Our favorite tech books written by women
AmyJune
Sun, 03/12/2023 – 03:00
Whether you’re a fast reader or someone who takes a book at a leisurely pace, a whole month is an ample time to explore a new book. As March is Women’s History Month, we asked Opensource.com contributors to tell us about their favorite books by women authors.
Leadership books
As an engineer turned agency CTO, one book I consider “required reading” for all of my technical leads and managers is The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier. Fournier does a stellar job outlining all aspects of the sometimes-awkward, sometimes-exhilarating progression from code to mentorship to management to executive leadership. The book is wonderfully tactical and real in its approach and will give you practical leadership tips no matter where you are in your engineering career. I highly recommend it.
These three books inspired and empowered me to own and shape my career in tech. They offer three different points of view: the manager, the engineer, and the hacker. You can understand what it’s like to be in these roles and decide the path you want to pursue. You’ll get complete and relevant information to act mindfully and to deal with obstacles.
- The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier
- The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly
- Hacking Capitalism by Kris Nóva
Hacking Capitalism can be particularly useful to marginalized people who are willing to fight back.
Profit Without Oppression by Kim Crayton
Programming guides
- 99 bottles of OOP (it’s Ruby) by Sandi Metz
- wizard zines by Julia Evans
- Beautiful C++ and Using Visual C++ by Kate Gregory
I’m inspired by Laura Thomson, current SVP of Engineering at Fastly, Board Trustee at Internet Society, and co-author of the best-selling PHP and MySQL Web Development from Addison-Wesley Professional.
Women making history
I enjoyed Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks
—Evelyn Mitchell
Proving Ground: The untold story of the six women who programmed the world’s first modern computer. by Kathy Kleiman
Grace Hopper: Admiral of the cyber sea by Kathleen Broome Williams
Share your favorites
What books are you reading by women authors? Share your recommendations in the comments!
Add these inspiring tech books to your reading list for Women’s History Month.
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Katherine is a full-stack web LAMP developer and Chief Technology Officer at Kanopi. She’s been building websites since 1999, working in WordPress since 2003, and Drupal since 2007. She found her way to Kanopi as a client; when she worked at a marketing/brand agency, Katherine was so impressed with how Kanopi managed a project under challenging conditions that she was eager to join the team.
As Chief Technology Officer, Katherine’s job is to keep Kanopi excelling in all things technical. She is a Solutions Architect with a proven track record spanning 15 years of client-facing technology leadership for clients ranging from small businesses and high-growth startups to global business and consumer divisions of Fortune 500 enterprises. She helps clients see the relationship between their business needs and their technical solution, and guides them towards maximizing the impact and longevity of their sites with the budget they have available.
As an experienced cross-functional team leader, Katherine guides project teams, defines requirements, and provides project oversight while serving as a solutions-focused client partner. She is a passionate advocate for rewarding user experiences and future-proof development methodologies.
Ben Ramsey is a web developer, API enthusiast, and open source software advocate living in Nashville, TN.
Passionate about the PHP community, Ben is actively working on the PHP Community Foundation, PHP TestFest, and Southeast PHP Conference. He is the founder of the Atlanta PHP user group and co-organizer of the Nashville PHP user group. He also organized the first PHP Appalachia retreat and PHP Community Conference.
A core contributor to the PHP programming language, Ben is the co-author of Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide and PHP 5 Unleashed, the author of numerous articles on APIs and web application security, and is a popular speaker at PHP conferences worldwide.
When not building the next-generation platform for professional photographers at ShootProof, Ben enjoys good beer and spending time with his family.
Ben blogs about web development at benramsey.com. His open-source contributions, including the popular ramsey/uuid library for PHP, may be found at github.com/ramsey.
I’m a Software Engineer at Red Hat, working on CI/CD and Automation with cloud-native open-source technologies.
Rob McBryde is a Senior Technical Program Manager for the Red Hat Customer Portal. Working with Customer Lifecycle Marketing and Customer Digital Experience design and engineering teams, McBryde oversees creating personalized and improved experiences for Customer Portal visitors.
He joined Red Hat in 2022 as part of the Customer Experience and Engagement. Prior to Red Hat, McBryde worked in digital agencies since 2006 and managed numerous enterprise-level web projects since 2013. He loves being in the trenches with his team and seeing all parts of a project come together to form a tangible, meaningful solution.
I love to code, write things, run. Freelance web developer, former cheerleader. I enjoy all Linux distros.
A “furry” alter ego (OC/Original Character) for a senior US Government Employed (civilian) research scientist & (patented) inventor, married, “boomer” generation Dad to a teenager, who is also advocate for diversity, self improvement and higher education. Further interest in/abilities for: Photographer (semi-professional, digital & film), avid horse riding competitor, Foodie (supertaster), computer hobbyist & IT qualified professional (aware of AI/Machine Learning as well as parallel/GPU processing techniques, supercomputers use and architecture), basic understanding of politics, federal agency alignments, government budget cycles, planning & approvals, as well as medical issues related to cardiac issues and basic health (I am *not* a health profession!)
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