Soft Skills:The software developer's life manual

The title of “Soft Skills” suggested to me that this book might be about all the non-technical skills you need to get along at work and with your colleagues. But to my surprise, and to my delight, it turned out to be much more than that. The subtitle of “The software developer’s life manual” is much more apt, as this book lays out a collection of suggestions for you, the software developer, to get the best out of your career and the rewards that come with it.John starts by outlining the broad choices you have in terms of what type of career you can choose to have. Perhaps you’re happy working as an employee of a company, or contracting or freelancing, or maybe you have a burning desire to be an entrepreneur and want to make it as master of your own venture. The pros and cons of each of these career choices are explored in a refreshingly straight forward manner. Subsequent chapters go on to explore each of these in much more detail, which certainly gave me a good deal of food for thought about my own career journey.Some really solid suggestions are presented around the idea of creating a brand for yourself. How to get yourself and your talents known to your peers and turn the tables of your career. No longer will you be the one searching for new jobs, new jobs will be searching for you instead. That’s a powerful position to find yourself in. Nothing discussed is beyond the reach of anyone with an ounce of dedication.This is where the book ventured into unexpected territory. A great deal of time is spent discussing the options that a person has to make sound investments with the money earned from their software development career. Suggestions such as salary negotiations, Options trading, real estate investment, and planning your retirement. Life is much more than a pay-cheque.The last sections are all about personal health, fitness, and relationships. A proposal to break the stereotype of the lone nerd living on pizza and caffeine by putting forth a set of very achievable things to break the cycle. Wrapping up with arguably the most important topic of all, relationships. As a happily married man who is relatively fit and healthy I skimmed over these sections a little but the general advice looked sound enough to me.Normally it takes me a few weeks to read a book of this size, but in this case I flew through it in one week flat and I found every opportunity to read ‘just one more chapter’. A really good compelling read that I will be recommending to my fellow developer friends.

I am developer who loves self-development and I am always looking for ways to improve my career. There is a lot of wisdom inside this book touching various aspects of the life of a software developer. John story is fascinating, inspiring and helps to self-reflect about the direction you want to follow in your career and life. One of the main tip in the book is the principle that providing value to others is the best way to market yourself and accelerate your success. Finding a specialization and having a blog that you consistently update is key. It is also very important to make sure the results of your work are visible. The other interesting part of the book is how to motivate yourself to do more and grow: stop caring what people think, overcome fear, act with confidence and especially do things that make you uncomfortable. The 10-step system for learning creating by John is exactly what I was looking forward to develop skills more quickly and with fun. Basically the idea is the learn the minimum to get started and then experiment on your own driven by curiosity. Then you can fill the gaps to your unanswered questions using traditional learning materials like books. Finally sharing and teaching is the ultimate way to cement your learning. Surprisingly the book also helped me to understand better about finance and how the market works. I also discovered some tools like Kanbanflow to manage my activities and Buffer to schedule social media posts. Overall I am very happy about this book and I recommend it. I am sure you can find some valuable tips to enhance your future career.

But if you're interested, it covers subjects beyond soft skills only. Which I'm not interested.

This book feels like it was written for me specifically. I was a full stack software developer with a career that was going nowhere slowly, I believe this book is helping put me on the right track.This book doesn't really cover soft skills all that much but it definitely offers a couple of good tips, but it ultimately delivers on being a software developer life manual.In the quest to overcome impostor syndrome or to just simply be the best software developer you can be I would highly recommend this book be on your reading list.

