Books… What’s on the Reading List?

Books… What’s on the Reading List?

Dropping some books I’m reading or maybe it’d be more accurate to say some books I’m finally reading. Most have been my shelf a while. I’ve been jumping in and out of each of these, sometimes picking up the actual book and sometimes a listen to the audiobook version but I’m enjoying each.

The Current Reading List

Building Secure and Reliable Systems

2019 - Heather Adkin’s, Betsy Breyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Opera & Adam Stubblefield Link https://sre.google/books/

I’ve had this sat on my shelf for longer than I’d like to admit. This has been a really interesting read so far, as are most things coming out of the Google SRE team. Looking forward to jumping further into it and enjoying the call outs around how difficult and painful it can be to bolt on reliability and security after-the-fact.

The story at the start is great, talking about a failing internal password manager, a hardware security module (HSM) smart card system locked in the safe and how the code for the safe was stored in the now offline password manager, brilliant!

My favourite quote so far:

Over time, the horses are found; only the zebras are left.

The Agony of Decision: Mental Readiness and Leadership in a Crisis

2017 - Helio Fred Garcia https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35879129-the-agony-of-decision

Picked this up as a recommendation from Melanie Ensign and have been enjoying it. With a focus on clear thinking as the key to getting through a crisis well and how reputation in a crisis is completely in a leaders control, how there is the opportunity to inspire trust and confidence.

My favourite quote so far:

The English word crisis derives from the ancient greek word krisis, which means decision, or choice, especially at a turning point where one’s destiny is determined one way or another.

Accelerate - Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

2018 - Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Nicole Forsgren https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35747076-accelerate

This is an interesting book that I was mostly listening to as an audiobook, though I bought the actual book too. This was a suggestion a long while back from some folks in the Duo security team. Enjoying the layout of the methods and how they approached the research. A solid focus on culture and how impactful this is, with a nice callout that “Leaders must commit - action, not just words”.

My favourite quotes so far:

Our measure should focus on outcomes not output

Our analysis is clear: in today’s fast-moving and competitive world, the best thing you can do for your products, your company, and your people is institute a culture of experimentation and learning, and invest in the technical and management capabilities that enable it.

The Staff Engineers Path

2022 - Tanya Reily https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-staff-engineers/9781098118723/

I was checking out Kane Narraway’s blog post Crossing The Chasm: Getting to Senior/Staff Engineer it got me thinking more about the Staff engineer path. I’ve been a people leader in the past and enjoyed it, and as part of that role I got to manage some amazing technical leaders on this path outside of people management. I felt this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the staff engineer path and role overall, as I look at my own career but also to be able to help those in that role or approaching it.

My favourite quotes so far:

What will Future You wish that Present You had done.

As you grow in influence, you’ll find that more and more people want you to care about things. Someone’s putting together a best practices document for how your organization does code review, and they want your opinion. Your group is doing a hiring push and needs help deciding what to interview for. There’s a deprecation that would be making more progress if it had a staff engineer drumming up senior sponsorship. And that’s just Monday morning. What do you do?

Kubernetes Up & Running, 3rd Edition

2022 - Brendan Burns, Joe Beda, Kelsey Hightower, Lachlan Evenson https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/kubernetes-up-and/9781098110192/

As mentioned in [[My Kubernetes Learning Track]] I’ve been digging back into Kubernetes and picked this up, this has been great along with some of the hands-on bits and pieces. I read a great review that made me pick this up: “You cannot make a book about ‘death by yaml’ any more interesting.”

My favourite quote so far:

kubectl delete

Related Posts

Your First Pull and Merge Request With a Sprinkle of Automation

Your First Pull and Merge Request With a Sprinkle of Automation

New to Git? I wrote a version of this out for myself a good while back when starting out, it helped me to keep track of these basic parts in order. I do enjoy letting full commands slip from my working memory all the time, so this kind of thing and writing your own can help.

Read More
Books... They Have Been Read!

Books... They Have Been Read!

I’m a collector

I have to admit something… I am a book collector. There you go, it’s true. I buy books and put them on the shelf and this becomes a shelf of shame that I walk past and the books taunt me as I walk past trying not to look too long.

Read More
Oh! Am I Redundant?

Oh! Am I Redundant?

Alright, let’s start with the fact that it’s now Autumn, and the Acer Maple trees on my balcony look amazing!

Read More