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Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

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Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#51

Post by jeffbee »

bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #25
jeffbee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally I think people with sports and military backgrounds have the soundest perspectives on leadership. The sociology of software engineering biases the perspectives on leadership therein toward this kind of contempt for subordinates.

Great point. Who has better perspective on teamwork than people who spent their life in real teams? Life experience is an area where tech really needs to diversify. Hire ex-military, hire rugby players, philosophers, political scientists.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#53

Post by jqcoffey »

brians wrote: post #48
jqcoffey wrote: post #34

Crazy that no one mentioned the Mythical Man Month by Fred J. Brooks ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13629.The_Mythical_Man_M... ). I thought it was the definitive classic. I also like to recommend Coders at Work by Peter Seibel ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6713575-coders-at-work ). It's incredibly useful to read about just how different 16 ultra high performing software engineers are/were. Nothing pre…

I love Seibel’s work, but it’s important to know he has retracted much of the emphasis on code reading. He apparently read that into his subjects words, perhaps in a manic period.

Ah, that's good to know. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#54

Post by stonogo »

kevsim wrote: post #37

I really liked “Managing Humans”. Super useful and told in a story format that makes it ultra accessible

This book left me with a bad taste in my mouth, as though it were written by someone who wasn't really grounded in experience. I'm not sure if the author was trying to convince me or himself. Perhaps I'm not the target audience, but I'd be interested to hear more about why you liked it, since it was such a disappointment to me.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#55

Post by emmaonthursday »

The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau[1] is a great book that walks through how to have the most impact at various levels of an organization (roughly: IC, tech lead, manager). I've found the approaches & mindset it outlines to be incredibly helpful, and I wish I'd come across it earlier.

[1] https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#56

Post by senthil_rajasek »

colebowl wrote: post #9

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…

When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly.

One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red".

What it meant to me as a new dev was that I can't go home and the whole team had to stay in the office until the problem was solved... A part of the team had to sleep in the office for a few weeks. (I still don't know if this is against OSHA.)

Many years later while I was watching the movie "A Few Good Men.", I learnt that "Code Red" was a military term. Suddenly, it dawned on me that my "superboss" was also an ex-military person.

Sleeping at work did not fix the issue, after many months of hiring help and bringing in more hands the outage was brought under control.

Did the ex-military "superboss" help the situation? I don't know...

Now I know that Military veterans in their enthusiasm to find work in civilian environments tout their ex-military skills as team building or leadership skills.

Skills learned in the military are for war, learned for conflict situations and applying them to civilian environments and bringing a war mentality or attitude to a workplace is toxic.

I don't have an answer to what makes a good technical leader but I know from experience that ex-military style leadership only adds to the toxicity of a workplace.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#57

Post by tensor »

Contrary to most people, in my experience managing technical people is the same as managing anyone else. The best general management book I've read is: Becoming the Evidence Based Manager. The information in this book is backed by science studies and is also extremely actionable and easy to understand. It's really changed my life as a manager.

https://www.amazon.ca/Gary-Latham/dp/1473676975/ref=sxts_sxw...

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#58

Post by saas_sam »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #56
colebowl wrote: post #9

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…

When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly. One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red". What it m…

The book Extreme Ownership would not condone psychopathic behavior like making people sleep in office for weeks at a time. Nor would any ex-military leader I've ever encountered. Military skills are not purely "for war" any more than college skills are for "writing essays."

Sorry you suffered that experience though, hope you made it out of there.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?

#59

Post by hator »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #56
colebowl wrote: post #9

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…

When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly. One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red". What it m…

While for sure not all "ex-military skills" are leadership skills, there are some general leadership skills you can learn in many places, including the military.

The book is in my opinion a distillation of those skills, which -- maybe just so happen to -- come from military background. None of what is presented in the book come anywhere close to the situation you described. I would dare to say, quite the contrary. It is about listening, understanding, trusting and many other things, usually considered positive.

It had a great influence on me, though I have never even thought of joining the military.

I started practicing extreme ownership as a regular developer and made my way up to a team leader in about 6 months time. Now I double down as a fresh (and young) leader.

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