8 ms·

A reading list for new engineering managers

177 points by gHeadphone 6y ago

krallja 6y ago
One thing not on the list: where do you find the space to read all these books?
- nojito 6y ago
  All you need is 30 minutes a day. It’s simply creating a habit of reading.
- kmtrowbr 6y ago
  Each minute that you read per day, equals about 1 book per year. So if you read 20 minutes per day, you will read around 20 books per year. A bookstand such as https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MVBDIPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MVBDIPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... is helpful to hold the book on the table where you eat. This way whenever you sit down, the book is open and ready to go. Books are simply a media format like a podcast or a movie. The only difference is that, they are pure language, and it requires a bit more from you to read, than it does to listen or watch. Reading is a bit more "active." However the pure language, and the active reading, makes them really dense and effective for communicating ideas. The "ideas per minute" is very high for books. If you are a software developer, you're already a writer in some sense. Books therefore I see as very familiar for developers.
- Ozzie_osman 6y ago
  I used to read physical books. Then I started using Kindle devices, which were a lot less enjoyable but more more convenient (can carry anywhere, get books instantly) and my reading time increased dramatically. Then I started using the Kindle app on my phone, which was even less enjoyable but even more convenient and accessible, and now I easily do 30-60 minutes each day (time I could've easily spent lost in social media).
- pjmorris 6y ago
  I keep a Kindle and a physical book or two on my nightstand. I sometimes read before bed, and sometimes read once I've woken in the middle of the night. The Kindle also goes with me on any kind of trip. I also take time to read every morning. I wonder at people who find time to exercise, but I guess I shouldn't as the reading tends to take the place of exercise. Time is there, it's what we decide to do with it where the battle lies.
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  Usually I find that if I have a problem to solve and I see a book that might help me solve it, I become very motivated to read it. When that happens repeatedly, pretty soon it starts to seem like a good idea (and creates motivation) to read related books in advance.
- occz 6y ago
  Some options: - Audiobooks, while: - Exercising - Commuting - Performing mundane everyday tasks. My favorite is doing the dishes and throwing out the trash. - If your organisation values continuous learning, dedicate 30 minutes each workday for reading. It will pay off for the organisation, but not all organisations comprehend that, unfortunately. - Dedicate 30 minutes outside your workday for reading, if you think you can derive enough value from it to be worth it. This requires some personal evaluation, and is the last option on the list for good reason - it is easily the least good option in my opinion.
- stunt 6y ago
  Use a time-sheet to record your activities for the next two weeks. It will help you to find the space you need to read regularly.
krona 6y ago
I admit I haven't read many books on the subject but Managing Humans is the only one that was interesting/entertaining enough for me to recommend to anyone.
- rkda 6y ago
  The Art of Leadership from the same author is awesome as well :)
908B64B197 6y ago
Best advice I would have to give is to simply... be an engineer yourself before attempting to manage some. The best engineering managers I've met were simply brilliant engineers, that inspired devs around them and starting managing without having the official tittle: folks would naturally come to them for guidance. The hardest part was to get them to accept that the scope of what they were working on simply went beyond one human's ability to code it himself. But I've seen them break out debuggers and debug issues right in the middle of meetings. On the other hand, I've met handful of "career managers" that weren't qualified as engineers and, well, frankly they didn't understand the engineering and got no respect out of the organization. No wonder Nadella, Pichai and Cook are all engineers.
- olah_1 6y ago
  Seems like there would be a benefit to having a manager that is actually further from the problem itself. Less precious about details and more focused on universal principles. What ex-engineer managers had was respect for the craft itself. You can respect the work of the team without doing it in the past.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    I used to assume that. Until I met folks who seemed to be able to switch from micro details to macro "big picture" rather seamlessly. The extreme example of that is a Gates review[0]. Maybe that's why John Sculley never stood a chance. It's more than respect for the craft, it's understanding the problem space. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
    - olah_1 6y ago
      That sounds like a different role to me. I think we’re talking about different things. Product Managers vs managing the work flow / engineering work. That was a funny read, thanks.
      - 6y ago
BlackjackCF 6y ago
Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle is the best book on management specifically tailored for engineering managers. I find most management books to be useful in terms of thinking about general people management. I had takeaways from An Elegant Puzzle that I could directly apply to my day to day work. That's more valuable than anything else.
- egwor 6y ago
  Link for others: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elegant-Puzzle-Systems-Engineering-Management-ebook/dp/B07QYCHJ7V/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=An+Elegant+Puzzle&qid=1618084480&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elegant-Puzzle-Systems-Engineering-...
splittingTimes 6y ago
Totally agree on Manager Tools. Great stuff. The best book on the topic for me was peopleware [1]. Radical candor [2] was something I started but only got to the first 50 pages. Was also good. === [1] https://www.amazon.de/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113/ref=asc_df_0321934113/ https://www.amazon.de/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3... [2] https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Kim-Scott/dp/1529038340/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=radical+candor&qid=1618082410&sprefix=radical&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Kim-Scott/dp/1529038340/ref=mp_s_...
epicureanideal 6y ago
In my experience, most managers don't bother reading books. If they've read ANY books on management, that's above average. More than 1 in the past year, they're already highly unusual. Usually they get their position through knowing people or being slavishly obedient even in ways that are destructive to long term value.
- seneca 6y ago
  > In my experience, most managers don't bother reading books... Usually they get their position through knowing people or being slavishly obedient... That's odd. I've spent much of my career in engineering leadership, and I'd estimate 75% or more of the managers I've worked with read books to a degree I would categorize as obsessive. This has been true across half a dozen companies. Do you usually work for software companies? Maybe outside the US? I'm curious how we could have such opposite experiences. We certainly agree that it's a mark of a good manager.
