This book grew out of the overwhelmingly positive response to posts on my blog about the career-oriented side of software development. I see a future in which software developers carve out more autonomy and leverage for ourselves and where software development goes from being seen as line level grunt work to a first class, knowledge work profession. In this book, I talk about how ill-suited the existing corporate structure is to knowledge work and to software development, and then I talk about how I think we're headed for a brighter future and how I think we can get there more quickly.