I'd like to re-emphasise sanderjd's point not to focus too much on reading books. I myself went from doing a PhD and a lectureship in mathematics (with some cod

I'd like to re-emphasise sanderjd's point not to focus too much on reading books. I myself went from doing a PhD and a lectureship in mathematics (with some coding here and there) to a decent software engineering job in a smallish company. I've learnt everything on the fly by reading code, searching stack overflow, trying stuff out and coding alongside others. The great thing coming out of a PhD is not just that you have to be pretty smart to have done it: you now know you can grasp almost any aspect of human knowledge with sufficient brain racking. This is a vastly underrated piece of self-awareness which enables one to stay humble and tenacious.