  - watwut 6y ago
    For whatever is worth it, my experience with managers was definitely not "obsessive reader". Some read books very rarely, others once in a while.
  - epicureanideal 6y ago
    Do you work in a particular subset of the industry, or at a particular company (that I should seek to join, if they have competent management)? Yes, I work exclusively with software companies, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
occz 6y ago
I've read both a few of the negotiation books (Getting to yes, Getting past no) and Five Dysfunctions and I don't know that I'd recommend them, to be honest. My beef with Five Dysfunctions is primarily the book recommending MBTI. MBTI has the predictive value of horoscopes, more or less. Really hard to take anything said seriously at that point. The negotiation-series has some value, and has helped me succeed in some negotiations, but I'd honestly recommend Never split the difference as a substitute. Having read that book instead would probably have saved me more than a few poor outcomes in negotiations. Finally I'd like to recommend Peopleware - surely one of - if not the definitively - best book I've read for professional purposes.
- mike555 6y ago
  I’ve read five dysfunctions and can’t say I remember anything about personality types (MBTI). To me it was about persistence honesty and pragmatism. Loved it.
  - occz 6y ago
    It's mentioned both in the fable-part and the epilogue.
- davideous 6y ago
  Five Dysfunctions of a Team completely was absolutely revolutionary for me and my team. It's not about MBTI at all, but MBTI is just a tool it mentions to help with dysfunction one. Here are the five dysfunctions: The foundational dysfunction is a lack of trust -- trust defined as belief that your skill weaknesses and deficiencies will not be used against you. So people conceal weaknesses and don't ask for help from each other, etc. This leads to fear of (healthy, productive) conflict -- you don't hash things out, but rather any meaningful discussion gets suppressed. Creates an environment where back-channeling and politics thrive, etc. This leads to lack of commitment -- the team has not really had heathy, productive conflict/discussion so they don't buy into decisions. There is ambiguity about direction and priorities. This leads to avoidance of accountability. This leads to inattention to results. Here's a high-level overview: https://www.executiveagenda.com/application/files/3215/6401/6016/fivedysfunctions.pdf https://www.executiveagenda.com/application/files/3215/6401/...
cdavid 6y ago
For engineers who become managers, manager tools is my first recommendation as well. It can be cringy from time to time, but it really focuses on things we are not used to think much as engineers. And it gives a lot of practical tips one can use right away. I think they apply to almost any type of organisation large enough to require management. One issue with giving tips about eng. management is a bit like giving tips about software engineering: it is very context dependent. Especially around the areas where you have agency. Do you have agency in hiring ? In the directions your team work on ? On head count ? On technologies ? On firing ? On promotions ? Depending on your levers, your management will have to adapt a lot.
rammy1234 6y ago
“Making of a manager” by Julie Zhuo was great read for me. It covers the transformation of individual contributor to a manager. Well written. Give it a try.
Guthur 6y ago
In my opinion for the majority of the cases you manage systems and lead people. Improving the organisational system so that the individuals can effectively do their job is an important activity. This requires collecting reasonable information to feed into developing your hypotheses on how to improve the system. This I feel is management. Ensure that the individual team members can understand how they are contributing the overall company aim, feel motivate to learn and work, and generally understand how they are fitting into the organisational system is leadership. There is an exception when an individual has deviated strongly from your average team member and that requires case by case analysis. The distinction might seem a little pedantic and I'm continually evaluating my perspective on leadership but I do feel there is reason to make some distinction and that it might avoid some of the pitfalls of leadership such as micro management and individual demotivation.
- TheColorYellow 6y ago
  I really think this nails it. Management of people requires a very empathetic, highly personalized approach. It's really all about motivation and the levers you can use are not always in line with the company objectives. High performance companies and teams are usually the ones that can find a way to sync up the people objectives with the company objectives for a long enough time to deliver products and services into a marketplace. Meanwhile, organizational management is much more of a systems thinking approach that requires classical engineering skills. It requires technical and domain expertise plus intimate knowledge of the existing practices, processes, and environments. Which makes sense as to why most managers in the software development field fail. They know the organizational side of things well but the people side is overlooked. And now the spectrum is swinging towards people managers without the requisite organizational skills and we're left with a new set of problems.
rramadass 6y ago
All "Engineering Managers" should read this first: Speech by David Packard to HP Managers - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-our-company-5634378 https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...
maroonblazer 6y ago
Any list of this sort should include "Managing The Design Factory" by Donald G. Reinertsen. A thought-provoking evaluation of what to care about when managing software teams.
shimms 6y ago
My current box of books that I recommend to new managers on my teams: Technology Specific: * An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management (Will Larson) * Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and Devops: Building and Scaling High Performing Teams (Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim) * Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow (Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais) * Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Marty Cagan) * The Phoenix Project (Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford) General: * The Goal (Eliyahu Goldratt) * Turn the Ship Around! (L David Marquet) * Just Culture (Sidney Dekker) * Leadership on the Line (Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky) * Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)
- jacobian 6y ago
  Thanks for the list! The one that I've read (about half) are great, which makes me want to read the rest. (Just Culture and Accelerate, in particular, are so great I think I'm going to consider adding them to my list as well.)
clarkevans 6y ago
I found "Switch" to be helpful when facilitating organizational change -- https://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/ https://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/

177 points by gHeadphone 6y ago

krallja 6y ago

One thing not on the list: where do you find the space to read all these books?

nojito 6y ago
All you need is 30 minutes a day. It’s simply creating a habit of reading.
kmtrowbr 6y ago
Each minute that you read per day, equals about 1 book per year. So if you read 20 minutes per day, you will read around 20 books per year. A bookstand such as https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MVBDIPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MVBDIPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... is helpful to hold the book on the table where you eat. This way whenever you sit down, the book is open and ready to go. Books are simply a media format like a podcast or a movie. The only difference is that, they are pure language, and it requires a bit more from you to read, than it does to listen or watch. Reading is a bit more "active." However the pure language, and the active reading, makes them really dense and effective for communicating ideas. The "ideas per minute" is very high for books. If you are a software developer, you're already a writer in some sense. Books therefore I see as very familiar for developers.
Ozzie_osman 6y ago
I used to read physical books. Then I started using Kindle devices, which were a lot less enjoyable but more more convenient (can carry anywhere, get books instantly) and my reading time increased dramatically. Then I started using the Kindle app on my phone, which was even less enjoyable but even more convenient and accessible, and now I easily do 30-60 minutes each day (time I could've easily spent lost in social media).
pjmorris 6y ago
I keep a Kindle and a physical book or two on my nightstand. I sometimes read before bed, and sometimes read once I've woken in the middle of the night. The Kindle also goes with me on any kind of trip. I also take time to read every morning. I wonder at people who find time to exercise, but I guess I shouldn't as the reading tends to take the place of exercise. Time is there, it's what we decide to do with it where the battle lies.
epicureanideal 6y ago
Usually I find that if I have a problem to solve and I see a book that might help me solve it, I become very motivated to read it. When that happens repeatedly, pretty soon it starts to seem like a good idea (and creates motivation) to read related books in advance.
occz 6y ago
Some options: - Audiobooks, while: - Exercising - Commuting - Performing mundane everyday tasks. My favorite is doing the dishes and throwing out the trash. - If your organisation values continuous learning, dedicate 30 minutes each workday for reading. It will pay off for the organisation, but not all organisations comprehend that, unfortunately. - Dedicate 30 minutes outside your workday for reading, if you think you can derive enough value from it to be worth it. This requires some personal evaluation, and is the last option on the list for good reason - it is easily the least good option in my opinion.
stunt 6y ago
Use a time-sheet to record your activities for the next two weeks. It will help you to find the space you need to read regularly.

