Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual

Several months ago, I had a renewed interest in computer programming and started researching . John's blog was one of the first places where I found some wonderful advice. Around this time, he was promoting this wonderful book. I signed up for the Manning Early Release Program like some others, and was really impressed when I read the first two chapters - I couldn't wait to read the rest of it.

"Soft Skills" has great advice for those who are interested in becoming software developers. This is the type of book I wish existed 15 years ago - I was not able to find much in the way of information back in those days which would've helped me even get my first interview for a software developer job.

One of the most important ways of getting noticed is marketing. People will talk about how difficult it is to stand out among the dozens of other candidates applying for a particular job or bidding on a contract, but it doesn't have to be that way. The Marketing section gives several practical strategies on how to differentiate yourself from everyone else. A couple of them I already knew, but wasn't sure of the best way to implement them until I read this chapter.

The Learning section is also valuable. Looking back at how I learned how to use Linux (Gentoo in particular), vim, and a few other tools over the past few years, I realized that I was able to gain some profiency by using a variation of the self-teaching method he discusses in this book. It is easy, and - as he says - it is fun.

The section on careers really opened my mind to new possibilities. He shows you that there are other options besides full-time employment, along with the advantages, disadvantages, and more. This allows you to know what you're potentially getting into and determine whether a particular path (e.g. employee, freelance, entrepreneur) is suitable for you.

The advice John gives is indeed helpful for trying to become a software developer, but if you change your mind and decide to go into another field of work, don't worry about the book being a waste of time - you'll still be able to apply what you've learned here.

Just starting your career? Wondering what paths and options are open to you as a software developer? Feel like you're professional growth is stalled? This book is packed with real life advice, information, tips, and hacks drawn straight from the author's successful career as a developer, instructor, and coach. You might be able to find this information scattered over a dozen books or hundreds of blog posts, but you don't have to. Its all right here in John's book. Give it a look, you won't be disappointed.

I have come to know about John while refreshing Java skills by watching his courses on Plural sights. From then, I regularly read his blog and videos at www.simpleprogrammer.com which I greatly enjoy it. Few months back, email was popped in my mail box regarding early access to “Soft Skills – The Software Developer’ Life Manual” book which was being written by John. I bought the early edition of it while it was being written. This book is for the Software Developer who wants to pursue happiness in life. It is not a book about any specific technology. Author discusses all different aspects of developer life. Author has covered Career, How to market yourself , Learning to learn, How to become more productive in busy social and professional life, How to manage personal finance and at last but not least how to live healthy life with positive self-image. To be honest, I am still in the process of reading the book. So far I am enjoying at the fullest.

John Sonmez is one of those unique developers who has excelled in a number of different areas: health (he's buff!), finance (he has a portfolio of investment properties that he could retire off) and career (highly sort after consultant, 50+ pluralsight courses, hugely popular blog and podcasts).

I first came across John through his Entreprogrammers podcast with Derick Bailey and Josh Earl. Since then I've been hooked on everything that John puts out.

This book is another amazing resource that John has written! It's a guide on all the other facets of life outside of programming.

Everything from careeer, marketing yourself, financials, fitness, productivity, learning hacks and spirit... This book covers it!

In reality this book has amazing advice for anyone not just developers or tech people. This is my "go to" resource for taking my life to another level.

Don't hesitate, buy now!

Excellent book not only for software engineers but also for any leading professional--John goes through essential topics that are often overlooked such as how to manage your own career, how to brand yourself, how to adapt to a constantly changing environment and learn fast, how to manage your finances intelligently, and how to balance hard work with fitness to stay at the top of your game always. The book is particularly useful because John offers candid advice derived from his own experience, so it is an incredibly useful account of what things work, how and why, and which ones do not. I think this book is an absolute must-read for any leading professional, whether they are in the software engineering business or not.

Couldn't even finish it. Random assortment of ideas from the author. All very specific to his life and in no way related to actually being a software engineer. Just read the foreword by Robert Martin to get a feel for how confused you will be by this. Seems like just a money-grab from the author based off his blog. If you aren't interested in being a contractor or following his exact life path, then this is worthless. Just pick up "How to Win Friends & Influence People"

I came to know about this book rather accidentally: at a social media site, where a friend of mine had liked a post referring to this book. The post was about using timers to help staying focused on various tasks at work. Then I started reading the book at a website where I can access some technical books at my workplace. I liked the content and presentation so much that I decided to procure a physical copy, even though I could access the whole content there. I am very happy about what I am learning from this book. Not only that, but I have also started procuring and reading some of the books which were referred in John's work.

I was so excited when I heard about John Sonmez’s book: Soft Skills: the Software Developer’s Life Manual, and couldn't wait to read it.

If you're in IT, as I am, you know that we’re a breed unto ourselves. A developer working in a non-IT company knows the rest of corporate America believes that, too. The average corporate employee is in awe of us. We're like the X-Men. Mutants, who can do miraculous things with computers and make magic happen in the Inter-Webs. But they also fear us. Because this is the age of the Internet, where reality is made up of 1s and 0s, and we have Magneto-esque powers. We can rearrange those 1s and 0s in ways that could destroy life as we know it. (Or at the very least, do a little more damage than “The Man” asked you to do for the sake of a movie release. But I digress. )

So they try to keep us happy so that we will use our powers for good. We come in late, or leave early because we do our best work from midnight to 8 am. We can wear jeans and Hawaiian shirts everyday, while the rest of the company only gets that privilege on casual Fridays. We get catered lunches and pizza whenever it's deemed necessary. We can babble and go off on tangents, and speak Geek in meetings, and make no sense at all. But most of the time we can ignore the meeting notice and skip the meeting with no penalties or negative consequences. We’re even isolated on our own floor of the building, like Greek gods on Mount Olympus.

You IT Consultants have it even better, because your clients don’t have a clue what you mean when you throw around terms like Hadoop or Data Vault Modeling or Agile Manifesto or Extreme Programming. They nod and smile, and sign the contract, then cross their fingers and hope you know what you're doing.

Sounds like a pretty good gig, right.
Not necessarily.

These kinds of perks are unique to IT. But if you want to get ahead of the pack, and excel at the “business” of you, understanding how the rest of the business world functions, and knowing how to fit in when necessary, or use it to your advantage, this book is for you.

Whether you're trying to get your startup off the ground, your app in the App Store, or move into a Lead Developer position at your company, this book can get you there. Finally there is someone who understands, and can relate to the IT workforce. John understands the traps and snares we can get caught in because we exist( our working lives at least) in a different realm. He knows the ways IT careers are often limited because of self-sabotage. Sometimes we don’t know the rules. Sometimes we don't think they apply to us. But to reach our full potential, and succeed the way we know we truly can, we need Soft Skills.

John’s book doesn't rehash the usual things, like time management, or the best time to deal with email, or how to interview, or write a good resume. Yes, those things are mentioned, but the difference is its just for us IT (im)mortals. He discusses the benefits of specialization over being a jack-of-all-trades, he even gives advice on how to get funding for your startup. But the best thing about this book is that he covers things you've never seen in another book and several things you might want to know but are afraid to ask. Chapter 60 is a good example. It's called:” How to gain muscle: Nerds can have bulging biceps”. Bet you didn't expect that one. He explains the basics of weight lifting; the best exercises to do and which muscles they benefit. And he has a link to the weight training section of his Simple Programmer blog, which has tons of articles and videos (for goddesses as well as gods) on training and nutrition.

He has a wonderful section called Spirit. Because you truly are what you think. There's even a section on relationships and love. This is a 500 page tome, with advice on finance and real estate investing, productivity, and life-long learning is like having your own personal mentor, spiritual advisor, and success coach all in one portable package.

So if you've ever paused before responding to the question “So what do you do for a living?” because you’re dumbing down your answer so that the questioner’s eyes don't glaze over and then you finally just say “I'm in IT.”, Soft Skills is required reading.

Medical Professionals have the Physician’s Desk Reference. Now IT Pros have Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual.

Elaine Sims
Sr. Enterprise Data Warehouse Developer and Data Services Coordinator
Arby’s Restaurant Group

This book is golden! The author speaks of many universal truths which we all subconsciously know of. As Morpheus once said, "You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." By revealing these truths and understanding them John is able to use them to teach success. I recommend this book to everyone, not just software developers. Now time to take action.
Thanks John!

Soft Skills is the book all developers should read. It guides you towards a successful career and also has information on how to reach financial freedom and stay healthy both physically and mentally.

You will learn the skills you need to be as productive as possible, how to stand out among your peers, how to invest your money wisely and how to stay healthy.

Hard work and persistence in following this guide will most definitely lead you to the success you so deserve.

The author proposes a very interesting point of view in this book as he challenges the reader, who is a software developer, to see all the facets of life. There are many books that explain technology for software developers or related fields, but this one proposes to see the other parts of life. Of course, many of the points discussed can be applied to other types of professionals as well, but it's nice that the author shares his view as a software developer.
I actually learned many things by reading the book and I would recommend it. There are some very good book recommendations that detail specific subjects and references to useful resources(blogs or websites). Also the author gives extra content for readers.

Enjoy!

This book contains a wealth of information. Written by John Sonmez. He has a good understanding of what he can say or write that will help us in our software development careers. Inspires us to take charge. I think this book has useful content for the hopeful, early and middle career devs.

I really enjoyed reading Soft Skill: The software developer's life manual book as it provides a holistic framework for a software developer.
Coding skills will take software developer only till a point in life but there after it’s his soft skills will take him further complementing his coding skills. Typically Soft skill is a neglected skill from a software developer perspective but this book provides very practical advice for a software developer on varied topics ranging from managing one's career, marketing, productivity, financials, fitness, spirit and so forth.
This book will be very helpful for any software developer starting his/her career or to a software developer who wants to lead a well-rounded and satisfying life as software professional like me.

I have been keeping up with John for quite sometime and follow his blogs and youtube videos religiously. This book on Soft skills has reached me as a promotional copy and I must say that it has changed my perception of software and has a drastic impact on my views with soft skills and marketing. I'm really impressed with the content and the knowledge John has shared in this amazing developer manual.

I am amazed at how a technical book can contain fitness and finances in it but John has ensured that he has woven it carefully and at ease.

This is the very first book that I am keeping up to and it has made a remarkable mark on how many ever chapters that I have read.

I would like to thank John for crafting this material and Manning for publishing it and both of them for offering me a promotional eCopy. I wish them all success.

Happy New Year 2015.

I am following John Sonmez's blog posts on simple programmer.com from quite some time. Also, I listen to his podcasts on getupandcode. Soft Skills book has really valuable information on different aspects of a software developers's life. This book is useful for both experienced as well as for those who are starting out. I started reading the book and just couldn't stop finishing it. However, to get useful value out of this book, it has to be read multiple times and the suggestions provided have to be put into practice. It is always better to know from the experience of others instead of taking time for us to experience and then learn. This book serves the purpose of collating worthwhile information from the experience of John as well as the people whom he has interacted with. Definitely worth learning from the book.

I have watched John's video course in pluralsight, it's very helpful and practical. I use the skills into my daily work and learn things from his blog. Now there is a book from him, I really want to buy the paper book even if I already got the digital one from him. Thanks a lot. I have read some chapters, it's great, include a lot of interesting stuff, not just for skills , but also tips and success experience from his own. I wish this book can translate to Chinese, so some of my friends who does not usually reading English book can also learn from this book. John maybe can think it and make it happen in future . Thanks again, looking forward for new good stuff from you .

I purchased this directly from Manning. I've gotten about 60 pages in and I absolutely love it. Lots of great advice on how to manage your career. I'm guilty of not doing as good a job managing my career as I should have done. But John has plenty of good ideas on how to get your career sailing in the right direction. I love how he talks about going out on your own and the best way to accomplish this. He freely admits his mistakes so you won't go down the wrong path.

I've been following Jon Sonmez for awhile through his podcasts and blog and once I heard he was working on this book I couldn't wait to get a copy of it. I've been reading the eBook version of it for the past few weeks and it really delivers an immense amount of knowledge that Jon has gathered over the course of his incredibly successful career. I've already learned so much from him and I feel that it has already put me on a stronger path in my career. Since I first started following Jon's success his inspiration has led to me starting my own blog, speaking at local conferences, being a guest on multiple podcasts, becoming a podcast host and getting my Microsoft MVP Award.

@robwirving
www.robwirving.com

Excellent book!

I was amazed by the amount of courses John had published in Pluralsight, and I started reading his blog. What caught me with this book was the way he convinced Bob Martin (A.K.A. Uncle Bob), one of the top people in the software field, to write the forward to the book. And within only 3 days.

