Updated: September 9, 2024
Hear, hear! I am happy to announce the publication of my latest nonfiction, tech-related book. It comes with a snarky title How to Make Your Career Suck Less. Or, in other words, A Guide to a Less Painful IT Existence. This book is a culmination of some twenty years of my fairly successful work in the tech industry, where I've faced many an absurd situation, hordes of yesmen, tons of bureaucracy, and heaps of nonsense. And I bet, if you work in the tech space, you've experienced it all, too.
Well, there's no reason why future generations ought to suffer. Reflecting on my own career, I would like to help people achieve higher job satisfaction and self-realization, if possible. In a way, this book is a practical howto on a lot of topics, with a simple aim: navigate the IT world career with greater ease. If this sounds like this something you might want to sample, even for pure fun, without any higher goals, then please, follow me.
In more detail ...
I think the best way to explain further what the book is about is its backcover text:
Once upon a time, you were young, naive, full of hope, dreams and ambitions. You
thought you could make a change! But then you started working in IT ...
Your career isn't progressing as you imagined? Too much micro-management, too much workplace
politics? Not sure how to transform your ideas into projects? Looking for a way to add structure to
your everyday job? Perhaps I can help. Let’s turn the tables. Let’s embrace the aggressive in
passive-aggressive.
This book is a practical, down-to-earth guide on how to make your career more successful, despite
the corporate odds stacked against you. It’s not all bitter cynicism, either. The book offers
genuine, proven tips, too: how to write your CV and prepare for an interview, how to create your first
open-source project, how to talk to your manager, how to present at a conference, and a lot more.
Join me for a fantastic ride. Let the un-suckening begin.
I like it, where do I buy it?
You can purchase the book in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon, or you can get it through the extended distribution of the Draft2Digital network, which includes Apple, Everand, Thalia, Smashwords, Vivlio, Fable, Palace Marketplace, and others. Draft2Digital utilizes the Books2Read service, which offers a single Universal Book Link (UBL), which then points to all of the supported stores. Alternatively, you can manually go to any one of these stores, and get the book there yourself.
Anyway, here are the relevant links:
Call for reviews
Folkses, if you would like to do a professional review of your book, please get in touch. Send me an email, titled Career Book review, and we can take it from there. Please introduce yourself, your site, blog, whatever, and any other relevant details. I can also provide the introduction section and the first chapter as press samples.
And that would be all!
Conclusion
I wrote How to Make Your Career Suck Less in about ten days of furious typing, roughly 5,000 words per day. It all came out in a wild burst. Later on, I added a little bit of shine and polish, and rearranged a couple of chapters, but the essence of it captures the tragicomic nature of work in the tech world.
Now, jokes aside (to an extent), I am convinced this book will be useful. I genuinely believe it has a lot of excellent tips and tricks for people early or half-way through their careers. Different chapters handle different situations, problems and projects, like your manager, your on-stage presence, whitepapers, interpersonal skills, and then some. I tried to keep it real, reduce preaching to a minimum, and add humor where possible. I hope this will be an enjoyable read, i.e., one that will suck less. Take care, fellow readers!
Cheers.