The Effective Engineer

This is a book review I wrote 3 years ago.

The Effective Engineer (Author: Edmond Lau)

How many times as a software engineer you had to work 60 to 70 hours a week to meet a deadline, fighting some prod issue or facing some other urgent situations? But that doesn't sustain.

As an engineer if you have to spend a lot of hours at work, sacrificing your life or family time, then you probably should rethink and figure out how you can balance. The answer is - be efficient. Instead of working more hours work more efficiently. Study also shows working more hours doesn't usually produce more. It is possible working long hours causes less production than a normal 40 hours work week in the long run.

Edmond Lau explains why it is so important to focus on being efficient. He added a lot of suggestions and techniques how engineers should think in to achieve different purposes efficiently. Before doing any work we should always ask ourself what other thing we can do which gives us more leverage.

To produce more in the long run we should focus on few things -

1. Optimize for iteration speed
2. Prioritize on automation
3. Simplify engineers life by right software abstractions,
4. High quality code
5. Respectful work environment
6. Shared ownership of code
7. Test automation
8. Set some time aside to do some experimental works
9. Build a learning culture and focus on continuous improvement
10. Hire the best

Edmond also gave a lot of examples from his personal experience in company like Google, Facebook, Quora, Ooyala, Quip which are extremely valuable. In Google, I already got a chance to practice many of these. But still those suggestions are good reminders for me.

I highly recommend this book. The earlier stage of software engineering life you are in the more value this book can bring to you.

Thanks for reading.