I think this book targets any software developer in any stage of life - from someone after college just starting to work, through someone who works in the industry a few years, to people with long mileage in the industry.

The book handles all aspects of life as a software developer that are not on the technological side, and I think everyone can find at least a few of the sections that they will benefit from, if not all.

Highly recommended!

Loved it!
No book about programming but about life, lifestyle etc. Excellent topics (think I enjoyed more than 90% of all the topics) in short, easy to read chapters. And short does not mean that there is lack of content, because the author does a very good job at comprehending topics in easy to read and short text.
Even for topics I already knew a lot about he surprised me how good an explanation he good give in one small chapter.
Excellent book, in my personal top 5 books ever.

I first learned of Mr Sonmez from Pluralsight, where several of his online trainings helped me increase my productivity in ways I didn't think possible. Now this book helps me round up my soft skills and get ahead to the next level, not in front of the pack but ahead of it.

Pay special attention to section 4, my favorite: Productivity.

What are you waiting for? Buy the book, read it, interiorize and get to work. Life is indeed fair, those who work tirelessly in the right way to achieve their goals succeed.

Soft skills is a great book for any software developer to have on their bookshelf. It is divided into 7 sections:
1. Career
2. Marketing Yourself
3. Learning
4. Productivity
5. Financial
6. Fitness
7. Spirit

My personal favorite is section 3 on learning. John gives easy to follow steps on how to learn pretty much anything. For those with a career in technology this is a must have skill. Each section deals with areas of your life in which you have to make decisions every day. John uses his experience to give you the tools you need to make better choices. At 504 pages this book is an excellent value. I highly recommend it.

This is a book every software developer needs to read and keep handy. John's advice is absolutely spot on. I refer to John's book as my career bible to my fellow co-workers, often telling them things that I have learned to do better just by reading John's book. Thanks John this is a winner.

This book is a must have for software developers who want to be successful in their career. John discusses in great detail all the aspects of a software developer's life. We all should have been taught these things in school: interviewing, salary negotiation, productivity, working remotely, freelancing, startups, real estate investing, staying fit, etc.

All the strategies and tactics mentioned in this book come from John's versatile experience in this industry and I find it invaluable to learn from someone who has already been where I am at currently in my career.

I also highly recommend following his blog with weekly insights on soft skills and software development at http://simpleprogrammer.com/. Thanks, John!

Finally a book that focuses on something more that the cleanest algorithm, the newest technology or the latest development craze. This book is targeted to people. People who need advice. People who already know how to unit test and work with hash tables. This book will help you be more. From career management to productivity to "hash table abs!", Soft Skills will help you iron out the rougher patches that most developers have. Thanks John for finally providing me with something that actually tells me there is more to being a software developer than forms over data.

I have been following John Sonmez’s blog simple programmer for about a year now and I was very excited to hear that he had a book coming out. John doesn’t just focus on the code writing to become a better software developer, but on other skills as well. From mental and physical health to how to better market yourself. I really wish I had read this book while I was in college. I would definitely recommend this to any of my developer friends and many of my non-developer friends as well. (A lot of the content is developer specific but a lot of isn’t as well. Most of things he talks about can be applied to any field, not just software development.)

Definitely a worthwhile book.

John Sonmez has divided the book into seven sections with between 7-17 chapters in each, a total of 71 chapters all in all. They are short and to the point (5-10 pages each), and most of them can be read individually, i.e. you can read the book from cover to cover, or jump to the parts you are interested in and continue on from there.

The ”Career” section is, that you can imagine, useful tips on how to setup career goals, gain people skills, write a good resume and pass the interview. But it’s also about what different type of options you have (employee, independent consultant, or entrepreneur) and how to think if you want to switch.

Section 2, ”Marketing yourself” was a real eye opener for me personally. I never had thought about it in this way. I tried out some of the stuff mentioned, and it didn’t take long before I could see positive result! You have to read the section yourself to fully understand, but I can give you some quotes: ”marketing is a multiplier of talent”, ”a brand is a promise” and ”follower to fan”. In this section you can also find the advice that you should give away 90% of what you do for free (that personified John’s willingness to help me).

”Learning” is a very important section, given the ever evolving world we live in. I like the idea with the 10-step process for learning, though I haven’t had the time to try it out yet.