krona 6y ago

I admit I haven't read many books on the subject but Managing Humans is the only one that was interesting/entertaining enough for me to recommend to anyone.

rkda 6y ago
The Art of Leadership from the same author is awesome as well :)

908B64B197 6y ago

Best advice I would have to give is to simply... be an engineer yourself before attempting to manage some. The best engineering managers I've met were simply brilliant engineers, that inspired devs around them and starting managing without having the official tittle: folks would naturally come to them for guidance. The hardest part was to get them to accept that the scope of what they were working on simply went beyond one human's ability to code it himself. But I've seen them break out debuggers and debug issues right in the middle of meetings. On the other hand, I've met handful of "career managers" that weren't qualified as engineers and, well, frankly they didn't understand the engineering and got no respect out of the organization. No wonder Nadella, Pichai and Cook are all engineers.

olah_1 6y ago
Seems like there would be a benefit to having a manager that is actually further from the problem itself. Less precious about details and more focused on universal principles. What ex-engineer managers had was respect for the craft itself. You can respect the work of the team without doing it in the past.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  I used to assume that. Until I met folks who seemed to be able to switch from micro details to macro "big picture" rather seamlessly. The extreme example of that is a Gates review[0]. Maybe that's why John Sculley never stood a chance. It's more than respect for the craft, it's understanding the problem space. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
  - olah_1 6y ago
    That sounds like a different role to me. I think we’re talking about different things. Product Managers vs managing the work flow / engineering work. That was a funny read, thanks.
    - 6y ago

BlackjackCF 6y ago

Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle is the best book on management specifically tailored for engineering managers. I find most management books to be useful in terms of thinking about general people management. I had takeaways from An Elegant Puzzle that I could directly apply to my day to day work. That's more valuable than anything else.

egwor 6y ago
Link for others: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elegant-Puzzle-Systems-Engineering-Management-ebook/dp/B07QYCHJ7V/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=An+Elegant+Puzzle&qid=1618084480&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elegant-Puzzle-Systems-Engineering-...

splittingTimes 6y ago

Totally agree on Manager Tools. Great stuff. The best book on the topic for me was peopleware [1]. Radical candor [2] was something I started but only got to the first 50 pages. Was also good. === [1] https://www.amazon.de/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113/ref=asc_df_0321934113/ https://www.amazon.de/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3... [2] https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Kim-Scott/dp/1529038340/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=radical+candor&qid=1618082410&sprefix=radical&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Kim-Scott/dp/1529038340/ref=mp_s_...

epicureanideal 6y ago

In my experience, most managers don't bother reading books. If they've read ANY books on management, that's above average. More than 1 in the past year, they're already highly unusual. Usually they get their position through knowing people or being slavishly obedient even in ways that are destructive to long term value.

seneca 6y ago
> In my experience, most managers don't bother reading books... Usually they get their position through knowing people or being slavishly obedient... That's odd. I've spent much of my career in engineering leadership, and I'd estimate 75% or more of the managers I've worked with read books to a degree I would categorize as obsessive. This has been true across half a dozen companies. Do you usually work for software companies? Maybe outside the US? I'm curious how we could have such opposite experiences. We certainly agree that it's a mark of a good manager.
- watwut 6y ago
  For whatever is worth it, my experience with managers was definitely not "obsessive reader". Some read books very rarely, others once in a while.
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  Do you work in a particular subset of the industry, or at a particular company (that I should seek to join, if they have competent management)? Yes, I work exclusively with software companies, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

occz 6y ago

I've read both a few of the negotiation books (Getting to yes, Getting past no) and Five Dysfunctions and I don't know that I'd recommend them, to be honest. My beef with Five Dysfunctions is primarily the book recommending MBTI. MBTI has the predictive value of horoscopes, more or less. Really hard to take anything said seriously at that point. The negotiation-series has some value, and has helped me succeed in some negotiations, but I'd honestly recommend Never split the difference as a substitute. Having read that book instead would probably have saved me more than a few poor outcomes in negotiations. Finally I'd like to recommend Peopleware - surely one of - if not the definitively - best book I've read for professional purposes.