I’ve just finished reading this truly excellent book.It’s a feast of distilled wisdom on the life skills needed to succeed and thrive as a software developer. Rather than focusing on technical skills, which are covered in so many other books and videos, John instead generously shares his hard earned insight and experience on topics as diverse as financial management, maintaining physical and emotional health, working for your self, and cultivating a positive and effective mental attitude.In each bite-sized chapter there are practical and immediately actionable exercises to improve any developer’s life across the board.I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Main problem is that I am 60 this year and somehow I don't think a) I have the energy required to bother or b) the time left professionally, to benefit from some of his advice - the payback period would be in years and I'd still be fighting the IT industries idea that unless you're a teenager you can't possibly know anything about modern IT (I am SO not going to bother refuting that here).Yes, if you're starting out then some of this makes sense (although a lot is obvious - make money, buy low sell high). Some of his examples are extreme - I wouldn't want to be his over achieving professor (I can see a heart attack in the making here).Having LinkedIn might be for you, me I personally avoid all "social medja" - I have a life.Overall, read it and see if it suits. frankly I think I could have saved some money if I could have got it from a library. The upside is that he says he doesn't make money from books (so I feel a bit better).Wanna buy a second hand, VERY slightly used copy?

I liked the simplicity of the book and the content. The book is large size, making it even more easier to read and understand the concepts. The reader definitely feels motivated with the non-fancy advise on going about mastering once work and personal life. Highly recommended.

Un libro de conducta profesional recomendado. No todo en la vida del programador es código, existen temas mas allá de lo técnico que no son tocados. Recomiendo este libro al programador que este buscando mejorar en lo personal y en lo profesional.

I almost didn’t buy this book. I visited the authors website to get a better picture of him and was bombarded with a pop up and pictures of his biceps. As an engineer, I thought: “this guy can’t really be one of us” (but who knows? He seems to get readers). I read this books table of contents, and while all the topics are important to understand, they didn’t seem to justify the price of the book to me.So why did I buy it? I realized I had read a lot of professional software development books: on languages, coding style, design patterns, high level concepts, mindset, etc. But I had a blind spot: no books on software development social/soft skills. I searched for software development books on social skills and this one stuck out. There also doesn’t seem to be much competition (if you know of any other good ones, please let me know).So against all my instincts telling me “this guy is not really an engineer. He’s a marketing bro. How could he know what he’s talking about? How could this book apply to my life?” I decided to purchase the book. My next thought was shock: “WHAT? The delivery time is TWO WEEKS? It’s not prime!?”When the book finally arrived and I started reading it, it didn’t take me long to start making highlights, bookmarking sections, and writing notes. The book is good. He gives a lot of good advice in a wide variety of topics. The ones I found most useful were about career planning, networking, marketing, productivity, and mindset. He surprised me by offering advice I hadn’t heard before and can instantly put into practice. I would share them here, but he deserves the book sales.When you have a book with such a wide variety of topics, it’s inevitable that many readers will already have a good understanding of a few of those topics. For me it was personal finance, fitness, and diet. I didn’t think his chapter on dating added value either.His writing was simple and easy to understand, but not exactly spellbinding. He opens a lot of chapters with a single paragraph explaining why the subject is important and follows it by saying “now that I’ve convinced you this subject is important…” Most of the time, he didn’t. It felt cheesy. But his points are clear and he offers a lot of important questions to ask yourself.This book covers a lot of subjects at a high level with examples you can put to use right away. I think most readers will be able to take away a few things that they can apply to their own lives that over time will make a significant difference. What more can you ask for from a book?

Un livre que chaque développeur devrait posséder, une vraie mine d'or pour donner un coup de boost à sa carrière

Despite the "software developer" part of the title this book is applicable to almost every knowledge worker. It provides a well-structured and actionable review of almost every aspect of professional life. It addresses such topics as how to market yourself and get a better job, how to negotiate your salary, how to be professional and what differentiates one from an amateur, how to deal with burnout, how to learn new things quickly and effectively, how to set your goals and reach them, and much more. I also enjoyed the topics about personal finance planning, in particular about avoiding silly spendings and doing smart investments, as well as section about being fit and healthy.The book is easy to read, it is alive, vibrant, and each section ends with a list of specific actions to follow. I recommend this book to any knowledge worker!