While I wouldn’t put it in the pantheon of technology books I consider must have, Daniel Pink’s Drive is very good. While the concept of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose isn’t revolutionary, I find the book explains it well and why it is so important to knowledge work. If any one of those three elements is missing from work, productivity suffers drastically. Over the past year, with all the layoffs in technology, I suspect purpose will be the toughest aspect of knowledge work to get developers fully bought into. Mission statements are mostly ignored, and it’s difficult to commit to a purpose when all around you your friends and colleagues are being laid off to satisfy investors. If people are the greatest asset of a technology company, I’m not sure what that says about how a company values its assets.