Books that changed my career as a software engineer

I've not got through the majority, but I consider the up-to-date list on Teach Yourself Computer Science as the best one that currently exists:

https://teachyourselfcs.com/

The top 2 recommendations - based on return to learning on time invested - are: 1. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective 2. Designing Data-Intensive Applications

There can be only one: The Elements of Programming Style

There's an old adage: those who can do, those who can't teach.

There's no magic information you're going to come across to further your career in any sort of literature on software development, or indeed any sort of career in general. Any practical books are verbose versions of framework documentation, coaching books are common sense, others formalising experiential learnings - which are only realised from having that experience itself.

This makes sense; otherwise you could get any Joe Blogs to read a couple of books and become an expert immediately.

I'm not sure how any of these books have anything to do with actual career advancement. Career trajectory improvements are generally catalyzed by high-risk business decisions (e.g. doing a startup, joining as an early employee, job hopping, etc.), or political posturing (e.g. getting promoted, gaming the stack ranking, aggressive negotiations, etc.). Being a good engineer doesn't really have anything to do with either. You have plenty of baseline engineers both starting companies and getting promoted over the studious "10x engineers."

Take the 37signals Remote book, for example: as a run-of-the-mill engineer, you quite literally have no say in what the work/office culture of your employer is. Unless you're (at a bare minimum) a VP, no one cares what your opinion is, as you have zero political capital. I don't want to be too negative, so here are some books I would suggest:

    The 48 Laws of Power
    Outliers: The Story of Success
    The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
    How to Win Friends & Influence People