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Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
91–97 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#92Gerald M. Weinberg books. Just get them all. QSM 1-4 for start.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
High Output Management always gets recommended. How did his management work out for Intel?
To quote Wikipedia: > He was the third employee and eventual third CEO of Intel, transforming the company into the world's largest semiconductor company. Looks like it worked pretty well. Also from Wikipedia: > He relinquished his CEO title in May 1998, [...] and remained chairman of the board until November 2004. Care to guess when the decisions causing today's woes for Intel started happening?
I stand corrected.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#94Going from SE toward SEM I'd suggest you get into s/w metrics. Nothing is better for decision making and advancing good arguments at meetings than being able to give numbers. - Fenton: Software Metrics Obviously there's a ton of pop management stuff. A few of my favourites: - Horowtz: The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Pink: Drive - Evans: The Trousers of Reality - Gall: General Systemantics
Strong disagree. Metrics-based management leads to so much dysfunction. Read Robert Austin’s Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations for the details, but the short version is that metrics distract people from things that are important but non-measurable.
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#95Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#96If you read nothing else, read Edwards Deming. He clearly outlines what the management philosophy of modern creative jobs must be like: - Focus on what matters. - An organisation needs an aim, a meaningful goal, that's not just "do what we have always done except better". - Don't invest in shiny things because they are shiny – investments basically cost you the interest rate on a loan, rain or shine, even on Sundays.…
What books of his would you recommend?
In addition to Dr. Deming's books you can check out The Deming Institute (www.deminginstitute.org). They have a "learn" section with blog posts, podcasts, and articles about the Deming philosophy and how it's being used today. Plus they have sections on some of Deming's main teachings (e.g. the Red Bead Experiment).
Re: Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. DeMarco's Peopleware is a bit more hands on compared to the man month.
Man month is also pretty dated by now. There is some valid advice in the book still, but oftentimes it has to be 'translated' to the modern computing environment. Other things in it are just completely outdated.
I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point, but I learned a lot from The Mythical Man Month. It seems like every agile/scrum/kanban/lean book starts by arguing that the old ways of managing projects had problems. It was useful for me to read Brooks' deep dive into what, exactly, those old ways were. Some of the methods stand the test of time and others have not (e.g. not using too many comments in your code because of how much disk space they consume).