”Productivity” is another personal favorite of mine. Who don’t want to be productive? I really like chapter 37 - ”My Personal Productivity Plan”. It has a personal touch that I like, with great examples and pictures. The do’s and don'ts from chapter 41 about multi-tasking are also very good.

Section 5, ”Financial” has a very good tip on how to negotiate salary that is worth at least a 10% raise :) I can’t leave this section without mentioning chapter 55 - ”Bonus: How I retired at 33”. It’s very personal, and really shows that a travel from A to B usually aren’t a straight line.

To become a good software developer, or any knowledge worker for that matter, your body has to be reasonably ”up to speed” with your brain. This is covered in the ”Fitness” section. Maybe the most ”geek friendly” advice is the one about using a standing desk together with a treadmill.

Finally, section 7 is about ”Spirit”. Beforehand this was the least appealing section for me. But John does a good job not turning this into some spiritual mumbo jumbo.

Recommendation

When I re-read the foreword by Uncle Bob it all of a sudden clicked for me! This book is not about career, marketing yourself or fitness (well it is, but you understand what I mean). This book is about never giving up, to everyday make the version of yourself a little bit better than yesterday. I believe that this book will be a game changer for many software developers or knowledge workers in general (most of its content are applicable to larger audience). At least it has been for me. I can truly recommend ”Soft Skills”, its personal kaizen!

This book should be handed to everyone before they start their career out, regardless of one's career. Although focused on software developers, John Sonmez has written about some crucial things that we all need in order to be successful in their careers. Negotiating your salary, what to do with your money, productivity tips, fitness advice... these are just a few of the topics touched on. This book is the perfect springboard to everyone's career. The chapters are short and easy to digest. Each one has actionable tasks/questions to help bring your closer to building those "soft skills". I couldn't recommend this book more

Soft Skills is a book for the other highly desired skills needed by software developers besides coding. These skills easily adapt to life as well. The book shares insights and experiences from John Sonmez, a successful programmer and author. If I lost the book today, I would be another copy.

Dear sir,

Firstly, I congratulate you for releasing such a wonderful book.
I would suggest everyone over there to go through this book once in their life time, this book has given everything who wants to know how software developers like us undergo in their profession as well as who wants to be enterpruner like me and what difficulties they undergo during those initial phase, this book gives us lot of information that every developer should look into.

Thank you sir for bringing out such a wonderful book.

All the best

Soft skills, written by John Sonmez, is a book for software developers that deals with everything except programming. John, who is well-known for his blog at simpleprogrammer.com talks about a wide range of non-technical topics to improve the career and life of software developers such marketing yourself,
productivity and health.

The book contains 71 individual chapters, divided into 7 sections:
Career
The first section deals with career options in a general way. John encourages the reader to think about his options: work as an employee, a freelancer or even begin a startup yourself. He talks about resumes and interviews, and what you can do to increase your changes of getting the job.

Marketing yourself
The next section talks specifically about marketing yourself. Anyone familiar with John's blog can tell you he as an absolute expert at this. This section is about building your own personal brand and marketing yourself to potential employers by standing out from the crowd. One thing John recommends is starting a blog and writing articles that are helpful to other people in the same way he created simpleprogrammer.com

learning
This part deals with expanding your skillset and learning. John gives some tips to accelerate your learning of new subjects, talks about finding a mentor or even mentoring someone else because one of the best ways of learning something is explaining it to someone else.

Productivity
The fourth section deals with productivity and avoiding distractions. John explains the pomodoro-technique and his personal productivity plan. He talks about multitasking, breaking down large tasks into manageable pieces and avoiding burn out.

Financial
In the section about finance we learn how John was able to (semi-)retire at age 33. He gives pointers about how to successfully negotiate your salary and how to invest it for maximum long-term returns.

Fitness
The sixth section contains chapters about health and fitness which is something a lot of software developers neglect more than they should. The chapters deal with topics such as good nutrition, exercising and things you can do to improve health at work.

Spirit
In the last section John talks about having the right mental attitude and building a positive self-image. He offers advices for personal relationships and shares a list of books about personal success.

The book links to a lot of related resources and recommends other books for further reading.It is full of practical advice that is easy to apply and the author constantly encourages the reader to take action.

The individual chapters are very short (5-10 pages), which makes them easily digestible. This means for example that you can read one chapter a day if you have 10-15 minutes to spare.

