Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual

Should be called a developers roadmap to success!

Where does Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is my favorite audio book. I refer back to it often and glean new information each time.

What other book might you compare Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual to and why?

There are certain elements that remind me of How to win friends and influence people. It would however be unfair to both books to make the direct comparison because John Sonmez doesn't give the amount of anecdotal information on human interactions that Dale Carnegie does and "How to win friends and influence people" certainly doesn't cover as many topics that Soft Skills does.

Which character – as performed by John Sonmez – was your favorite?

N/A

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The chapters on Nutrition and Physical Fitness. As programmers we work very sedentary jobs at times and this is an area where we could all use a helping hand.

Any additional comments?

I recommend this book to all my friends, new programmers as well as non-programmers. If you are considering it I promise you won't be disappointed.

Ended Up being a great motivator

Where does Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I have only listened to 3 audio books so far, but have to say it will probably always rank in the top half of audio books I have and will listen to.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual?

Treat your development career as a business. Fight for the pay you deserve and don't take the easy way out.

Have you listened to any of John Sonmez’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I believe this is the only book he has narrated. Having listened to his podcasts his performance was better then I had expected. He is a bit nasally, which I thought would grate on me but it didn't at all. The only thing I think could have been improved would be the transition between chapters and transition between narration and explanation of the text.

What did you learn from Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual that you would use in your daily life?

I wont be taking a jump to leave my job right away without having a plan and traction on my ideas.

Any additional comments?

I will admit it, I thought I was going to hate the book before even downloading it, and that I had just wasted my money. Within the first hour of listening there was actionable advise from John which I am working on applying to my life right now.
I was feeling pretty crappy before reading this book which is in part why I had started listening to motivational books. My feeling was that I was working in a dead end job with high churn and if I went off on my own and made my own company I would just fail and be stuck crawling back to a big company. Anyway it seems that John has lived the life I feared living and made it through to the other side. My one wish is that he would have dived deeper into real estate investing.

Very shallow book and sometimes bad advice

I was very excited to listen to this book, but as the chapters progress the book becomes more and more shallow and it gets obvious that the author hasn’t done much (any?) research on the topics and just describes what worked for him. I stopped listening after the sentence “ ... the husband is a very logical person and a wife is more feeling-oriented - a pretty common situation ...”. As a female engineer I am so fed up of gender stereotypes and it is obvious that this book was not written with people like me in mind. Would not recommend this book to anyone, there are much better books on the topics.

A new life manual for any software developer

Just being new to the development world, I wad a bit hesitant when I was recommended to buy a software development book thats not really about software development.
But after getting into the book I completely understood John and his reasons for writing this book, there is a need for it and not enough people are preaching self development in these sort of areas (I come from a mechanical engineering background). He hits the nail on the head on so many topics and his style of writing many small chapters worked a treat as I could small chunk the information in my spare time. He teaches you ways to market yourself, to stay fit, how to handle your finances, how to see yourself as a different person and grow into that person. His background in Software development gave him a great foundation as he could easily convey how he gets his work done and how we can too.
Im excited for a few months time when I relisten to this book and see what else I get from it.
Hes inspired me to write my own blog and Im currently doing his email course on blogging. So hopefully we can connect sometime in the future.

Financial and workout advice rather than soft skills

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I expected at least some discussion about social skills and professionalism in software development. A significant part of this book is instead dedicated to providing the author's subjective financial and workout advice. A software developer certainly has a different perspective on these subjects, but the author falls short on relating these subjects to software development. Better financial and workout advice can be found in elsewhere. If you are just looking for some general personal development very loosely related to software development, or some career advice, some chapters of this book might offer some minor value, but if you are looking to improve as a software developer, look elsewhere.

Junior to senior developers should read this

This book is great listen for software developers from junior to senior level. It's probably one of the rare books on software development you can listen to and not read it.
I've been a software developer for almost 15 years and this book gave me a lot if ideas for next 15 years.

I liked it

There were many gold nuggets within the book. Covered tons of topics. I like his honesty.

great insights for a developer

love it great advice for programmers about life, technical perspective, fitness, health, finances, philosophy, etc

Excellent material.

Loved it. Great content. Great delivery. Helped broaden my perspectives on my potential and helped me better visualize what I'll need to do to be successful.

John Sonmez is a wizard

This is probably my favorite book about overall life skills. The concepts not only software developers, but to anyone who wants to develop more of a bulldog mindset.