High Output Management - for general management issues.
Software Project Survival Guide - for software specific issues. (Don't be discourged by all the documents it discusses.)
Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#72The Manager's Handbook is a great free online resource (by the founder of Clearbit): https://themanagershandbook.com/
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#73I'd recommend Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager. She's got a twitter https://twitter.com/joulee where you could check out her sharing of managerial wisdom to have your own gauge.
This book focuses on the practical side like sharing useful feedback, smart recruiting strategy and meeting optimization, all towards the goal of greater outcome and amplifying team success, instead of just more activities entailed by conventional manager model.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#74"The Phoenix Project"
IMHO, this book is better read after at least reading Goldratt's The Goal . It's a sort of spiritual sequel. His Critical Chain is also worth reading before or after The Phoenix Project as it has a more direct connection. The Goal , as written, is about manufacturing processes and a lot of people have trouble seeing past that domain when reading it. That is, they fail to generalize, or understand how to generalize, t…
Interesting, I'll check it out thanks. I do think the Phoenix Project is too verbose for the story they have to tell, but the "aha" moment is really just the parallel that engineering can be treated like assembly line manufacturing. It was good introduction to Kanban.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#75[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#76[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#77There are kind of two main axes you can impact
1. The Devs
2. The Org
For The Devs
With regard to the developers you need to make sure they have what they need to succeed, and to help them grow.
For this "Peopleware" is great - it helps understand the "servant leader" mindshift
For The Org
With regard to the organization, your main job will be making sure the organization doesn't make classic mistakes.
Mythical Man Month is great for this. Another great resource is the "Classic Mistakes" section from McConnell's book Rapid Development.
If you google that you can find a PDF for it.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#78Start here: https://holub.com/reading/
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
High Output Management always gets recommended. How did his management work out for Intel?
He became CEO in 1987, when Intel's stock price was in the range of $0.10-0.20. When he left the post of CEO in May 1998, Intel's stock price was ~$9.50. A 10x return over a decade is pretty damn good.
> A 10x return over a decade is pretty damn good
I think it was 100x
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#80Handbook of Total Quality Management. Demings, Jaran, Ishikawa, Crosby, Taguchi Divest yourself of the impression that Quality is just about Testing. It's a long uphill fight. Godspeed friend, and stay sane.
$230 on Amazon. Several books have been recommended that are no longer in print and are incredibly expensive for used copies. I'd be interested to know the reason behind this. If they're so useful, why aren't they in print?
That particular one you have to catch lucky. I stumbled across it in the University library, and it's basically an aggregator of the work of the biggest names in the Quality Management/Quality Assurance field. I.e. if you haven't run into those gentleman before and regularly hold the title of QA, you are missing out on the theory behind what you are doing.
Most text/theory in Quality Management lit focuses on industrial/manufacturing incarnations and there are some (the most tiring people on the planet) who insist somehow Software engineering is fundamentally different than manufacturing; it isn't. That's a myth disproven time and time again. The book will walk you through how the work of Quality Management permeates all layers of any number of different business verticals.
I scored mine in paperback used for a steal. It was awesome.
Long story short, it isn't. It's just easier because material expenditure tends to be lower, but this is compensated for in higher communication overhead when interfacing between teams.
The reasin they aren't in print, is since, as the name suggests, it is a reference book, they generally do not fly off the shelves like hot cakes, and are the kinds of texts you reach out for when you've basically exhausted everything you have and still have no idea what it is you are missing, and damnit, someone had to run into something like this before.
Remember, publishers are profit driven, and the practitioners in a field, (nevermind the subset that actually take into account the historical theory in their field) is not a numerous bunch.
Even for 230, I'd have bought it just to have the theory in my hands in a form I find more conducive to reference than otherwise.
I'd also caution against scoffing at out of print literature. We lose reams of expertise and old nuggets if wisdom that when cross referenced with newer material actually help build up a profound understanding of a field. I've not gotten one book I regret buying in terms of professional brush up, and it does more than you think to proof you against the great hype BS cycle that tech is so rife with. I can't count the number of times I've caught domething in tge bud as abother manifestation of a path already tread.
But you do you. Your style and mind probably works different than mine.