"The Squiggly Career" by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
What it's about
A modern take on non-linear career paths, providing tools for navigating careers that zig-zag rather than climb straight up. Includes exercises for identifying strengths, values, and possibilities beyond traditional corporate ladders.
Why I recommend it
The days of 30-year tenure at IBM are dead, and this book gets it. What resonates is their "career portfolio" approach—treating your career like a distributed system rather than a monolithic application. The exercises on values and strengths cut through the noise to what actually drives your decisions. I recommend this especially to engineers feeling trapped in the "senior engineer to staff engineer to principal" conveyor belt. Sometimes the most strategic move is sideways or even backwards. Their framework helps you evaluate non-obvious moves that compound over time.