rxin en route

If you are a software engineer and you haven’t read Sam’s new book on Making It Big in Software, it’s worth the $16 dollars off Amazon. In 400 pages, Sam covers most topics that are relevant in career growth and development for a software professional (a.k.a. “Get the Job, Work the Org, Become Great”).

Sam is a senior technical leader with IBM’s DB2 team, an active speaker in academic and technical conferences, and has twenty years of experience in recruiting, managing, and mentoring engineers. I was very fortunate to have him as my mentor and manager when I was an Extreme Blue student.

It is great to hear his perspective. In addition to a systematic overview of the topic, the book also features interviews with 17 interviews with stars of the industry:

Steve Wozniak, Inventor, Apple computer

John Schwarz, CEO, Business Objects

James Gosling, Inventor, Java programming language

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Search Products and User Experience

Jon Bentley, Author, Programming Pearls

Marc Benioff, CEO and founder, Salesforce.com

Grady Booch, IBM Fellow and co-founder Rational Software

Bjarne Stroustrup, Inventor, C++ programming language

David Vaskevitch, Microsoft CTO

Linus Torvalds, Creator, Linux operating system kernel

Richard Stallman, Founder, Free software movement

Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research

Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Fellow and Windows Architect

Tom Malloy, Adobe Chief Software Architect

Diane Greene, Co-founder and past CEO of VMware

Robert Kahn, Co-inventor, the Internet

Ray Tomlinson, Inventor, email

I pre-ordered a copy of the book on Amazon last year and received it last week. Today, Sam signed the book. Then this idea came to my mind: collect the autographs of all 17 interviewees of the book.

It is not an easy job as they are spreaded out geographically. If I can do this in 5 years, Sam promised to buy me a case of beer.

Fingers crossed.