- Peopleware
- The Mythical Man Month
- High Output Management
Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
11–20 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#12Things I've saved from previous discussions:
HN Question "Advice for a new & inexperienced tech lead?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22255301
HN Question "Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712194
HN Question "I want my tech lead's job" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21369535
Useful comments on a leadership blog post link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21376838
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#13An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson: https://press.stripe.com/an-elegant-puzzle
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#14At my previous company I was the lead on a team that was tasked with taking projects that had gone off the rails a bit (or a lot...) and try to get them back on track. If you land a role managing a team with a project that's not going well (a common reason for management change) then the book I'd recommend most is "Catastrophe Disentanglement" by E. M. Bennatan. It's very insightful.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#15I’ve just made this transition myself! Congratulations! I have a very short list of reading recommendations here: https://www.cenizal.com/reading/
In addition to the blog links on that page, I found these books to be the most useful:
High Output Management, by Andy Grove. My number one recommendation for anyone interested in managing people, particularly engineers. This book presents methods and processes for helping individuals maximize their impact, while remaining grounded in reality and humanity.
Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. This book gave me great insight into how I handle feedback and what I can do to make the most of it. It also helped me understand how others might take my feedback, and develop methods for sharing my feedback effectively.
The Manager's Path, by Camille Fournier. A pragmatic guide to the stages of technical leadership, from tech lead to CTO. A great read even for engineers with no interest in people management, because it provides a clear line-of-sight into what those folks care about and how they make decisions.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#16The Prince by Machiavel.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#17Here's the single one resource I'm giving any of our new leaders, it's really short and the highest signal-to-noise ratio I've ever seen: https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html I'm personally revisiting it every time I send it around, because it's just so good. Here's another I've seen recently that goes into a bit of detail while not being quite as succinct: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30240428 EDI…
The "defmarco" blog post is gold. I appreciate that he put it a quick bullet format, rather than a long fleshed-out ebook.
Most of the rules actually applies across all types of roles and not just a engineering one.
Gonna print this one out and nailed it on my desk.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#18An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson: https://press.stripe.com/an-elegant-puzzle
I found this to be immensely useful for my specific situation (mid-sized startup), but people in much bigger (enterprise-level) or smaller (<20 staff) seemed to get much less from it.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#19There’s really only one thing you have to take away from ‘The Mythical Man Month’ and ‘Peopleware’ in my opinion (more people != more work), but they’re still valuable reads.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#20The Prince by Machiavel.
Haha