Ask HN: What is the most career altering course or book you have gone through?

for me it was learning devops

A digital electronics design course I took at the local science museum when I was 11. It was free, so what the heck, I took it on a whim. I didn't know it at the time, but it set the course of my career for the rest of my life even though I'm a software, not electronic, engineer.

Two books I read after 9/11 shaped my path greatly:

1.) Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police

ISBN #: 0813337445

2.) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

ISBN #: 9780671728694

Both should be available in most public libraries, but with the ISBN you can usually get almost anything via inter-library loan.

Not a book or course per say, but based on a book:

The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office" by Venkat [0]

Other contenders:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1]

Haseeb qureshi's articles on Negotiating [2]

These along with er... mind-altering substances, helped me see that reality as we live it (careers, status, institutions, ect) is like software: built/programmed by humans and can be changed by shifting your perspective.

[0] https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVP...

[2] https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer...