if you're not aspiring to be a Staff+ engineer or are on the management track, the book will build appropriate expectations for what a Staff+ engineer can or should be.
Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track is a book with decent content but a terrible format. If you consume this book as an audiobook or paperback, you will likely find it lacking and inconvenient. At its best, the book offers practical insights about building engineering strategies or effectively presenting initiatives to executives. At its worst, the book flings you onto external blog posts, usually Will's own, to get to the juicy stuff. The rest of the book is padded with Staff+ engineer stories (interviews) that look like a disproportionally lengthy appendix.
How you engage with the book will highly depend on the expectations. I was expecting a guided experience with Staff engineer stories or situations mixed in-between. Frankly, this was more or less the case in some chapters. However, when I reached the stories part, the engagement dropped. Plaughing through the same question/answer format of a dozen Staff+ engineers felt like a chore. This fact is exarcerbated by realizing that parts of the stories are already included in the first part of the book anyway! I think Will Larson was on the right track when taking excerpts of the stories and combining them into educated, experience based deductions. I wish there was more of it throughout the book.
Overall, if you take the book in isolation, not knowing what's put out there already by Will Larson himself or others, it can be a decent read. However, when you realize that the book is a series of guides and stories stitched together from StaffEng, it is clear the book does not offer much extra.
Improv Wisdom connects to improvisational theater through improv maxims, and Patricia Ryan Madson tries to bring them to everyday life. If you remove the word improv from the book, most of the material will still preserve its meaning. It will not teach you improv and, at best, send you down a path of self-help-induced positive vibes.
The book is a collection of highly general and bland advice with no memorable stories from improvisational theater acting experience. In the chapter "wake up to the gifts," a few short sentences mention improvisation, and the rest is about the author's life flashbacks. "By focusing on what was right <...>, we managed to avoid the shouting and blaming <...>. We saw the gift in the moment <...>. Use this approach to create a lens of life." This writing pattern repeats throughout the book, and while I appreciate the cheerful tones, Patricia Ryan Madson does little setup for the advice to carry significant weight.
Ultimately, the book feels more like spiritual self-help advice than improvisational theater skills showcased outside the theatre. If you're in the market for reinforcing positive loops and need the nudge, this book can help. However, there are better mediums and content to get you there.
On the surface, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre is a book for those interested in theatre and improvisation. Keith Johnstone assembled it as part autobiography, part practical advice with situational examples. At the same time, the book is about the liberation of the mind and collaboration. Don't overthink a situation, and don't try to control it; accept each interaction and build upon it.
Keith Johnstone explores Status, Spontaneity, Narration, and Masks as the leading aspects of improvisation. Most of the readers will find the chapter Status as a revelation. Each interaction is a transaction between statuses, where status is an individual's sense of self-esteem and power difference. In improvisation, status is not fixed or assigned to an individual permanently. Status interactions and transformations during scenes help create dramatic tension, conflict, and comedy. Once you get how it works, you will understand what makes interactions engaging and will look at improvisation in a new light.
Whenever someone offers an idea, you can either accept or block it. Keith Johnstone describes blocking as a form of aggression: "when in doubt, say 'NO.' We use this in life as a way of blocking action." The author teaches that for actors to develop a scene in improvisation, they must help each other by accepting. If we take the same advice out of improvisation, it holds in everyday life too.
In the last chapter, Keith Johnstone focuses on Masks and Trance. If taken out of context, you would think the author describes ghost stories, demonic possessions, and voodoo magic. I found the chapter perplexing because it was my first time reading about mask acting, and it only occurred to me after how masks can change an actor's senses and behavior. The chapter is an intriguing read, albeit it provokes some skepticism.
The book is a brilliant introduction to improvisation acting. It is also a guide to being more receptive to others and overcoming the fear of failure by releasing the desire to be in control.
If there's one word by which I'd have to describe the book Contagious, it would be passable. The content is good enough to have some practical value. The book can provide mild entertainment from the stories Jonah Berger tells. But whether the book can stand the test of time or offer insights you couldn't arrive at on your own is something to consider.
The book revolves around the concept of STEPPS - six principles that describe why ideas catch on and spread. Jonah Berger dissects each principle by providing examples from ads, marketing stories, and some dubious research. These examples are passable enough to support the principles, but I am not convinced they're the formula of success. The author says that "the best part of the STEPPS framework is that anyone can use it. It doesn't require a huge advertising budget, marketing genius or some sort of creativity gene". However, the book did not lift my sense of skepticism on that.
I question whether the book can stand the test of time. Having published the book in early 2010s, Jonah Berger built it around the realities of that time. While I believe the described principles are still valid, they probably require different contexts to fully reflect the world of 2023 and beyond. The viral aspect of an idea stems from the human psychology, which cannot radically change in a decade. However, word of mouth is increasingly moving to social networks and are distilled through algorithms. Mix it with the shortening attention spans thanks to platforms such as TikTok and being tethered to our phones and computers, and the simple framework of STEPPS becomes dated.
Contagious is a passable read both for practical value and entertainment to reinforce the thoughts that you already have about ideas that tend to go viral. Read the book if you must, but don't expect it to have a lasting effect.
"Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we're going." After recently having read The Skeptics Guide to The Future, I jumped on the tomorrow bandwagon, and the premise of Y. N. Harari's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow clicked instantly with me.
Throughout the book, I felt engaged and emotionally invested. The narrative flows seamlessly from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. Y. N. Harari uses his historical expertise to connect the dots and form a cohesive story. Although the author spends the first 80 pages setting the stage, I was happy to be along for the journey.
While some might expect concrete predictions, Y. N. Harari takes a different approach, opting instead to expand our minds and stimulate our imaginations and fears. As the author puts it, "instead of narrowing our horizons by forecasting a single scenario, the book aims to broaden our horizons and make us aware of a much wider spectrum of options."
Can we envision a future in which we willingly surrender all our privacy? Decades ago, the notion of people recording every aspect of their lives and sharing it with millions of strangers would have seemed absurd. Will we need the counsel of friends, relatives, and spouses if Dataism suggests that a system knows us better than we know ourselves? Will our experiences eventually be valued as little as those of sheep?
If you want a more philosophical take on the future, Homo Deus can scratch that itch. By the end of the book, you will likely have collected a range of deep reflections and questions you haven't thought of before. I know I certainly did, and this is why it's easy for me to recommend this book.
As an adamant fan of astrophysics and all things cosmos, I got sucked into the proverbial black hole that Stephen Hawking had created with the book A Brief History of Time. However, fairly early in the book, I nodded to myself, agreeing with the consensus that the book can be a challenge to people without a physics or cosmology background. Trying to conceptualize imaginary time on top of hearing about imaginary numbers for the first time may be overwhelming for some people.
Stephen Hawking wrote the book for the general, non-technical audience. Be that as it may, I found that the concept and theory explanations are inconsistent in their delivery, as if there were missing pages sometimes. Things like geodesics and great circles are accompanied by illustrations, whereas the reader is left to imagine concepts such as imaginary numbers and imaginary time.
The first edition got released in 1988, so the book has had a long time to build its legacy. Along with that legacy also come the discoveries and phenomena that were theorized or observed indirectly back then. Gravitational waves, for example, were first directly observed only in 2015 by LIGO. It is possible to trip over the facts that are no longer entirely true today. The book explores the scenarios in which the Universe is contracting, expanding, or static. However, in 1998, ten years after the first edition came out, it was discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Unfortunately, this fact is only mentioned in the book's appendix (I read the 2016 edition).
Overall, do not expect an easy read. A Brief History of Time will leave a lasting impression if you're willing to dedicate quality time to it. The book is slightly dated in its original form, and you are required to read the appendix to stay true to the facts.
The Gods Themselves is a meltingly fantastic sci-fi novel and one of Asimov's favorites. I think it's a kind of story that works well as a book but would probably be challenging to bring to the big screens or as a TV series. Nonetheless, expect to find alien sex, nude people on the Moon, parallel universes and electron pumps here!
The main highlight of the book is the exploration of a parallel universe where the laws of physics are slightly different and what it means for the aliens living in the such universe. I expected to find humanoid aliens in this parallel universe, but Isaac Asimov was much more creative than that. Don't get surprised if you get aroused by gaseous lifeforms rubbing into rocks!
I think the story could be more engaging if it was not divided into three parts. Each part progresses the overall story but only loosely connects the characters. I could easily imagine the book fleshed out into three separate books.
Overall, The Goods Themselves is definitely a recommended read for sci-fi fans.
Starry Messenger is a stark deviation from Neil DeGrasse Tyson's other books. Here Neil delves into more controversial topics, such as race, religion, the value of human life, and politics, and tries to expose them through the perspective of accountability, wisdom, and science. I liked the content as individual pieces—even if the author recycled some from his previous talks, podcasts, and other mediums—but I wanted a more unified message.
