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Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer: Evolving to enjoy a sustained career in software delivery
The untold story of every Unicorn company is that they aren’t built by mythical creatures. They are built by the tireless, unsung hero of the tech the Donkey Developer.
If you're the one who quietly stays late to fix a production bug, the one who patches the same flaky test for the third time because it's the "sure-footed" thing to do, then this book is for you. You are the reliable beast of burden that gets the real work done. But you've also felt the quiet frustration of being stuck in a loop, where your hard work goes unnoticed and the initial pride in your resilience curdles into the dull ache of burnout.
Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer is your guide out of that loop. It’s a practical, experience-driven manual for evolving your greatest strengths—reliability, grit, and endurance—and layering on the sophisticated skills that transform you into a leader, a force multiplier, and a truly indispensable engineer.
Author Lee Campbell, a VP of Engineering with over two decades of experience building high-performance teams across the globe, knows that the answer isn't just about working harder; it's about applying leverage. Instead, drawing lessons from endurance sports and the science of high performance, he provides a credible strategy rooted in a deep understanding of people.
This book provides a career-changing framework built on the Four C's:
Go beyond instinct and learn to manage your own mental machinery. Understand the biases that trap you and build the mental models that let you tame complexity.
Evolve your raw strength into masterful skill. Learn to build predictable quality through clear expectations, curated toolboxes, and the discipline of practised performance.
Stop just enduring the load and learn to manage it. Identify the "capacity thieves" that steal your energy and implement strategies to create the slack needed for innovation and growth.
Cultivate the integrity, accountability, and wisdom to become a proactive leader. Learn to navigate the human dynamics of teamwork with confidence and build the trust that creates true alignment.
This is more than a book about software. It's a handbook for a sustainable and rewarding career. It's for the junior, the senior, the tech lead, and the architect who knows they are capable of more. It’s time to transform your effort into leverage, your reliability into leadership, and your frustration into a fulfilling, enduring impact.
If you're the one who quietly stays late to fix a production bug, the one who patches the same flaky test for the third time because it's the "sure-footed" thing to do, then this book is for you. You are the reliable beast of burden that gets the real work done. But you've also felt the quiet frustration of being stuck in a loop, where your hard work goes unnoticed and the initial pride in your resilience curdles into the dull ache of burnout.
Donkey Developer, Unicorn Engineer is your guide out of that loop. It’s a practical, experience-driven manual for evolving your greatest strengths—reliability, grit, and endurance—and layering on the sophisticated skills that transform you into a leader, a force multiplier, and a truly indispensable engineer.
Author Lee Campbell, a VP of Engineering with over two decades of experience building high-performance teams across the globe, knows that the answer isn't just about working harder; it's about applying leverage. Instead, drawing lessons from endurance sports and the science of high performance, he provides a credible strategy rooted in a deep understanding of people.
This book provides a career-changing framework built on the Four C's:
Go beyond instinct and learn to manage your own mental machinery. Understand the biases that trap you and build the mental models that let you tame complexity.
Evolve your raw strength into masterful skill. Learn to build predictable quality through clear expectations, curated toolboxes, and the discipline of practised performance.
Stop just enduring the load and learn to manage it. Identify the "capacity thieves" that steal your energy and implement strategies to create the slack needed for innovation and growth.
Cultivate the integrity, accountability, and wisdom to become a proactive leader. Learn to navigate the human dynamics of teamwork with confidence and build the trust that creates true alignment.
This is more than a book about software. It's a handbook for a sustainable and rewarding career. It's for the junior, the senior, the tech lead, and the architect who knows they are capable of more. It’s time to transform your effort into leverage, your reliability into leadership, and your frustration into a fulfilling, enduring impact.
280 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2025
About the author
Lee Campbell
18 books5 followersI'm the oldest of five (which is relevant to my story); a mother of four, one not legally recognized (which is key to my story); and a PTSD survivor (ditto).
I've also been a self-inventor and a self-re-re-inventor, one self making me somewhat notorious in the '70s. During this stint, (some of)my story became quite public. STOW AWAY, my first of two books, begins to unveil what was left untold.
Backing away from my often warm but sometimes unduly harsh spotlight, I retreated into academia where I then professed the social sciences for decades. By all appearances, I was professional, polished and relatively uncontroversial. A little (not too much) professing leaks into my story, too, which makes STOW AWAY an easy-to-read case study, if you want an excuse to learn a few new things you can use in class discussion, for extra credit or to insert in conversations with some socially-conscious friends who have probably never heard of the subject in quite the way I'm going to acquaint you with it.
It took me 50 years after the first fact for me to finally sit still long enough to write. Although it took me a while, I know you are going to find it worth your own!
I've also been a self-inventor and a self-re-re-inventor, one self making me somewhat notorious in the '70s. During this stint, (some of)my story became quite public. STOW AWAY, my first of two books, begins to unveil what was left untold.
Backing away from my often warm but sometimes unduly harsh spotlight, I retreated into academia where I then professed the social sciences for decades. By all appearances, I was professional, polished and relatively uncontroversial. A little (not too much) professing leaks into my story, too, which makes STOW AWAY an easy-to-read case study, if you want an excuse to learn a few new things you can use in class discussion, for extra credit or to insert in conversations with some socially-conscious friends who have probably never heard of the subject in quite the way I'm going to acquaint you with it.
It took me 50 years after the first fact for me to finally sit still long enough to write. Although it took me a while, I know you are going to find it worth your own!
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