This is a book that all developers should read, preferably early on in their career. It explains lessons that take most developers years to learn on their own and is always up to date since John talks about general principles rather than technical details.

John is my developer guru! I find his advice really practical and effective. I have been reading his blogs and buying his books for a couple of years now and they have already had a very beneficial impact on my career as a technical author.
I have enjoyed reading Soft Skills and it lives up to the usual quality of John's work. He has a holistic view of software development and places everything in a suitable context. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone working in any part of the software development field.
My only regret is it was not available ten years ago as I am sure that I too would have retired by now, as well as John!

I was surprised by this book. After reading the chapter titles, I was thinking it was going to be repeating stuff I've heard hundreds of times. Once I started reading, I found lots of information to be refreshing and just wanted to keep reading. Not only are the pages filled with detail, but, John has lots of web sites listed that are also filled with great information. I liked it so much I ordered a copy for a co-worker who is a great developer but needs the confidence to be a successful great developer.
A must read for anyone who wants to take their development career to the next level and beyond.

I first learned about John Sonmez when I stumbled onto his excellent PluralSight course on Selenium Test Automation. Since then I've been hooked on all his digital content -- his other PluralSight courses, podcasts, blog posts and YouTube videos. The amount of quality content John consistently creates is amazing; so much so that I've been wishing I could learn the secret sauce to his productivity and content creation awesomeness. That's why I was so thrilled when I heard about his new book. I signed up for the Manning Early Release (MEAP) program, and have been hooked since reading the first chapter.

In Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual, John reveals all his secrets for becoming a successful software developer. He holds nothing back -- covering everything from career management and productivity as well as a number of topics you won't find in any other engineering books, such as finances and fitness. I think of John as the hardest working developer in the software business today, and with this book you too can discover what it takes to succeed in software development (and in life!). This book would make a great gift for new computer science college grads as well experienced graybeards like myself.

Joe Colantonio
@JoeColantonio.com

I first learned about John Sonmez when I stumbled onto his excellent PluralSight course on Selenium Test Automation. Since then I've been hooked on all his digital content -- his other PluralSight courses, podcasts, blog posts and YouTube videos. The amount of quality content John consistently creates is amazing; so much so that I've been wishing I could learn the secret sauce to his productivity and content creation awesomeness. That's why I was so thrilled when I heard about his new book. I signed up for the Manning Early Release (MEAP) program, and have been hooked since reading the first chapter.

In Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual, John reveals all his secrets for becoming a successful software developer. He holds nothing back -- covering everything from career management and productivity as well as a number of topics you won't find in any other engineering books, such as finances and fitness. I think of John as the hardest working developer in the software business today, and with this book you too can discover what it takes to succeed in software development (and in life!). This book would make a great gift for new computer science college grads as well experienced graybeards like myself.

Joe Colantonio
@JoeColantonio.com

I have been Software Developer now for more than 5 years, always wanted someone to answer my burning questions. From couple of months I have been following John on YouTube, also purchased his course 'How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer'. Course is truly helping me. There I found out about his new book. Let me tell you, if I could have got this book 2-3 years back, I my career would have been defiantly better.
John tried to be true and not 'political', and that is where this book is helpful. He has covered almost all the topic required for happy and successful career.

I highly recommend this book.

I recently found John's website and found his information so helpful and insightful that I got a copy of his book. While I thought it was just about how to improve communication and dealing with other people, it's so much more than that. From reading the contents at the start, right through to the details in the book, it really shows you many different areas that programmers should, and could, be improving their career and their life. A great read.

I've been following John Sonmez's blog, newsletter, and podcasts for a while now, and I've got to say: He publishes a lot of good content about all things software development. I've purchased his book through Manning's early access program because I was eager to read it and didn't want to wait until it finally came out.

A well-rounded software developer is much more than just a code monkey, which is why it's crucial to not only improve one's technical and programming skills, but one's soft skills as well. If you're a developer, make sure to read this book and start enhancing both your life and your career.

There are only few books out there dealing with the daily challenges what to do beyond having technical skills. With Johns compilation you get hands-on advices to enrich your life and really become a better person in the wide area of things related to software creation.
It is a complete up-to-date manual for acting on your career or just enhancing your life (which is not mutually exclusive ;-) ) ) as being part of the software industry.
I definitely recommend reading it _and_ follow some of the advices.
PS and there is some great bonusmaterial after registering the book on manning.com .

