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Read The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier. It’s not just about managers, it’s also about tech leads.
That being said, really good book :)
2. "The Phoenix Project", "The Unicorn Project" (novels), and "DevOps Handbook" by Eugene Kim, on how different parts of a tech + non-tech organization come and work together.
3. "High Output Management" by Andrew Grove on overall technical management.
4. "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr on setting objectives and measuring their progress.
5. "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande on thinking through replicable processes.
6. "Who" by Geoff Smart on hiring.
7. "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek and "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle on creating culture and reasons for why people do the work. It's an important part of any management process, double import because of how often it is lost in technical management.
Here's two really good articles, not books, on the subject: * https://www.hashtagcoder.dev/blog/director-of-engineering * https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feedi...
The book is an interesting read, but merely reading it won't do anything. There are one or two exercises per chapter, and you should work on them if you really want to see the benefits.
Also, if you want to do a little test before reading the whole book follow these tips from the intro:
> Three quick tips to boost charisma in conversation: Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of sentences, reduce how quickly and how often you nod, and pause for two full seconds before you speak.
From this summary: https://github.com/mgp/book-notes/blob/master/the-charisma-m...
> Do you have any recommendation on what should I do Research. Why? Because this question has been asked dozens if not hundreds of times.
One of the skills of a tech lead (or parent, or anyone) is recognizing when a person may just be seeking recognition and politely playing along.
The sociology of software engineering biases the perspectives on leadership therein toward this kind of contempt for subordinates.
My two favorites for this are 'Becoming a Technical Leader', Gerald Weinberg, and 'Making Things Happen', Scott Berkun.
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Problem-Sol...
My two favorites for this are 'Becoming a Technical Leader', Gerald Weinberg, and 'Making Things Happen', Scott Berkun.
Don't be put off by the fact that his books are self-published, and the covers aren't great. He is brilliant.
The best book on leadership I read was Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership[1]. He was a career US Navy SEAL and bring a lot of great leadership approaches from the SEALS and correlates them to the business world. His principles lead back to the idea of taking extreme ownership of everything related to your team and the "mission". I really liked his no nonsense approach. The best lesson I learnt on leadership is to list…
None of those things exist in software engineering so there will be people that aren't motivated by the allure of moving up, aren't passionate about the product and maybe just want to do their job and go home. There is nothing wrong with that as long as they are doing their work.
As a leader, you may have peers that will like you to take extreme ownership because they can play politics and blame you for things. I don't think there is room for that sort of BS on a battlefield but I don't have first-hand experience.
There are also a lot of teams that don't have 'mission' like goals that are clearly evident (e.g. root out terrorists in Ramadi) but have a continuous flow of work to be done.
Like any books/videos/courses on leadership or self-help, take what you can from it an see what sticks in your world, don't take it as a prescription or steps on how to do something.