mike555 6y ago
I’ve read five dysfunctions and can’t say I remember anything about personality types (MBTI). To me it was about persistence honesty and pragmatism. Loved it.
- occz 6y ago
  It's mentioned both in the fable-part and the epilogue.
davideous 6y ago
Five Dysfunctions of a Team completely was absolutely revolutionary for me and my team. It's not about MBTI at all, but MBTI is just a tool it mentions to help with dysfunction one. Here are the five dysfunctions: The foundational dysfunction is a lack of trust -- trust defined as belief that your skill weaknesses and deficiencies will not be used against you. So people conceal weaknesses and don't ask for help from each other, etc. This leads to fear of (healthy, productive) conflict -- you don't hash things out, but rather any meaningful discussion gets suppressed. Creates an environment where back-channeling and politics thrive, etc. This leads to lack of commitment -- the team has not really had heathy, productive conflict/discussion so they don't buy into decisions. There is ambiguity about direction and priorities. This leads to avoidance of accountability. This leads to inattention to results. Here's a high-level overview: https://www.executiveagenda.com/application/files/3215/6401/6016/fivedysfunctions.pdf https://www.executiveagenda.com/application/files/3215/6401/...

cdavid 6y ago

For engineers who become managers, manager tools is my first recommendation as well. It can be cringy from time to time, but it really focuses on things we are not used to think much as engineers. And it gives a lot of practical tips one can use right away. I think they apply to almost any type of organisation large enough to require management. One issue with giving tips about eng. management is a bit like giving tips about software engineering: it is very context dependent. Especially around the areas where you have agency. Do you have agency in hiring ? In the directions your team work on ? On head count ? On technologies ? On firing ? On promotions ? Depending on your levers, your management will have to adapt a lot.

rammy1234 6y ago

“Making of a manager” by Julie Zhuo was great read for me. It covers the transformation of individual contributor to a manager. Well written. Give it a try.

Guthur 6y ago

In my opinion for the majority of the cases you manage systems and lead people. Improving the organisational system so that the individuals can effectively do their job is an important activity. This requires collecting reasonable information to feed into developing your hypotheses on how to improve the system. This I feel is management. Ensure that the individual team members can understand how they are contributing the overall company aim, feel motivate to learn and work, and generally understand how they are fitting into the organisational system is leadership. There is an exception when an individual has deviated strongly from your average team member and that requires case by case analysis. The distinction might seem a little pedantic and I'm continually evaluating my perspective on leadership but I do feel there is reason to make some distinction and that it might avoid some of the pitfalls of leadership such as micro management and individual demotivation.

TheColorYellow 6y ago
I really think this nails it. Management of people requires a very empathetic, highly personalized approach. It's really all about motivation and the levers you can use are not always in line with the company objectives. High performance companies and teams are usually the ones that can find a way to sync up the people objectives with the company objectives for a long enough time to deliver products and services into a marketplace. Meanwhile, organizational management is much more of a systems thinking approach that requires classical engineering skills. It requires technical and domain expertise plus intimate knowledge of the existing practices, processes, and environments. Which makes sense as to why most managers in the software development field fail. They know the organizational side of things well but the people side is overlooked. And now the spectrum is swinging towards people managers without the requisite organizational skills and we're left with a new set of problems.

rramadass 6y ago

All "Engineering Managers" should read this first: Speech by David Packard to HP Managers - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-our-company-5634378 https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...

maroonblazer 6y ago

Any list of this sort should include "Managing The Design Factory" by Donald G. Reinertsen. A thought-provoking evaluation of what to care about when managing software teams.

shimms 6y ago

My current box of books that I recommend to new managers on my teams: Technology Specific: * An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management (Will Larson) * Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and Devops: Building and Scaling High Performing Teams (Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim) * Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow (Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais) * Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Marty Cagan) * The Phoenix Project (Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford) General: * The Goal (Eliyahu Goldratt) * Turn the Ship Around! (L David Marquet) * Just Culture (Sidney Dekker) * Leadership on the Line (Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky) * Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)

jacobian 6y ago
Thanks for the list! The one that I've read (about half) are great, which makes me want to read the rest. (Just Culture and Accelerate, in particular, are so great I think I'm going to consider adding them to my list as well.)

clarkevans 6y ago

I found "Switch" to be helpful when facilitating organizational change -- https://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/ https://heathbrothers.com/books/switch/