I really enjoyed reading this book for a number of reasons, the main one being that John seems very candid and you really do get the impression that he isn't holding anything back. I also get the impression that he is genuinely a nice guy, which is perhaps neither here nor there, but certainly increased my enjoyment of the book. What I'm trying to say is that this feels like a very authentic book in which the author isn't keeping the best stuff for himself and isn't trying to sell anything to you. It's crammed (and I do mean crammed) full of all sorts of advice (career, personal finance, health, etc) in nice, small, easily digestible chunks. For example, I wish I'd read the section on personal finance when I was starting my career.

John is clearly a bright, passionate and driven person who has worked very hard and is now reaping the rewards which he certainly deserves. Good for you, John and thanks for making your blueprint for success available.

The times when software engineers were geeks locked up in a basement are gone. John Sonmez presents in This book a holistic approach to software developer's everyday life, ensuring that every great área of a persons life is taken care of.

Great book for developers with any level of expertise. The subjects addressed in this book are hardly addressed on books for our carreer (marketing, finances and even fitness for instance), which are mostly technical or they have very straight forward, traditional or narrow approaches. The advices here are based on real life experience, addresses different aspects of the developer's life and have an additional value when you get to know John successful trajectory.

This book is a smart investment for any software developer and also an enjoyable read. You won't regret getting it!

Speaking as a software developer with 30 years experience, this is one of the best books on software development I have ever read. Surely a future classic? Its up there with Code Complete, The Mythical Man Month and other classics. I am sure its got things of interest for both beginners and experienced hands. The sheer number of links to interesting sites and book recommendations alone make it worth the money in my view but there is much more to this book than that. Highly recommended.

Read from cover to cover and came out inspired to action. Written in such a way that the content is digestible and entertaining while still being informative and educational. I've been a fan of John's simple programmer blog and was eager to read the book and I am happy that I purchased this book.

I didn't get as much out of the section on diet and exercise, but I did understand and appreciate the holistic nature of the book.
Overall great read, and honest insight into becoming a successful developer.

Excellent book that has many different topics that are crucial for people to know. Some bits, you will already know. Others, will surely inspire you to make some changes. John is a workhorse. As a result, he was able to retire at 33. In fact, chapter 55 of this 71 chapter book is titled "Bonus: How I retired at 33". It was a fantastic read.
John explains topics like learning (9 chapters), productivity (13 chapters), and finances (7 chapters). He discusses real estate investment and stock options and the pomodoro technique and the cure for burnout as well as to be able to learn effectively, you need to teach. I can personally testify to the productivity and learning aspects. I'm still trying to figure out this whole investing thing, and I have quite a few years on John so I'll continue to re-read the financial chapters several times.

I've recently started my own company, GlobalCove Technologies, and am just starting to try and build my personal brand in addition to my company brand. He talks about that as well in his marketing section (8 chapters). The book is filled with great advice. There are many things that I do that he talks about that have served me well. Yet, there are many things that he talks about that I haven't done, but it is obvious that if I do, the outcome will be very favorable.

If any of the topics in this book interest you (and they really should), do yourself a favor and buy the book. Then READ the book. It is well worth the effort.

John, thank you for taking the time to create this outstanding book that has great life information for software developers.

This book contains a lot of valuable lessons that every software developer should learn and practice. Every chapter is full of great lessons to achieve a successful career. It not only contains the secrets that a developer struggles to reveal through the years of career but also contains great advice and ideas that you can put in action right away. I highly recommend this book to every software developer of any level.

I wish that all software developers knew and applied some of the advice given in this book. It would be a wonderful world!

Some times, we focus on technical stuff that, as software developer are good, but make us forget that a career is more that write code.
John Sonmez did a great job putting the software development career in a different but clear and valid point of view, a perspective that some times we avoid.
But if you ask me if the book worth the try, I say YES, TOTALLY, this is a must to have book and knowledge that any person related or not with the software development area could take advantage.

Awesome book! John honestly, concisely and humbly presents relevant information and techniques. The simplicity and utility of this book cannot be overstated. Although it is full of practical advice which is applicable to just about anyone, this book never seems preachy. It also reads extremely well, and the personal reflections and experiences which resulted in the author's concepts make the book seem much more real; unlike other 'self-help' books. The book surpasses my wildest expectations. I could not give it any higher recommendation!