Ask HN: Which non-programming books are a beneficial read for programmers?

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I really liked "The Effective Engineer" by Edmond Lau. Its not intended for starting your own company. But it has some good insight for doing good in your job and how to grow as a software engineer. https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Engineer-Engineering-Dispro...

The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development http://amzn.to/2DK6kVP

Contrary to the self-help nature, "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life" has a set of somewhat structured ideas on how spending time/attention a bit more selective and sometimes going deep instead of broad gives you a better return on your efforts.

Say you're in a position where you can work on any aspect of a project, in any language, framework, SDLM, and with whoever you want. Some advice would be to learn new things all day long, but if you do that 100% of the time, you end up with a lot of nothing. Diversity is good, but not at the expense of in-depth knowledge, just like change is good, but change for the sake of change doesn't really do much by itself. Doesn't mean you should stagnate all development of course ;-)

As with all books on ideas and processes: it's just ideas someone else wrote, take what works, leave what doesn't work.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus