r/sysadmin · 2025

Most-mentioned books in r/sysadmin during 2025

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/sysadmin within the published source unit for 2025. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

Books ranked

Tracked mentions in 2025

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

The Phoenix Project

Gene Kim

A struggling IT VP inherits a doomed project, a company on the edge of collapse, and one coworker who has quietly become the company's entire bottleneck.

6 in 2025

The Practice of System and Network Administration

Thomas A. Limoncelli

One r/sysadmin comment tells you to buy this on the company card before you touch a single production server.

4 in 2025

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1

W. Richard Stevens

You run tcpdump on a mystery connection and finally understand every line it prints, packet by packet.

3 in 2025

The Practice of Cloud System Administration

Thomas A. Limoncelli

Limoncelli's sequel to the sysadmin bible, rebuilt for teams who rent their servers by the hour instead of racking them.

3 in 2025

Introduction to Algorithms

Thomas H. Cormen

A course syllabus gets posted, and a Redditor recognizes it as nothing but this book's chapter headings in disguise.

2 in 2025

Network Warrior

Gary A. Donahue

Gary Donahue's field manual for the network engineer who inherits a closet full of Cisco gear and has to keep packets moving by Monday.

2 in 2025

Practical Packet Analysis

Chris Sanders

Chris Sanders walks you through Wireshark captures of real attacks, slow networks, and broken handshakes until the protocol stack stops being abstract.

2 in 2025

The Practice of Network Security Monitoring

Richard Bejtlich

Richard Bejtlich's field manual for catching intruders by watching the wire, built around Security Onion and the assumption that prevention will fail.

2 in 2025

The Manager's Path

Camille Fournier

A software engineer becomes a tech lead, then a manager, then a director, and the book insists on teaching you each rung separately.

1 in 2025

#10

The Soul of a New Machine

Tracy Kidder

A journalist embeds with Data General's engineers racing on no sleep to ship a new minicomputer before the deadline kills the project.

1 in 2025

#11

The Unicorn Project

Gene Kim

A senior engineer gets exiled to a doomed payroll project and finds a rogue skunkworks team racing to save the company's flagship app before the deadline kills it.

1 in 2025

#12

Time Management for System Administrators

Thomas A. Limoncelli

A sysadmin who can't ignore his phone reads the one book r/sysadmin keeps recommending to people who are burning out.

1 in 2025