Gift for Engineers Products
Discover the best gift for engineers products and tools we actually use. Each item tested in real-world scenarios with honest, detailed reviews.
Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (2nd Edition)
Michael Nygard's definitive guide for production hardening, resilience, and real-world failures. Learn how to design systems that survive in production, not just work in development.
The book I read after my first production incident. Nygard's stability patterns and capacity planning framework helped me understand why code that works in dev fails in production. Read full review.
Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time
Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright's practical lessons in scale, culture, testing, and long-term maintainability. Learn how Google builds software that lasts decades.
Lessons from maintaining codebases for decades. The chapters on testing, code review culture, and documentation gave me frameworks that work at any scale. Read full review.
Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais' modern framework for designing software teams and reducing cognitive load. Learn how team structure affects software architecture and delivery speed.
Explained why our microservices weren't working. The framework that team structure and software architecture are inseparable changed how I think about system design. Read full review.
The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
Camille Fournier's roadmap for senior ICs, tech leads, and managers. Even individual contributors benefit from understanding team dynamics, career progression, and the transition from coding to leadership.
Essential reading for senior ICs considering tech lead work. Fournier's breakdown of each level from senior IC to VP helped me understand what I was signing up for. Read full review.
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr's DevOps novel that teaches operations, bottlenecks, and flow. Learn the principles of continuous delivery through a story about saving a failing IT project.
The DevOps novel that teaches operations and flow through story. I hand this to executives who don't understand why deployments break—it makes the concepts stick. Read full review.
The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change
Tanya Reilly's guide to thinking and operating at staff-plus levels. Learn how to have impact without direct reports, influence architecture decisions, and navigate the transition from senior to staff engineer.
The book I wish existed when figuring out what staff engineers do. Reilly's breakdown of scope, technical leadership, and having impact without authority is essential reading. Read full review.
The Unicorn Project: A Novel About Digital Disruption, Redshirts, and Rebelling Against the Ancient Powerful Order
Gene Kim's developer-centered companion story to The Phoenix Project about cognitive load and platform engineering. Learn how developers can fight back against technical debt and bureaucracy.
The developer's perspective on fighting technical debt and bureaucracy. The five ideals gave me a framework for advocating for better tooling and processes. Read full review.
Arduino UNO R4 WiFi
UNO R3 form-factor board built around a 48MHz Renesas RA4M1 with onboard ESP32-S3 Wi-Fi/BLE, USB-C power, Qwiic connector, and a 12x8 LED matrix—ideal for connected prototypes without stacking extra shields.
Renesas RA4M1 plus ESP32-S3, USB-C, Qwiic, and the built-in LED matrix keep the UNO R4 WiFi my go-to IoT board—just budget for higher idle draw and the occasional AVR library tweak. Read full review.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Martin Kleppmann's definitive handbook on building reliable, scalable, maintainable data platforms. Covers the fundamentals of distributed systems, databases, and data processing that remain essential for modern architectures. Note: The second edition will be released on Tuesday, March 31, 2026 with updated content on streaming, CDC, compliance, and cloud patterns.
The definitive guide to distributed data systems—covering consistency, replication, partitioning, and the fundamental trade-offs that shape modern architectures. Read full review.
Genmitsu 3018-PRO CNC Router with 20000RPM Spindle
Desktop CNC kit with a 300 x 180 mm work envelope, GRBL control, ER11 spindle, and keyed wiring that let makers engrave PCBs, plastics, and hardwood alongside their 3D printing projects.
Pre-wired limit switches, a cooler 20K spindle, and GRBL compatibility keep the 3018-PRO my go-to desktop router for PCB prototypes and hardwood inlays. Read full review.
Hakko FX-888DX Digital Soldering Station
70W temperature-controlled station with the new rotary encoder interface, T18 tip ecosystem, and rapid thermal recovery for dependable assembly and rework.
Rotary encoder controls, fast thermal recovery, and Hakko’s T18 ecosystem keep the FX-888DX as my go-to station for everything from connector swaps to fine-pitch rework. Read full review.
Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
Classic essays on software project management, schedules, and team dynamics that shaped modern engineering practices.
Brooks’ essays still explain why schedules slip and why communication matters—every engineering leader should revisit them. Read full review.
Raspberry Pi Pico W
Compact RP2040‑based microcontroller board with 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi for affordable embedded and IoT projects.
Perfect for IoT projects. Built-in Wi-Fi incredibly convenient for connected projects. RP2040 chip surprisingly powerful for price. Used for home automation sensors to weather stations. Rock solid. Great value. Read full review.
Rigol DS1102Z-E Digital Oscilloscope
100 MHz, 2‑channel digital oscilloscope with deep memory for capturing and analyzing electronic signals during debugging.
Invaluable for electronics projects and debugging. 100 MHz bandwidth perfect for microcontroller work. Deep memory captures complex signals beautifully. Intuitive interface. Worth every penny. Read full review.
RTL-SDR Blog V3 USB Radio
USB software‑defined radio (SDR) receiver covering a wide frequency range for exploring and decoding radio signals.
Fascinating addition to tech collection. Frequency coverage impressive - explore AM/FM radio, weather satellites, digital signals. Mature software ecosystem with free tools. Great value for radio exploration. Read full review.
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production
Google's SRE practices for operating reliable, scalable production services, covering SLIs/SLOs, automation, and incident response.
Still the definitive SRE playbook—SLOs, toil budgets, and blameless postmortems that every ops team should adopt. Read full review.
Fluke 117 Multimeter
True-RMS digital multimeter with integrated non-contact voltage detection, low-impedance mode, and compact design for electricians and electronics workbenches.
True-RMS accuracy, LoZ ghost-voltage protection, and Fluke build make the 117 my trusted daily multimeter. Read full review.
GeeekPi Raspberry Pi Cluster Case
Clear acrylic six-layer case that houses four Raspberry Pi boards with active cooling, cable management, and easy access for homelab clusters.
Keeps my four-node Pi cluster cool, accessible, and organized—best acrylic stack I’ve used for k3s and homelab work. Read full review.
Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit PRO
Starter kit including Raspberry Pi 5, power supply, case, and cooling—everything needed to set up a capable single‑board computer.
Excellent Raspberry Pi 5 starter kit with everything needed to begin single-board computing projects. Perfect for DIY makers. Read full review.
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
Research-backed field guide that ties lean software delivery habits to measurable business outcomes, unpacking the DORA metrics, cultural foundations, and continuous delivery capabilities that separated top performers in the Accelerate State of DevOps reports.
Still my go-to reference when aligning execs around DORA metrics and the cultural work that makes continuous delivery stick. Read full review.