2019 - 2022 reading recap.

If this seems redundant, I did indeed accidentally release a draft version of this list earlier in the year.

In 2018, I put together my book recommendations, and while I don’t currently have any ambition to reflesh that list (those are pretty timeless books!), I decided to collect the non-fiction books I’ve read since writing that list through the end of 2022, which is roughly 2019 through 2022. I’m certain that I’ll miss a few, but here is a fairly representative list, particularly those where I read a physical copy.

Altogether, this is 57 “books about work” over the past four years, or just over one per month. I don’t set reading goals, but this isn’t a startling number that I’m concerned about one way or another. I’ll also note that I read more fiction than non-fiction, but have omitted those because that’s not really what this blog is about.

For books that I still think about somewhat frequently, I’ll preface with a star emoji, “⭐”.

• When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich
• Talent by Cohen and Gross. As someone who is primarily focused on scalable, repeatable hiring processes (like hiring a team of engineers), this book’s focus on hiring one-off individuals (e.g. founders) was an interesting one, although most lessons would be difficult to translate
• Atomic Habits by James Clear. Have seen recommendations for years on this one, but never actually read it. A quick read with some interesting ideas
• An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Kegan and Lahey. A recommendation from my father stemming from a discussion about dead-end jobs
• ⭐ The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly. An excellent book on succeeding as a Staff Engineer, with a deeper focus of on doing the day-to-day, month-to-month assignments that a Staff Engineer is likely to be focused on (both those literally assigned and those implicitly necessary but never assigned).
• Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry. I saw someone recommend this as an interesting read, and it was. The premise of the book is that you should search for jobs in a circle of other folks concurrently searching for jobs, and that feedback from this circle will prevent you from wasting a tremendous amount of time pursuing jobs you’re not qualified for, help you negotiate, and so on
• Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
• Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos by Jeff Besos, Walter Isaacson.
• ⭐ System Design Interview – An Insider’s Guide: Volume 2 by Alex Xu and Sahm Lam. I’ve gotten to know Alex Xu from a distance as someone doing interesting and very successful independent publishing work, and wanted to both support and learn from his work.
• System Design Interview – An insider’s guide by Alex Xu. Same as the previous book, although this is the first volume.
• Startup CXO by Matt Blumberg. I really like what this book aims to do, but I found it wasn’t quite at the right depth for me, personally.
• The End of Loyalty by Rick Wartzman. Interesting context behind the social contract between employees and businesses.
• ⭐ The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby. I learned a lot about the history of venture capital from this book. It’s absolutely the history of venture capitalists from the perspective of venture capitalists, so take it with a grain of salt, but I enjoyed it.
• Amp It Up by Frank Slootman. An interesting read of one CEO’s perspective on good leadership. My personal opinion on “the value of intensity” has changed quite a bit over time (not in a consistent direction), and I appreciate reading folks’ opinions on it. More of an aspirational book than a tactical one.
• Doing Good Even Better by Edgar Stoesz. A primer on how to be an effective non-profit board member, which I read while refining my approach to personal altruism.
• Couples That Work by Jennifer Petriglieri. Read while looking for more perspectives on navigating dual career parenthood. I thought it was good, but I’m hard pressed to identify a novel takeaway that changed our approach. (The biggest idea–be explicit–was an idea we’d heard a lot.)
• Startup Wealth by Josh Maher.
• Fool’s Gold? by Scott Shane. A skeptical review of data on angel investing.
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson.
• ⭐ The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Mel Lindauer, Taylor Larimore, and Michael LeBoeuf. A useful summary of the approach to personal finance that we follow as a family.
• The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein.
• Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz.
• Empowered by Marty Cagan.
• Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr.
• Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.
• Pivot by Jenny Blake.
• Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro.
• Seeing Like a State by James Scott.
• Weinberg on Writing by Gerald Weinberg.
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.
• The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim.
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.
• Billion Dollar Brand Club by Lawrence Ingrassia.
• ⭐ All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer.
• Traction by Gino Wickman.
• Super Pumped by Mike Isaac.
• Building Evolutionary Architectures by Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons, Patrick Kua.
• The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen.
• Enterprise Strategy by Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson.
• The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor.
• Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor, Eric Ries.
• The Broken Ladder by Keith Payne.
• Late Bloomers by Rich Karlgaard.
• ⭐ Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri. I wrote up notes on this book when I finished reading it.
• Practical TLA+ by Hillel Wayne.
• The Rust Programming Language by Steve Klabnik, Carols Nichols.
• Angel by Jason Calacanis.
• ⭐ The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi.
• Company of One by Paul Jarvis.
• Silk Road by Eileen Ormsby.
• ⭐ The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kiddler. I wrote notes on this one as well.
• Swipe to Unlock by Parth Detroja, Aditya Agashe, Neel Mehta.
• Move by Patty Azzarello.
• The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. This is sort of a summary of his other books, many of which I love.
• Principles by Ray Dalio.
• What Works for Women at Work by Joan Williams, Rachel Dempsey, Anne-Mare Slaughter.