This Book Will Revitalize your Programming Career in 2020

Learning more technical skills is an obvious 2020 New Year resolution for software developers. But what if that goal is not motivating at all?

What if there are other more pressing problems: you are stuck at your pay bracket with nowhere to grow, or you want to transition between developer careers, or you are simply stuck, confused about the next career move?

There is a book for that, and it is specifically for software programmers, thank goodness! Published in 2017, this programming career book is still relevant and unrivaled.

Here is just a handful of topics this guide covers:

The book is available only on Amazon and free for Kindle Unlimited users. This was a deterrent for me since I use neither Audible nor Kindle as my main ebook retailer (speaking to all fellow Kobo readers), but this isn’t a problem for many readers.

In this review, I am going to cover three main takeaways after reading this book cover-to-cover (more about reading cover-to-cover in Takeaway #3).

Then, stay to the end for the Review Snapshot, which includes important key information — like whether this book was actually fun to read. Fun matters, even in careers books about programming.

Even technical books provide a personal experience for readers. That is why I include key takeaways that resonated with me in my reviews. By sharing what resonated with me, I hope to allow you to imagine how the book might impact you.

The book is about mindset: taking ownership of your career, getting over social anxiety, and attacking success by making opportunities happen.

Personal branding and in-bound marketing is a major talking point in this book, and by the end, the book’s true mission becomes apparent: it aims (without pressuring too much) to convert you into an entrepreneur programmer and into the path the author himself took.

The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide covers personal branding, networking, blogging, becoming known for something, and not just being a 9-to-5 career programmer for life but “breaking the glass ceiling” on the programming career.

The personality Sonmez brings in the audio version is also motivational and uplifting. It’s like having a career coach in your ear.

The best advice in this book is not about programming. In fact, the content about just programming is the least valuable. An overview of the difference between a back-end vs front-end vs app vs mobile developer provided more rudimentary information than a top Google search. The content is not worth it, particularly if you are lugging around a hard copy of this behemoth.

It was the true career stuff — personal branding, interviewing, getting internship opportunities, networking, and negotiating, specifically from a programmer’s perspective — that makes this book shine.

The book states that networking and reputation building is 90% giving and 10% receiving, which is a message I can 100% get behind. Expanding the heart, spreading positivity, and building mental resiliency are all positive things on top of furthering a career.

To give you the flavor of the book, I picked some key quotes related to being deliberate about your career:

Break stereotypes. I’m an introverted developer, and likely so are you, but we ultimately sink and swim by the hands of others. All business is still about people, and while most of the job as a programmer is (ideally) spent programming, soft skills are an essential and often uncultivated necessity.

Here is a quote from The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide along these lines:

I can relate to “being in another profession.” In college, I majored in not computer science but English literature. I got my Master’s in literature while working full-time as a web developer. But even as an undergrad student, I had the intention of entering tech.

Here’s the thing: I knew my peers had no intention of doing the same. A few vocal individuals in my “Business of Writing” class felt electronic books were the death of literature, and the general sentiment among my peers was to make a living with literature or “sell out.”

In my literature curriculum, particularly my Master’s program, I found most valuable the requirement to give presentations and lead discussions. Leading discussions often involved lengthy sessions of about two hours, asking smart questions about the reading and listening attentively in order to gently guide the discussion toward meaningful insights. Keeping on topic was a key part of the job, which later became an instrumental skill in my career. Facilitating meetings can be one of my favorite activities, and my career’s greatest highlights have been in building bridges to join differing perspectives (like between developers and designers).

The book advocates for not just being a good communicator, but a good networker and speaker as well. One of its many suggestions was to join your local Toastmasters chapter and to do public speaking. Having participated in a Toastmaster’s group myself — I recommend!

In the chapter titled “Keeping Your Skills Up to Date,” Sonmez says:

Sonmez goes on to recommend design patterns and methodologies as a classically good choice.

Notice that it advises against reading cover to cover. This means a particular skill is required in reading technical books, which is pinpointing what you want to get out of them and finding just those things you need. We all know, or might ourselves be, completionists with books. But reading is for knowledge and not to boast that our eyeballs were on every page. Speaking from a technical writer’s perspective, as somebody who has written technical things for eyeballs, if the writing is not working for you, skip it.

The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide makes clear that there is no substitute for hands-on experience and advocates for side projects as a way to get experience, generate questions, and then find answers to those questions through books, Google searches, or video courses like Pluralsight.

When it comes to learning a programming language, Sonmez encourages getting stuck in the weeds first. Knowledge sticks when you have an active, practical use for it.

Reading alone isn’t the answer, just like practicing yoga alone does not give a sculpted physique. When reading a technical book, it’s often hard to gauge what information will come most in handy.

Instead, let experience inform what you read rather than let reading substitute experience.

This review snapshot covers all the basics you need to understand about this book: the audience that suits this book best, its affordability, how much value the book brings, and most importantly, how fun the book is to read. Since after all, books on programming ought to be fun to read.

While developers at any phase in their career can find value out of this book, the most suitable reader is someone who is feeling stuck in their career and looking for a change. This can be the student who is trying to break into development or a QA engineer looking to cross into programming or an all-star developer at the top of her pay bracket, unable to find the next best career move.

This book is sold exclusively on Amazon and free with Kindle Unlimited, which makes the book extremely affordable. Without Unlimited, the ebook copy is $9.99, whereas the physical copy is $29.99.

This nearly-800-page book covers many topics, but each topic doesn’t have much depth and may not have much takeaway. The paragraphs are written like blogs, with short-short paragraphs, bold text everywhere, and zingers without zing. I recommend reading this book how I read it — audio book and while lightly focusing on something else like driving or washing dishes.

Especially with the audio version, I enjoyed Sonmez’s energy. He motivated me to think more deliberately about key aspects of my career. A book this long gives you plenty of time for personal reflection and to get ideas.

And if you have a long commute and don’t mind some fluffy material.

As someone who purports to read “technical books” on my blog, The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide is not very technical. But it is for programmers and it gives valuable career insights.

Sonmez is a highly successful entrepreneur and programmer, and he authenticity wants to help others reach new heights in their career. In some ways, I felt that I was not the target demographic. I could feel that the Persona he wrote to had a completely different look. Perhaps someone who lacks my sunniness and affinity to both matcha and group fitness classes. Yet, that did not detract from my enjoyment listening to this book.

Thank you for reading. I post new content about programming technical books each Monday. Give me a follow, this post some claps, and I will see you next time, book lovers.

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