Back in early 2022 I decided I wanted to transition from engineering to tech.

I started with a simple Google search:

“How to get a job as a software engineer”

As a university graduate, I had zero exposure to the corporate world. Being an engineering student, I had an almost allergic reaction to terminology like “job market”, “providing value”, and “headhunting”. I realized that there was an entire world of topics and areas that I had to understand in order to get a job.

I searched Reddit, researched YouTube, read books and dozens of blog posts, and went through dozens of interviews. I learned not only about dealing with recruiters, but about negotiation, pitching my story, and communicating with interviewers.

Despite being an entry-level graduate with almost no professional experience, I managed to get several offers and successfully negotiated all of them increasing compensation more than 10% on average.

I spent endless hours figuring out how to do this thing.

In the most unexpected of outcomes, I landed a job at Google of all places. That was an outstanding achievement in itself for me, but I soon realized that I had entered a new territory where I had to repeat the above process. Navigate the vast organizational and technological complexity of one of the Earth’s biggest tech companies with over 100,000 engineers. I had to understand how their world works, and how to be good at it.

Surprisingly, it all went staggeringly well, and I even got promoted within a year, something that less than 3% of engineers do.

During this journey, something strange started happening: People started asking me for advice. University colleagues were asking how to approach interviews, strangers on LinkedIn were requesting feedback on their resumes, and non-tech friends and family were seeking my guidance for transitioning into tech and programming.

I found myself repeating the same advice, wondering why would people ask me, a novice engineer early in my career, for guidance. All I did was read the advice and information available on the internet and convert it into actions towards a result. Glue work. Connect everything together.

That’s when it struck me. The information is out there, and it’s great, high-quality, impeccable information. I could not hope to match the technical depth or information value to classics like “Cracking the Coding Interview”, or patio11’s article “Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued”. But those endless hours I spent into connecting everything together, figuring out the path from “I want to get into tech” to “I have a job and I’m doing great at it” was something that I couldn’t find. Which is why I spent so much time figuring it out.

I am an over-thinker at heart. I read too much about everything and think way too much about anything. I obsess about understanding how the moving parts work around me and how to best navigate the world to get where I want to. I spent countless hours figuring things out.

Back when I started, I wished I had a friend who went though all this and shared all this information with me. All the tips and tricks that hide in plain sight, between the lines.

Glue work.

This is what this book is about. It’s the glue. The complexity that arise between the lines, that everyone assumes you will figure out yourself. It’s not a technical book, and it will not teach you to code, or negotiate. Instead, it will tell you that you will need to learn to code, where to look, and pitfalls to avoid. Especially pitfalls to avoid.

At the same time, I want the content of the book to be as evergreen as possible. I will deliberately not mention specific, concrete resources in the book, choosing to focus on lessons that transcend trends.

Lack of concrete pointers would make a book meant to be a practical guide almost useless. Instead of making the book ephemeral by mentioning links and articles, I will create a powerful online companion to the book, containing high-quality resources and actionable pointers for every topic that the book deals with. Handpicked, organized information that can get you started within minutes.

My goal is to save you days of work and frustration, by sharing everything that I learned, and the best resources I picked up along the way.

If you want to move to a tech career, and you wish you had a friend to help you navigate the process, and share with you all the tips, tricks, and what to do, I’m writing this book you.

It would mean the world to me if you subscribe to the waitlist for the pre-order. As a gift I will send you an early draft of the book’s introductory chapter “The philosophy of this book”. And to make sure that the book deals with what YOU find valuable, I have a form below where you can tell me what you would want me to cover in the book. I promise that I will try my best to include what you need.