**Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century** Jeff Lawson

Jeff Lawson, developer turned CEO of Twilio (one of Bloomberg Businessweek's Top 50 Companies to Watch in 2021), creates a new playbook for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization, showing how to help management utilize this coveted and valuable workforce to enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems, and drive digital transformation.

<aside> 💬 „The ultimate guide for creating a software developer culture that unlocks the passion, creativity, and empathy needed to build amazing products and succeed in the digital economy." — Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce

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**Creativity Inc.** Ed Catmull

An incisive book, from Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, about creativity in business and leadership.

„Steve Jobs—not a man inclined to hyperbole when asked about the qualities of others—once described Ed Catmull as ‘very wise,’ ‘very self-aware,’ ‘really thoughtful,’ ‘really, really smart,’ and possessing ‘quiet strength,’ all in a single interview. Any reader of this book on the art of running creative companies will have to agree. Catmull, president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written what just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.” — Fast Company

<aside> 🥇 One of my alltime favorite business books. Must read.

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**Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams** Alistair Cockburn

This book introduces Crystal Clear, a better lightweight methodology for building software. It describes the roles, teams, values, intentions, habits, activities, policies and work products of a small software development team for whom time-to-market and development costs are critical considerations.Alistair Cockburn is one of the founders of the Agile software development movement.

He spells out proven best practices based on his extensive experience helping organizations build software quickly and with less cost. The author understands that small teams cannot be burdened by "process-heavy"software methodologies. By advocating that developers stay close together and remain in steady, good-will communication with customers and users, this book teaches the reader how to develop software that not only does what it is supposed to do, but also gets completed on time and within budget.

Debugging Teams: Better Productivity through Collaboration *Brian Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman*

In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort.

The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.

**Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose** Tony Hsieh

After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion. In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.

<aside> 🥇 One of the best books on culture I have ever read.

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Effective Remote Work James Stanier

The office isn’t as essential as it used to be. Flexible working hours and distributed teams are replacing decades of on-site, open-plan office culture. Wherever you work from nowadays, your colleagues are likely to be somewhere else. No more whiteboards. No more water coolers. And certainly no Ping-Pong. So how can you organize yourself, ship software, communicate, and be impactful as part of a globally distributed workforce? We’ll show you how. It’s time to adopt a brand new mindset. Remote working is here to stay. Come and join us.

Remote working is on the rise. Whether or not we are remote workers, it is likely we are all part of a global workforce. We need to learn to interact remotely, because we are all remote from someone in some way. Rather than simply simulating the way we’d usually work together via digital means, we have to learn new communication skills and adopt a different mindset in order to work remotely effectively, efficiently, and, most importantly, healthily.

We’ll start by getting you set up with the right equipment and habits. Then, we’ll learn the mindset of treating everyone as remote, and conquer both synchronous and asynchronous communication. You’ll learn how to produce amazing artifacts, how to communicate clearly, and how to manage yourself and your teams. Then we’ll look at the bigger picture: from measuring the remote readiness of your workplace, to creating a handbook for your team, to exploring remote-first culture and tackling burnout and mental well-being.

Fundamentally we’ll see that adopting a remote-working mindset can do wonders for our organization, our effectiveness, and our impact in our careers. It can even create a more diverse and inclusive industry for us all to work in.

So what are you waiting for? The remote future is now. Be a part of it.

**Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success** Adam Grant

Praised by bestselling authors such as Dan Pink, Tony Hsieh, Dan Ariely, Susan Cain, Dan Gilbert, Gretchen Rubin, Bob Sutton, David Allen, Robert Cialdini, and Seth Godin--as well as senior leaders from Google, McKinsey, Merck, Estée Lauder, Nike, and NASA—Give and Take highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common. This landmark book opens up an approach to success that has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organizations and communities.

<aside> 💬 „Give and Take just might be the most important book of this young century. As insightful and entertaining as Malcolm Gladwell at his best, this book has profound implications for how we manage our careers, deal with our friends and relatives, raise our children, and design our institutions. This gem is a joy to read, and it shatters the myth that greed is the path to success.” — Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule

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**How Google Works** *Eric Schmidt, []( Jonathan Rosenberg)Jonathan Rosenberg*

Seasoned Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg provide an insider's guide to Google, from its business history and disruptive corporate strategy to developing a new management philosophy and creating a corporate culture where innovation and creativity thrive.

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary-and frequently contrarian-principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business.

Today, Google is a global icon that regularly pushes the boundaries of innovation in a variety of fields. How Google Works is an entertaining, page-turning primer containing lessons that Eric and Jonathan learned as they helped build the company. The authors explain how technology has shifted the balance of power from companies to consumers, and that the only way to succeed in this ever-changing landscape is to create superior products and attract a new breed of multifaceted employees whom Eric and Jonathan dub "smart creatives."

**It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work** *Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson*

Another great book from the Basecamp founders which **broadly rejects the prevailing notion that long hours, aggressive hustle, and "whatever it takes" are required to run a successful business today.

In Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson introduced a new path to working effectively. Now, they build on their message with a bold strategy for creating the ideal company culture—what they call "the calm company." Their approach directly attacks the chaos, anxiety, and stress that plagues millions of workplaces and hampers billions of workers every day.

Long hours, an excessive workload, and a lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for modern professionals. But it should be a mark of stupidity, the authors argue. Sadly, this isn’t just a problem for large organizations—individuals, contractors, and solopreneurs are burning themselves out the same way. The answer to better productivity isn’t more hours—it’s less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress.

It’s time to stop celebrating Crazy, and start celebrating Calm **🧘

**Lift Off: Launching Agile Projects & Teams** [Diana Larsen](Diana Larsen), Ainsley Nies

Agile veterans Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies teach you how to organize and conduct liftoffs, hold team activities to discover what's most important, and offer a working framework for effective and lightweight agile chartering.

Whatever you call it (project kickoff, bootcamp, inception, or jump start), liftoff gives your team its trajectory, and launches your project. It offers concrete techniques to build team charters and to greatly accelerate the norming phase of a team.