My Recommended Books in 2025

I like to recommend books. Many of these we’ve read at Omnitech for book clubs and I always gain a lot more when discussing the chapters weekly during lunch with others. So choose a book, recruit some co-workers or other Engineers and continue learning. 📙🍽️🧠

2019 Book Stack — My curated list of recommended books from 2019 is getting out of date. It’s time to update it.

Developer

Pragmatic Programmer — Andrew Hunt, David Thomas (1999, 2019)
A classic guide to pragmatic software development practices and professional growth.

Clean Code — Robert C. Martin (2008)
Teaches principles and best practices for writing readable, maintainable, and robust code.

Clean Architecture — Robert C. Martin (2017)
Explores architectural patterns and design principles for building scalable and resilient systems.

Working with Legacy Code — Michael Feathers (2004)
Provides techniques for safely refactoring and improving legacy codebases.

The Phoenix Project — Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford (2013)
A novel illustrating DevOps principles through an IT transformation story.

The Unicorn Project — Gene Kim (2019)
A companion novel to The Phoenix Project, focusing on developer experience and modern practices.

Learn Better — Ulrich Boser (2017)
Explains science-backed strategies for more effective learning and skill acquisition.

Art of Unit Testing — Roy Osherove (2009, 2013)
A practical guide to writing good unit tests and building testable code.

Unit Testing: Principles, Practices and Patterns - I might recommend this book over the Art of Unit Testing — Vladimir Khorikov (2019)

A book about thinking like a Senior Engineer would be good Become a true Senior Engineer | Swizec Teller — Swizec Teller (2021), which I haven’t read yet or something that teaches to think at the system level
It offers insights and mindset shifts for advancing from mid-level to senior engineering roles.

Tidy First — A concise book on incremental code tidying and refactoring for sustainable development. - Kent Beck (2023) Here’s an interview with Kent Beck about it .

F# in Action — Isaac Abraham (2021)
A hands-on introduction to functional programming and real-world development with F#.

Test Driven Development: By Example — Kent Beck (2002)

Managers and Leaders

I’ve found these books interesting as an Engineer, even if I don’t have the declared responsibility. However, these books are hard to implement from grass roots. Having leadership understanding and backing is crucial to make many of these organization changes.

Accelerate — Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim (2018)

Better Value Sooner Safer Happier — Jon Smart (2020)

Investments Unlimited - learn about Audit and Compliance in a fictional format — Helen Beal, Bill Bensing, Jason Cox, Michael Edenzon, Tapabrata Pal, Caleb Queern, John Rzeszotarski, Andres Vega, John Willis (2022)

Wiring the Winning Organization — Gene Kim, Steven J. Spear (2023)

The DevOps Handbook - older, but — Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis (2016, 2021)

Lean Startup — Eric Ries (2011)

Wisdom

The Bible is my top recommendation to read for your life.

Psalm 111:10 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth forever.”

More suggestions

Dr. Milan Milanović offers many more. It was pleasant to see many of mine show up in his list. I highly recommend his newsletter.