I haven’t written much over the last two years because I have been pretty steeped in the adventure of becoming an engineering manager. My organization has more than doubled in size over the last year, and I am now in the position of mentoring for other folk who are beginning their journey on the manager track. I realized that I have read a significant number of management and leadership books over the last few years, so I put together a list of my favourites that have helped me most along the way.
The Manager’s Path — Camille Fournier
Absolute MUST READ for anyone at the IC or Tech Lead level who is curious about entering leadership. Camille shares her journey from Senior Engineer to CTO, along with how expectations change along the way. I use this book as a reference, and whenever I feel I am ready to take on a bigger challenge I re-read the chapter for the next level up.
Resilient Management — Lara Hogan
Lara is a management coach and founder of Wherewithall. Management can sometimes be more art than science, but Lara shares practical tactics that can be applied in the fuzziest of situations. I constantly refer to her Feedback Equation and Manager Voltron practices.
Difficult Conversations — Bruce Patton, et al
My first task as a new manager was to set clear expectations, and to provide feedback to engineers who weren’t meeting them. Delivering actionable, critical feedback that lands is a skill, and learning how to approach difficult conversations from a place of curiousity and collaboration has been invaluable to me in both my professional and personal life.
Becoming a Manager — Linda Hill
This book is not specific to software engineering management, and I was surprised to learn that the challenges you face when moving from IC to people manager are universal to a lot of professional disciplines. In particular, the myths vs reality
| Myth | Reality | |
|---|---|---|
| Operative principle | Authority | Interdependence |
| Key players | Direct reports | Include those outside your formal authority |
| Source of power | Formal authority | Everything but formal authority |
| Focus | Managing 1:1 | Managing one-on-one and leading the team |
| Desired Outcome | Control through compliance | Commitment through empowerment |
| Key challenges | Cope with complexity | Cope with complexity and change |
| Essential competencies | Technical | Technical, human, conceptual |
Effective Delegation of Authority — Hassan Ossman
Scaling yourself is one of the bigger challenges of management, and it is easy to get into the habit of thinking “it will take me the same amount of time to explain as it will be to delegate it.” This may be true for simple tasks that sort well in the Eisenhower Decision Matrix:
…but you should delegate responsibilities, not tasks, and as with all things — the clearer the expectations are up-front, the better the outcome. This book is a quick read, but it made an outsized impact on my ability to scale — it also made me a leader who can grow the next generation of technical leaders.