The Pragmatic Programmers have two great new books coming up.
The first one is “My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book)”. Reckoning from the sample excerpts and book’s description it seems like another very good companion to “The Pragmatic Programmer”, this time focussing one what you can do to save your job (or improve your skills for the next one). From the looks of it, Chad Fowler does a good at trying to motivate to constantly work and improve the way you think, work and learn. Every chapter ends with something you can and should do to improve the corresponding skill. It will definitely be a very good read. Check out his blog for some additional stories and bits of information.
The second one to come is “Behind Closed Doors - Secrets of Great Management”. This one focusses on the management side of projects. It tells the story of Sam and the leads dealing with and solving everyday management problems to make their project a success. It’s split into small stories which are followed by advice and corresponding practices. I skimmed through the sample excerpt’s pages and already started to think about what I can do to do better at work.
So both books will definitely be well worth spending money on. But “Behind Closed Doors” is better suited for people in management or wanting to become a project or technical lead. I recommend reading these books as a developer anyway, just like “The Art of Project Management”. There’s always something you can learn, and that you could improve in your team.
And you did get a copy of “Agile Web Development with Rails”, did you? Truly an amazing book about an even more amazing framework.