Build An Unorthodox Guide from the Designer of the IPod, IPad and Nest

Tony Fadell has been through the career crises and forks in the road that most people face, and this book gives the advice he wishes someone had handed him. It works as a mentor on the page: how to choose a job, how to manage well, how to approach design, how to start a company and how to run it.

Fadell spent the first ten years of his working life in Silicon Valley failing badly. The following twenty went into building devices that reached huge numbers of people: the iPod, the iPhone and the Nest Learning Thermostat. He draws on both stretches, the screwups and the successes.

The form is an advice encyclopedia, a non-fiction guide organised around leadership, design, startups, mentorship and decision making. Stories from his own career sit alongside practical guidance, so the reader gets the reasoning behind each lesson as well as the rule.

His approach goes against the Silicon Valley idea that everything must be reinvented. The advice is old school, built on human nature rather than gimmicks, and kept plain: he says what works. It suits anyone making a product, leading a team or deciding what to do next in a career.