The book could use a more consistent tone and narration. Some chapters have mature, serious, and sometimes even gloomy tones, while others remind of the usual funny and somewhat goofy Neils' soundbites. For example, consider the chapter about race, skin color, and slavery: "A key step when you want to feel superior: can't have stupid, inferior Black people walking around who are more educated than you are. <...> Without the African slave trade, there are no romanticized plantations to feed the South's rose-colored memory of itself." Then you also have: "<...> why not take our visiting space alien to ComicCon. <...> The upside? Our alien visitor phones home and instead reports—"They're just like us!". However, the contrasting styles do not necessarily take away from the main points Neil is trying to make.
At times, the book seems like a way for Neil deGrasse Tyson to justify his tweets that have caused backlash over the years. Regarding mass shootings, Neil writes, "<...> I once posted a Tweet that should have been relegated to my Forbidden Twitter File, but I mistakenly thought people would be comforted to know that mass shootings are a tiny fraction of all preventable deaths in the country." Admittedly, owning one's mistakes is valuable, but referencing old controversial tweets does not bring anything new into the fold and only opens old sores. While I feel unaffected, some readers may see tweet references as Neil being out of touch with his audience.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and found the individual chapters compelling, even if Neil recycled some of his thought experiments and ideas from his previous work in other mediums.
"Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" neatly packs common themes that are part of manager's everyday reality, whether that manager is a freshly minted one, or one that has years of experience.
The most appealing aspect of the book is that it focuses on situations and real world examples, presented from Sarah's own experiences and learnings. The topics described feel relatable and palpable, as if they're directly taken from your own workplace.
Sarah has done a good job of expanding the narratives by providing relevant references to other books and authors in between topics and chapters. If you're hungry for more on the touched topics, you will find that the book provides plenty of opportunities to branch out, whether it's developing habit systems or building confidence in yourself and others.
However, there are a few topics that seem to be less connected to the enginineering manager's job and more to the individual contributors. For example, Sarah focuses on Pull Requests quite a bit, even to a point of mentioning possible branch naming patterns!
All in all, "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" is a useful read and is grounded in relatable reality.
You will feel at home if you are familiar with Neil deGrasse Tyson and his content. If you have only heard of him, you may miss some of the subtleties and musings that one would notice otherwise. Either way, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" is a fabulous book for those who have only recently started plunging into the depths of science and astrophysics and for those who are more seasoned.
The book covers topics all too familiar in the context of astrophysics, such as how the Universe came to be, what is dark matter or dark energy, and exoplanets -- you will all find it there. Neil does not go too heavy on any of them, but there are breadcrumbs and clues for the curious mind to go deeper. You may know what planets are roaming our solar system, but do you know how the names of the planets came to be? Or how about learning what was Einstein's greatest blunder? The book connects facts from science and history to build a coherent story of the cosmos.
In the last chapter, called Reflections on the Cosmic Perspective, Neil deGrasse Tyson brings the reader to a humbling conclusion. He reflects on the scale between humans and the Universe. Human curiosity should always be at the forefront. As Neil puts it, "the day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us". It is very reminiscent of Carl Sagan and that, in a sense, seems to be the point.
"Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" touches on the most common astrophysics topics just enough to not overstay their welcome, yet engages you in craving for more.
The word skeptic has gotten a bad rep, and one could easily deduct from the book title that the authors will nitpick current and previous visions of the future to exhaustion. Rest assured: the Novella brothers are excellent critical thinkers and big nerds of science fiction and space fantasy. The exploration of the near and distant future is in safe hands!
The book first lays down the pitfalls of futurism (calling them futurism fallacies) and frequently refers to them throughout the chapters. The fallacies help the authors be honest, managing the reader's expectations.
Part two of the book goes through today's technology and how that is already shaping and will continue to shape the future. The book navigates such existing technologies and makes a compelling argument that even incremental advances soon add up to create a profound effect on us.
The following parts of the book increasingly distance the reader from the current reality, going from non-existing but very probable future technologies to pure tech fantasies and technobabble. The authors give a good perspective on why some tech from sci-fi movies and books is beyond the realm of possibilities.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was reminded that predicting the future is not just about technological advances. Science, exploration, and incremental technological advances significantly alter the course of history. Yet, do we understand how they change how we think and what decisions we make? Would we have the same governing structures if every resource imaginable was abundant? Would it seem reckless or unnatural to have designer babies a century from now? There are a lot of similar questions that the book explores and that I keep raising in my head.
One criticism I have for the book is that it feels too dry and overly factual at times. If you're not in a focus mode while reading/listening to the book, some topics, such as rocket propulsion will fly over your head!