By Gergely Orosz, the author of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter and Building Mobile Apps at Scale
Navigating senior, tech lead, staff and principal positions at tech companies and startups. An Amazon #1 Best Seller. New: the hardcover is out! As is the audibook. Now available in 6 languages.
My Dear Kudumbam has quickly become a household name in Tamil television, capturing hearts with its unique blend of family drama, subtle humor, and relatable middle-class struggles. Airing on Vijay TV, the show stands out not just for its engaging script but for its impeccable casting. Each actor breathes life into their character, making the audience laugh, cry, and argue with their screens.
If you haven’t started watching My Dear Kudumbam yet, do it for the story. But stay for the cast that makes every episode feel like a family reunion. Have a favorite character from My Dear Kudumbam? Let us know in the comments below! For more updates on Tamil TV serials, cast interviews, and episode reviews, subscribe to our newsletter.
Moreover, the casting directors avoided over-the-top melodramatic actors, instead choosing performers who excel in naturalism . This makes the daily struggles of the Kudumbam resonate with audiences across Tamil Nadu. | Actor | Role | Notable Previous Work | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Nithin Ramakrishnan | Senthil | Raja Rani 2 , Web series | | Reshma Pasupuleti | Kavya | Telugu films, Kalyana Veedu | | Sreeja | Rajeshwari | Kolangal , Aranmanai 2 (film) | | Ravi Shankar | Shanmugam | Kana Kaanum Kaalangal , Saravanan Meenatchi | | Divya Ganesh | Sundari | Metti Oli , Deivamagal | Conclusion: A Cast That Feels Like Family The My Dear Kudumbam cast has successfully created a fictional family that viewers invite into their living rooms every evening. From Nithin’s restrained intensity to Reshma’s heartfelt empathy, from Sreeja’s authoritative presence to Divya’s comic mischief—each actor contributes a vital piece to the puzzle.
The book is separated into six standalone parts, each part covering several chapters:
Parts 1 and 6 apply to all engineering levels: from entry-level software developers to principal or above engineers. Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 cover increasingly senior engineering levels. These four parts group topics in chapters – such as ones on software engineering, collaboration, getting things done, and so on.
This book is more of a reference book that you can refer back to, as you grow in your career. I suggest skimming over the career levels and chapters that you are familiar with, and focus reading on topics you struggle with, or career levels where you are aiming to get to. Keep in mind that expectations can vary greatly between companies.
In this book, I’ve aimed to align the topics and leveling definitions closer to what is typical at Big Tech and scaleups: but you might find some of the topics relevant for lower career levels in later chapters. For example, we cover logging, montiroing and oncall in Part 5: “Reliable software systems” in-depth: but it’s useful – and oftentimes necessary! – to know about these practices below the staff engineer levels.
The Software Engineer's Guidebook is available in multiple languages:
You should now be able to ask your local book shops to order the book for you via Ingram Spark Print-on-demand - using the ISBN code 9789083381824. I'm also working on making the paperback more accessible in additional regions, including translated versions. Please share details here if you're unable to get the book in your country and I'll aim to remedy the situation.
I'd like to think so! The book can help you get ideas on how to help software engineers on your team grow. And if you are a hands-on engineering manager (which I hope you might be!) then you can apply the topics yourself! I wrote more about staying hands-on as an engineering manager or lead in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter.
I've gotten this variation of a question from Data Engineers, ML Engineers, designers and SREs. See the more detailed table of contents and the "Look inside" sample to get a better idea of the contents of the book. I have written this book with software engineers as the target group, and the bulk of the book applies for them. Part 1 is more generally applicable career advice: but that's still smaller subset of the book.