A Field Guide for Sustainable Careers in Software Delivery

For most of my career, I’ve been surrounded by talented, hardworking people who care deeply about the software they build – and the people they build it with. But I’ve also seen how easily good engineers can burn out, drift off-course, or get stuck under the weight of competing priorities, poor leadership, or sheer complexity.

That’s why I wrote Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer.

Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer book cover

It’s a handbook for those of us who want to grow sustainably in our careers – to build, to lead, and to last.

The Goal: Sustainable Careers in Software Delivery

The tech industry celebrates velocity, disruption, and heroics. But behind every overnight success is a team of quiet, reliable builders carrying the load day after day.

Sustainability in software isn’t just about uptime or code efficiency. It’s about endurance – the ability to keep delivering value without burning out the people who make it possible.

This book is built around that idea: helping engineers, leads, and teams design careers that are not just successful but sustainable. It’s about balancing ambition with stability, creativity with craftsmanship, and speed with sense.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “Can I keep doing this for another five years?” – this book is for you.

What It Is: A Field Guide to Keep by Your Side

Think of Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer as a field guide – not a textbook. It’s designed to sit beside your keyboard or your notebook, to be picked up between sprints or over a morning coffee.

It’s written in short, focused chapters—just 13 in total—each built to be read and reflected on in about 20–30 minutes.

Every chapter blends cognitive psychology, engineering craft, and real-world leadership lessons. You’ll find frameworks, stories, and practical ways to apply each idea the next day at work.

Ideally, you would read it in order. The chapters build on concepts from previous chapters. However, once you have completed it, you will find yourself jumping back to chapters, leaving bookmarks, recapping highlighted sections and comparing notes with colleagues. Sharing it with your colleagues is key. Once you have all read it, you can jump in wherever you’re feeling the most friction—burnout, planning, focus, accountability, or culture—and find something immediately useful.

Who It’s For: People Building Software That’s Meant to Last

This isn’t a startup blitz playbook or a management theory manual. It’s written for the builders.

If you work in a team that delivers software intended to last more than two years – the kind that must evolve gracefully, maintain reliability, and outlive its original creators – this book is for you.

It’s for developers, testers, tech leads, product managers, scrum masters, producers and engineering managers who care about how work feels, not just how it performs.

The book is for teams that value craftsmanship over chaos, progress over posturing, and collaboration over heroics.

I really worked hard to ensure this was valuable to a broad range of readers, from juniors, interns, and graduates to established coders, developers, and engineers, and to privileged roles such as tech lead, team leader, staff engineer, principal engineer, and even CTO. I wanted to consider the types of contributors to software delivery — from front end to back end, design to data, regulatory to reliability. Finally, I also wanted to respect the various personality types we see, including introverts, extroverts, deliberators, doers, soloists, and team players. All of these roles and traits have value, and I wanted to ensure that they felt valued when reading the book. I also wanted them to appreciate the value others bring.

And, so it’s especially for the quiet achievers – the “donkeys” who keep carrying the load, often without the spotlight, but whose steady contributions make everything else possible.

What’s in It for You

At its core, Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer helps you become the best version of yourself – and help your team do the same.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

  • Manage cognitive load and maintain clarity when everything feels urgent
  • Recognise the traps of overwork and the myths of productivity
  • Design lightweight planning and reflection habits that stick
  • Create team cultures that balance trust and accountability
  • Shift from reactive firefighting to proactive, enduring delivery

These are not abstract principles – they’re the lessons I’ve applied across real teams, delivering real products, under real pressure.

Each chapter offers a practical lens you can apply to your next sprint, meeting, or decision.

How Much Effort for You

The book is deliberately light on jargon and heavy on insight.

With just 13 chapters—most around 20–30 minutes of reading—the entire book can be completed in a week of short daily sessions or a focused weekend. You could even have a 30-minute morning book club session for 3 weeks to get the whole team to travel the journey together.

You’ll walk away not just inspired, but equipped – with new language to describe the challenges you face and new frameworks to help you overcome them.

The goal isn’t to teach you what to think – it’s to give you better ways to think about your work, your team, and your career.

Why I Wrote It

I’ve been fortunate to work across many teams – some that struggled, some that soared – and a few that achieved something rare: They delivered high-quality software, enjoyed working together, and sustained that performance for years.

Getting one of those is hard. Getting two is rare. Getting all three—delivery, enjoyment, and endurance—is the mark of a truly exceptional team.

I wanted to share what I learned from those experiences: the mindset, models, and moments that helped us get there—and stay there.

Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer distils those lessons so others can build their own versions of that success – in their teams, their projects, and their careers.

Because enduring delivery isn’t an accident.

Closing

This book is for everyone who still believes software can be better—not just faster, but smarter, saner, and more human.

If you crush software delivery every day, all by yourself – good for you, ya little Unicorn. This book is not for you. It is for the rest of us, the horses and the donkeys that carry the load for the long run.

If you’re ready to build a sustainable career – and help your team do the same – Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer is your field guide.

Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer is available on Amazon in digital and paperback.