Listening Through a Year of Change

This year, the return to the office for a few days a week brought back something I had quietly lost over the past few years: time to listen.

Commuting again meant space. Not just physical space between home and work, but mental space. Audiobooks slowly made their way back into my routine. Not as a productivity hack or a yearly challenge, but simply as a way to think, learn, and sometimes just listen.

Looking back, the books I listened to say more about this year than any list of achievements ever could. They reflect curiosity about how we build software, how we work with others, how we endure hard things, and how we prepare for becoming a parent for the first time.

This is not a ranked list, and it is not a recommendation post. It is a reflection.

Dark Wire by Joseph Cox

Cybersecurity has long been an interest of mine. Although the book is not directly about cybersecurity, it does offer a sobering look at surveillance, law enforcement, and the unintended consequences of technology.

It made me think more carefully about where software ends up, and how far removed developers can be from the real-world impact of their work. Not a comfortable listen, but a valuable one.

The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

Some books age well because they are not tied to trends.

Listening to this again was a reminder that good software development is still about fundamentals. Responsibility, communication, curiosity, and ownership matter more than tools. What stood out most was how relevant the advice still feels, even decades later.

Now in the "Age of AI", I believe, these core principles will become even more important.

The Art of Resilience by Ross Edgley

I picked this up out of curiosity after hearing Ross Edgley on this podcast, where he talked about swimming 510 kilometers without stopping.

The examples in this book are extreme, but the underlying message is grounded. Resilience is built through exposure, consistency, and choosing discomfort in controlled ways. While the book focuses on physical endurance, the ideas translated surprisingly well to work and life. Growth rarely comes from comfort, but it also does not come from chaos. This book reminded me of a quote by Mike Tyson that I keep coming back to:

Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.

The Positive Birth Book by Milli Hill

Becoming a first-time father has a way of reshuffling priorities quickly.

This book was recommended to us by our Doula, and I approached it with curiosity rather than expectations. What it offered was not certainty, but understanding multiple perspectives. It helped frame the birth process as something that can be approached with confidence rather than fear.

Building Microservices by Sam Newman

This felt like revisiting familiar ground, but with a sharper lens.

Microservices are often discussed as a goal rather than a tradeoff. This book does a good job pulling the conversation back to reality. It focuses on boundaries, change, and failure, not just deployment diagrams. It reinforced the idea that tools shape how we see problems. As the saying goes, to the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier

I am not a manager, and I do not have any plans to become one. Still, I have always been interested in understanding how perspectives shift in various different roles.

This book helped me see management less as a promotion and more as a change in problem space. Many decisions that can look strange or frustrating from the outside start to make sense when you understand the constraints behind them. Listening to this made me think more about the different levels of challenges people are trying to solve in their respective role.

It is easy to get absorbed in your own challenges and lose sight of the problems others are navigating.

Platform Engineering by Camille Fournier

This one aligns perfectly with my day-to-day life as a Software Engineer, and being part of a growing company.

As systems and teams grow, complexity tends to spread quietly. Platform engineering is often mentioned as a solution, but the term itself is vague enough to be misused.

What I appreciated most here was the emphasis on platforms as products. Internal teams are users, not obstacles. The book reinforced that building a platform is less about technical elegance and more about reducing friction for others. That framing stuck with me far longer than any specific architectural pattern.

Looking back

I am struck by how naturally these books aligned with where I was in life. Questions about systems, responsibility, resilience, and care all showed up in different forms, both professionally and personally.

Audiobooks did not make this year more productive. They made it more reflective.

And that was enough for me.

Staying curious has served me well this year, and I am looking forward to an interesting year ahead.

Listening Through a Year of Change

The return to the office brought back something I had quietly lost: time to listen. Looking back, the audiobooks I chose say more about this year than any list of achievements ever could.

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